The Individual Right to Petition in Internationalized Territories. From Progressive Thought to an Abandoned Practice

Abstract

This article discusses the right to petition as it existed within both the mandate system during the League of Nations and under the trusteeship system of the United Nations (UN) in light of contemporary missions of international civil administration. During these past systems, inhabitants of territories placed under international tutelage were given the right to address the conduct of the powers responsible for the governance of the respective territories. In other words, by exercising the right to petition, individuals and interest groups were given the opportunity to object to decisions taken by the governing authorities and accordingly set in motion review procedures. Even though both the mandate system and the trusteeship system have ceased to exist, in light of modern day operations involving post-conflict governance such as the UN mission in East Timor and the international presence within Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the territory of Kosovo, the question arises whether the reintroduction of such a right would be a step forward in finding a solution for the accountability deficit which currently exists within those missions of civil administration. The mandate and the trusteeship systems as well as the current international governance missions are representative for the changing relations within the international legal domain. During the creation of both the mandate and the trusteeship systems the state was the pivotal element in the international arena. Therefore, the main hierarchical relationship existing at the time in terms of governance was one between individuals and their state. With the emergence of the League and the UN as a territorial administrator, a new context emerged in which peoples and individuals were placed more or less directly under the supervision and guarantees of the international community, creating ‘a new kind of governmental relationship quite foreign to the old ideas of international law’. In such new circumstances, mechanisms were deemed necessary to control the conduct of the governing authorities, i.e. the mandatory state, not only top down through obligations to report but bottom up as well. The right to petition which was guaranteed during both the mandate and the trusteeship systems was probably the best example of such a mechanism. After the de facto termination of the trusteeship practice in 1994, leaving the international scene with no externally governed territories falling under the UN trusteeship system’s umbrella, purportedly the need for such a specific right ceased to exist. Conversely, this article argues that considering the subsequent development of the UN’s governance practice in post conflict situations, the need for supervision mechanisms in situations of internationalized administration has only grown. In the past two decades, the UN has been involved in far-reaching governance missions in which it was directly in charge of the administration of territories and ultimately responsible for all legislative, executive and judiciary processes within the administered territory. Building on the generally accepted view that UN governance missions are faced with an accountability deficit, the article argues that insight into the petition experience from the past can and should be used in discussions on current accountability issues within UN territorial governance practice.