The Special Committee on Decolonisation

 The declaration on decolonisation provided a framework for the General Assembly to pay attention to progress achieved towards ending the subjugation of peoples. A body entitled Special Committee on the Situation with Regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on Decolonisation (Committee of 24) has become the main body concerned with self-determination and is engaged in the problems of few remaining non-self-governing areas. 

         From the beginning, non-administering governments have dominated the Committee of 24. The administering powers smarting under constant criticism, gradually left the Committee. The first to leave it were Italy and Australia, followed by the United Kingdom and the United States which complained of the ”militant attitude" of the majority. Since 1971, not a single administering state is a member of the Committee of 24.

 
As the number of dependent territories declined, the behaviour of the Committee and the tone of its debates sharpened increasingly. It took a especially hard line on the remaining major colonial areas, such as Rhodesia, the Portuguese colonies in Africa, and Namibia. It also has demanded full independence for the dozens of dependent islands and archipelagos existing in many parts of the world, no matter how small their populations or how benign their governors. To carry out its tasks, the Committee of 24 has taken some cues from the provisions of the Trusteeship system and added some of its own innovations. It receives petitions and offers forums to people from the non-self-governing territories. It tries to send visiting missions to the territories, but the administering authorities have not always allowed them permission to do so. The Committee issues periodic reports and makes recommendations to the administering states. These recommendations sometimes criticise them strongly and demand adoption of specific methods intended to fix a date for independence.

DECOLONISATION

The General Assembly and Decolonisation 

The first step towards establishing UN responsibility for all dependent territories was taken in 1946 with the formation of a Committee on Information from non-self-governing territories. On the basis of information given by the administering powers, it was to make recommendations to the Assembly. This committee was modelled on the Trusteeship Council which had an equal number of administering and non-administering powers. Like the Trusteeship Council, the Committee prepared a questionnaire to guide its members in reporting. 

        This committee had a very limited effectiveness in the UN’ 5 struggle against colonialism for two reasons. It was debarred from examining ”political" information, and was not given the right to accept petitions or send out visiting missions to the dependent territories. As a result, the anti-colonial initiative remained largely with the General Assembly and its Fourth Committee, which soon requested governments to include political information in their annual reports. Later, the Assembly began to demand that the administering authorities should submit sufficient information on constitutional changes in the territories to enable it to determine whether self-government had in fact been attained. Spain and Portugal after joining the UN in 1955, initially resisted the idea of transmitting information to the UN about their overseas dominions. Following UN pressure Spain agreed to do so in 1960 but Portugal refused to follow suit. 

        By 1960, the anti-colonial revolution was at its peak. Four decades of mandate and trusteeship had established the principle of international accountability for the administration of a select group of territories, with independence as the ultimate aim. Fifteen years of gradually expanding activity under the Charter Declaration regarding non-self-governing territories had gone far in establishing the principle of international accountability for the well-being and self-government of ex-colonial states. With a Third World majority dominating the UN world body, the Assembly was well on its way to becoming an aggressive instrument in the drive against whatever remained of colonialism in different parts of the world. In a historic Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, the General Assembly proclaimed that the subjection of any people to alien domination was a denial of fundamental human rights contrary to the UN Charter and an impediment to world peace, and that all subject peoples had a right to immediate and complete independence. This was a historic declaration and a landmark in the UN role in decolonisation and provided a rationale to all peoples in dependent territories to overthrow their colonial masters. 

In 1961 the Assembly expanded the role of the Committee on Information by authorising it to discuss political information and to make recommendations specifically directed at the problems of territories located in the same region. The Fourth Committee also broke new ground by granting, for the first time, a hearing to petitioners from two non-self-governing territories. 

However, what was far more important was the creation of a special committee on the situation with regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples. Known as the Committee of 17 (increased to 25 in 1979) it was assigned the task of studying the Declaration and making appropriate recommendations for its implementation. The Special Committee had an anti-colonial majority (of membership) and a broad mandate to do whatever it thought was appropriate to implement the 1960 Declaration. The Committee assumed to itself all the powers of the Trusteeship Council, such as the powers to hear petitions, send missions to the field and make recommendations directed at specific territories. By 1963 the earlier Committee on Information was formally abolished. 

Rhodesia, Namibia and the Portuguese African colonies of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea were some of the problem areas standing in the way of the UN efforts at decolonisation. Rhodesia’s White minority government unilaterally declared independence from Britain in 1965 and endured 15 years of international ostracism, UN economic sanctions, and internal strife before finally accepting majority rule in 1980 and receiving . admission to the UN as the State of Zimbabwe. Portugal's ha rd-line policy collapsed in 1974 under the weight of colonial wars that ate away nearly half of the country’s revenues and after the fall of the Galtano dictatorship Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bisseau) became independent in 1974. Mozambique and Angola followed suit in 1975. Namibia, despite South Aftrica’s persistent efforts to hold on to it,‘ finally got its independence in 1990. The decolonisation efforts of the UN can be called its crowning success. Independence has become not merely a goal but an accomplished fact for the vast majority of colonial peoples since 1945. We shall now examine the case of Namibia to give an example of the kind of role the UN has played with regard to decolonisation.