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The Politics of Decolonization: The New Nations and the United Nations Political Process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

David A. Kay
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The fifteenth session of the General Assembly of the United Nations which convened in New York in September 1960 marked an important turning point in the history of the Organization. The United Nations had been created primarily through the efforts of states with a European or European-derived political and social culture possessing a common history of political involvement at the international level. During its first ten years the Organization was dominated by the problems and conflicts of these same states. However, by 1955 the process of decolonization which has marked the post-1945 political arena began to be reflected in the membership of the United Nations. In the ten years preceding the end of 1955 ten new nations devoid of experience in the contemporary international arena and struggling with the multitudinous problems of fashioning coherent national entities in the face of both internal and external pressures joined the Organization. By 1960 the rising tide of decolonization had reached flood crest with the entry in that one year of seventeen new Members—sixteen of which were from Africa.

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Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , Fall 1967 , pp. 786 - 811
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1967

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References

1 The movement towards self-government in Africa proceeded much more quickly during 1960 than even the most informed observers would have anticipated in 1959, let alone in 1958 or earlier. In a very real sense, therefore, the large influx of new members in 1960 to the United Nations came as something of a surprise to the U.N. as an institution and, in many ways, as something of a surprise to the new members themselves.

(Hadwen, John G. and Kaufmann, Johan, How United Nations Decisions Are Made [2nd ed. rev.; Dobbs Ferry, N.Y: Oceana Publications, 1962], p. 128Google Scholar.)

2 Crabb, Cecil V. Jr, The Elephants and the Grass: A Study of Nonalignment (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), p. 2Google Scholar.

3 Charter of the United Nations, Article 77 (1).

4 Ibrd., Article 87.

5 Ibrd., Article 73.

6 These territories were: Cameroons (British); Cameroons (French); Nauru; New Guinea; North Pacific Islands; Ruanda-Urundi; Somaliland; Tanganyika; Togoland (British); Togoland (French); and Western Samoa. As of 1967 all but three—Nauru, New Guinea, and the North Pacific Islands—have become independent states.

7 Jacobson, Harold Karan, “The United Nations and Colonialism: A Tentative Appraisal,” International Organisation, Winter 1962 (Vol. 16, No. 1), p. 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 UN Document A/4501, September 23, 1960.

9 UN Document A/4502, September 23, 1960.

10 General Assembly Official Records (15th session), 902nd plenary meeting, October 12, 1960, p. 687.

11 This account of the negotiations leading to the adoption of the declaration on colonialism draws on contemporary press reports in The New York Times of November 1960 and the many revealing remarks made by the delegates during the debate on the question.

12 Vakil, Mehdi (Iran), General Assembly Official Records (15th session), 926th plenary meeting, 11 28, 1960, pp. 995–996Google Scholar.

13 UN Document A/L.323, November 28, 1960. Emphasis added.

14 General Assembly Official Records (15th session), 945th plenary meeting, December 13, 1960, p. 1250.

15 General Assembly Official Records (15th session), 931st plenary meeting, December 1, 1960, p. 1065.

16 General Assembly Official Records (15th session), 947th plenary meeting, December 14, 1960, pp. 1272–1273.

17 For the views of the United States delegation see Morse, Senator Wayne (Oregon), “The United States in the United Nations: 1960—A Turning Point,” Supplementary Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1961), pp. 20–21Google Scholar.

18 General Assembly Official Records (15th session), 947th plenary meeting, pp. 1273–1274.

19 Ibid., p. 1283.

20 The New York Times, December 16, 1960, p. 4; Hamilton, Thomas J., “Colonialism at the U.N.,” The New York Times, 12 18, 1960, Section IV, p. 9Google Scholar; and Morse, pp. 20–21. According to Arthur Schlesinger, Our delegation even had the concurrence of the State Department in Washington in its desire to vote for the resolution. But the British were opposed, and Harold Macmillan called Eisenhower by transatlantic telephone to request American abstention. When an instruction to abstain arrived from the White House, James J. Wadsworh, then our ambassador to the UN, tried to reach Eisenhower to argue the case. Eisenhower declined to accept his call.

(Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House [Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965], pp. 510–511Google Scholar.)

21 General Assembly Resolution 1654 (XVI), November 27, 1961. In the idiom of the UN the formal title of this body is the Special Committee on the Situation with Regard to the Implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, often referred to as the Special Committee on Colonialism or the Special Committee of Twenty-Four (after 1962).

