League of Nations mandate

Basis

The mandate system was established by Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, drafted by the victors of World War I. The article referred to territories which after the war were no longer ruled by their previous sovereign, but their peoples were not considered "able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world". The article called for such people's tutelage to be "entrusted to advanced nations who by reason of their resources, their experience or their geographical position can best undertake this responsibility".

U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and South African General Jan Smuts played influential roles in pushing for the establishment of a mandates system. The mandates system reflected a compromise between Smuts (who wanted colonial powers to annex the territories) and Wilson (who wanted trusteeship over the territories).

Generalities

All of the territories subject to League of Nations mandates were previously controlled by states defeated in World War I, principally Imperial Germany and the Ottoman Empire. The mandates were fundamentally different from the protectorates in that the mandatory power undertook obligations to the inhabitants of the territory and to the League of Nations.

The process of establishing the mandates consisted of two phases:

1. The formal removal of sovereignty of the state previously controlling the territory.
2. The transfer of mandatory powers to individual states among the Allied Powers.

Treaties

The divestiture of Germany's overseas colonies, along with three territories disentangled from its European homeland area (the Free City of Danzig, the Memel Territory, and the Saar), was accomplished in the Treaty of Versailles (1919), with the territories being allotted among the Allies on 7 May of that year. Ottoman territorial claims were first addressed in the Treaty of Sèvres (1920) and finalised in the Treaty of Lausanne (1923). The Ottoman territories were allotted among the Allied Powers at the San Remo conference in 1920.

Types of mandates

|- | British Mandate for the Cameroons ||British Cameroon||United Kingdom|| rowspan="2" |German Kamerun|| Became part of the United Nations trust territories after World War II on 13 December 1946 || Part of Cameroon and Nigeria ||Equivalent document as for French Cameroons, with all articles substantially the same |- | French Mandate for the Cameroons ||French Cameroon||France|| Under a Resident and a Commissioner until 27 August 1940, then under a governor. Became part of the United Nations trust territories after World War II on 13 December 1946 || Cameroon ||[[File:French Mandate for the Cameroons.pdf |100px]] |- | British Mandate for Togoland ||British Togoland||United Kingdom|| rowspan="2" |German Togoland|| British Administrator post filled by the colonial Governor of the British Gold Coast (present day Ghana) except 30 September 1920 – 11 October 1923 Francis Walter Fillon Jackson). Transformed on 13 December 1946 into a United Nations trust territory; on 13 December 1956 it ceased to exist as it became part of Ghana. || Volta Region, Ghana ||Equivalent document as for French Togoland, with all articles substantially the same |- | French Mandate for Togoland ||French Togoland||France|| French Togoland under a Commissioner till 30 August 1956, then under a High Commissioner as the Autonomous Republic of Togo || Togo ||[[File:French Mandate for Togoland WDL11571.pdf |100px]]

Rules of establishment

According to the Council of the League of Nations, meeting of August 1920: "draft mandates adopted by the Allied and Associated Powers would not be definitive until they had been considered and approved by the League... the legal title held by the mandatory Power must be a double one: one conferred by the Principal Powers and the other conferred by the League of Nations."

Three steps were required to establish a Mandate under international law: (1) The Principal Allied and Associated Powers confer a mandate on one of their number or on a third power; (2) the principal powers officially notify the council of the League of Nations that a certain power has been appointed mandatory for such a certain defined territory; and (3) the council of the League of Nations takes official cognisance of the appointment of the mandatory power and informs the latter that it [the council] considers it as invested with the mandate, and at the same time notifies it of the terms of the mandate, after ascertaining whether they are in conformance with the provisions of the covenant."

The U.S. State Department's Digest of International Law says that the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne provided for the application of the principles of state succession to the "A" Mandates. The Treaty of Versailles provisionally recognised the former Ottoman communities as independent nations. It also required Germany to recognise the disposition of the former Ottoman territories and to recognise the new states laid down within their boundaries. The terms of the Treaty of Lausanne required the newly created states that acquired the territory detached from the Ottoman Empire to pay annuities on the Ottoman public debt and to assume responsibility for the administration of concessions that had been granted by the Ottomans. The treaty also let the States acquire, without payment, all the property and possessions of the Ottoman Empire situated within their territory. The treaty provided that the League of Nations was responsible for establishing an arbitral court to resolve disputes that might arise and stipulated that its decisions were final.

A disagreement regarding the legal status and the portion of the annuities to be paid by the "A" mandates was settled when an Arbitrator ruled that some of the mandates contained more than one State:The difficulty arises here how one is to regard the Asiatic countries under the British and French mandates. Iraq is a Kingdom in regard to which Great Britain has undertaken responsibilities equivalent to those of a Mandatory Power. Under the British mandate, Palestine and Transjordan have each an entirely separate organisation. We are, therefore, in the presence of three States sufficiently separate to be considered as distinct Parties. France has received a single mandate from the Council of the League of Nations, but in the countries subject to that mandate, one can distinguish two distinct States: Syria and the Lebanon, each State possessing its own constitution and a nationality clearly different from the other.

