Negotiation and Supervision

Abstract

As we have seen, the findings by the International Court of Justice, as part of the 1950 Advisory Opinion, that South West Africa still had the international status of a mandated territory and that the UN General Assembly was the competent body to assume the supervisory functions previously performed by the Council of the League of Nations in respect of administration of the territory, were favourable to the UN. However, the same was not true about the court’s view that South Africa was not legally obliged to place the territory under the International Trusteeship System of the UN. This ruling and South Africa’s persistent rejection of the supervisory competence of the General Assembly, posed problems for the UN. On the one hand, it could not effectively supervise the administration of South West Africa without the cooperation of the mandatory; on the other hand, the territory would not be placed under the trusteeship system if South Africa did not so wish, and it did not. Under these circumstances, the future of South West Africa hung in balance.KeywordsIndigenous PeopleAdvisory OpinionNationalist PartyIndigenous InhabitantSupervisory FunctionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.