Australia and the colonial question at the United Nations

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis to examine and seek to explain the response of Australia to anti-colonial activity at the United Nations. It deals with such activity in three categories: (l) attempts to apply extensive United Nations supervision of non-self-governing territories under the authority of Chapter XI of the charter; (2) attempts to have interpreted very rigorously the supervision rights of the United Nations over trust territories; and (3) attempts to force the pace of decolonisation in some territories by seeking United Nations intervention in situations claimed to comprise threats to peace. At the writing of the charter in 19^5» Australia sought to have it allow the United Nations to be informed about and, to a limited degree, involved in, dependent territories. Essentially Australia was seeking an extension of the mandates system to ensure the humane and progressive administration of dependencies. However, anti-colonial feeling led to activity in the United Nations designed to maximise international supervision of dependent territories and, more to the point, to accelerate political development in them so as speedily to accomplish their self-government or independence. Throughout the late 1940 s and the 1950s, Australia, herself an administrator of trust and non-self-governing territories, consistently opposed attempts in the United Nations to interfere with administering Powers' exclusive control of their territories. On only one issue, that of Indonesian independence, did any Australian government of the period support forceful anti-colonialism. She took up this position partly in sympathy with western allies under Cold War attack and partly because of inherited constitutional attitudes, but mainly because experience had led her to see control of the non-self-governing territory of Papua and the trust territory of New Guinea as vital to her own security. Only in the case of Indonesian independence did other considerations outweigh the New Guinea interest and take Australia into the company of her mainly anti-colonial Asian neighbours. In the 1960s, it is seen, she dropped her former intransigence because of resignation to the success of the anti-colonial cause in respect of Papua-New Guinea and because of the diplomatic price of isolation. Show more