Later history

After the United Nations was founded in 1945 and the League of Nations was disbanded, all but one of the mandated territories became United Nations trust territories, a roughly equivalent status. In each case, the colonial power that held the mandate on each territory became the administering power of the trusteeship, except that of the Empire of Japan, which had been defeated in World War II, lost its mandate over the South Pacific islands, which became a "strategic trust territory" known as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands under U.S. administration.

The sole exception to the transformation of the League of Nations mandates into UN trusteeships was that of South Africa and its mandated territory South West Africa. Rather than placing South West Africa under trusteeship like other former mandates, South Africa proposed annexation, a proposition rejected by the UN General Assembly. Despite South Africa's resistance, the International Court of Justice affirmed that South Africa continued to have international obligations regarding the South West Africa mandate. Eventually, in 1990, the mandated territory, now Namibia, gained independence, culminating from the Tripartite Accords and the resolution of the South African Border War — a prolonged guerrilla conflict against the apartheid regime that lasted from 1966 until 1990.

Nearly all the former League of Nations mandates had become sovereign states by 1990, including all of the former UN trust territories with the exception of a few successor entities of the gradually dismembered Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (formerly Japan's South Pacific Trust Mandate). These exceptions include the Northern Mariana Islands which is a commonwealth in political union with the U.S. with the status of unincorporated organised territory. The Northern Mariana Islands does elect its own governor to serve as territorial head of government, but it remains a U.S. territory with its head of state being the President of the United States and federal funds to the commonwealth administered by the Office of Insular Affairs of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

Remnant Micronesia and the Marshall Islands, the heirs of the last territories of the Trust, attained final independence on 22 December 1990. (The UN Security Council ratified termination of trusteeship, effectively dissolving trusteeship status, on 10 July 1987.) The Republic of Palau, split off from the Federated States of Micronesia, became the last to effectively gain its independence, on 1 October 1994.

Sources and references

• Anghie, Antony "Colonialism and the Birth of International Institutions: Sovereignty, Economy, and the Mandate System of the League of Nations" 34 (3) New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 513 (2002).
• Nele Matz, Civilization and the Mandate System under the League of Nations as Origin of Trusteeship, in: A. von Bogdandy and R. Wolfrum, (eds.), Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law, Volume 9, 2005, p. 47–95.
• Pugh, Jeffrey, "Whose Brother's Keeper? International Trusteeship and the Search for Peace in the Palestinian Territories", International Studies Perspectives 13, no. 4 (November 2012): 321–343.
• Tamburini, Francesco "I mandati della Società delle Nazioni", in Africana, Rivista di Studi Extraeuropei, n.XV – 2009, pp. 99–122.

References

References

1. (21 June 1971). "Legal Consequences for States of the Continued Presence of South Africa in Namibia (South West Africa) notwithstanding Security Council Resolution 276 (1970)". International Court of Justice.
2. Matz, 2005, pp 70-71, "Primarily, two elements formed the core of the Mandate System, the principle of non-annexation of the territory on the one hand and its administration as a 'sacred trust of civilisation' on the other... The principle of administration as a 'sacred trust of civilisation' was designed to prevent a practice of imperial exploitation of the mandated territory in contrast to former colonial habits. Instead, the Mandatory's administration should assist in developing the territory for the well-being of its native people."
3. Pedersen, Susan. (2012). "Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century".
4. Potter, Pitman B.. (1922). "Origin of the System of Mandates Under the League of Nations". American Political Science Review.
5. Wright, Quincy. (1923). "Sovereignty of the Mandates". American Journal of International Law.
6. Kripp, Jacob. (2022). "The Creative Advance Must Be Defended: Miscegenation, Metaphysics, and Race War in Jan Smuts's Vision of the League of Nations". American Political Science Review.
7. (June 28, 1919). "Papers relating to the foreign relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919 Volume XIII, Annotations to the treaty of peace between the Allied and Associated Powers and Germany, signed at Versailles, June 28, 1919". United States State Department.
8. (2004). "Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory". The International Court of Justice (ICJ).
9. (July 20, 1922). "Italy Holds up Class A Mandates". The New York Times.
10. Pugh, Jeffrey D.. (2012-11-01). "Whose Brother's Keeper? International Trusteeship and the Search for Peace in the Palestinian Territories". International Studies Perspectives.
11. [http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/Peace+Process/Guide+to+the+Peace+Process/Declaration+of+Establishment+of+State+of+Israel.htm Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs: The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel] {{Webarchive. link. (2013-01-16 . May 14, 1948: Retrieved 28 January 2013.)
12. (2003). "Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements: G to M". Taylor & Francis.
13. 1-84511-138-9, p. 21
14. 0-7735-2424-X, pp. 89–100
15. Treaty of Peace and South West Africa Mandate Bill of 1919
16. (pp. 109–110)
17. Quincy Wright, Mandates under the League of Nations, Univ.Chicago Press, 1930.
18. See also: Temperley, History of the Paris Peace Conference, Vol VI, pp. 505–506; League of Nations, The Mandates System (official publication of 1945); Hill, Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeship, pp. 133ff.
19. "See Article 22 of the Peace Treaty of Versailles".
20. "See Article 434 of the Peace Treaty of Versailles".
21. "Article 47, 60, and Protocol XII, Article 9 of the Treaty of Lausanne".
22. See Marjorie M. Whiteman, Digest of International Law, vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1963) pp. 650–652, 21 Apr. 2010