22 General Assembly Resolution 1654 (XVI), operative paragraph 5, under which the Assembly directs the Special Committee to carry out its task by employment of all means which it will have at its disposal within the framework of the procedures and modalities which it shall adopt for the proper discharge of its functions….

23 Rusk, Dean, “Parliamentary Diplomacy—Debate vs. Negotiation,” World Affairs Interpreter, 07 1955 (Vol. 26, No. 2), p. 122Google Scholar.

24 UN Document A/5238, October 8, 1962, p. 18.

25 UN Document A/5124, May 21, 1962, Annex I.

26 Ibid., Annex III.

27 UN Document A/L.386/Rev.1 and Add.1–4, June 18–19, 1962.

28 General Assembly Official Records (16th session), 1121st plenary meeting, June 28, 1962, p. 1549. The draft was adopted as General Assembly Resolution 1747 (XVI), June 28, 1962.

29 UN Document A/C.4/L.753, October 31, 1962.

30 UN Document A/5446/Add.3, July 30, 1963, Appendix.

31 Ibrd..

32 UN Document S/5409, August 30, 1963.

33 UN Document S/5425, September 11, 1963.

34 General Assembly Resolutions 1883 (XVIII), October 14, 1963, and 1889 (XVIII), November 6, 1963.

35 UN Document A/AC.109/61, March 23, 1964.

36 UN Document A/AC.109/L.128, June 17, 1964.

37 UN Document A/AC.109/88, June 26, 1964.

38 UN Document A/5800/Add.1, Part II, December 22, 1964.

39 UN Document A/AC.109/SR.315, November 19, 1964.

40 For example, during the period 1962–1964 Southern Rhodesia was considered at the following meetings of the Special Committee: 9, 11, 13–26, 37, 44, 45, 47–49, 53, 71, 107, 130–140, 143, 144, 146, 168, 171–177, 223–233, 245–249, 252, 254, 255, 258, 259, 262, 263, 268, 269, 271–273, 278, 286, 294–296, 315.

41 General Assembly Resolution 2012 (XX), October 12, 1965.

42 General Assembly Resolution 2022 (XX), November 5, 1965.

43 General Assembly Resolution 2024 (XX), November 11, 1965.

44 Security Council Resolutions 216 (1965), November 12, 1965, and 217 (1965), November 20, 1965.

45 Security Council Resolution 221 (1966), April 9, 1966.

46 The New York Times, December 9, 1966, p. 22.

47 The New York Times, December 17, 1966, p. 9.

48 Security Council Resolution 232 (1966), December 16, 1966.

49 Henkin, Louis, “The United Nations and Human Rights,” International Organization, Summer 1965 (Vol. 19, No. 3), p. 512CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 UN Document A/C.3/L.991/Rev.1, October 15, 1962.

51 UN Document A/C.3/L.1002/Rev.1, October 25, 1962.

52 General Assembly Resolution 1775 (XVII), December 7, 1962.

53 General Assembly Official Records … Third Committee (18th session), 1213th–1233rd, 1237th, 1242nd, I244th–1250th, and 1252nd meetings.

54 The draft declaration is contained in UN Document A/5603, November 12, 1963.

55 General Assembly Official Records … Third Committee (18th session), 1245th meeting, October 28, 1963, p. 2.

The seventeen states abstaining in Committee were Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. South Africa remained absent from both the Committee and plenary meetings because of the specific mention of apartheid. The draft was adopted as General Assembly Resolution 1904 (XVIII), November 20, 1963.

56 Henkin, , International Organization, Vol. 19, No. 3, p. 513Google Scholar.

57 However, a caveat is owed the reader as to the shortcomings of voting analysis in elucidating the workings of the political process of the United Nations. First, the number of votes taken in the Organization each year has soared to such an extent that it even has become onerous using modern high-speed computers to encompass every vote taken. In their recent study Alker and Russett, in fact, found that it was no longer practical to include every main committee and plenary roll call when they dealt with only one session, the sixteenth, of the Assembly. (Alker, Hayward A. Jr, and Russett, Bruce M., World Politics in the General Assembly [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1965], p. 27.)Google Scholar While there are guidelines, there are no hard-and-fast rules as to which votes should be selected for analysis and which ones rejected. This is a hazardous process; but to pretend that any guarantee exists as to proper selection other than the skill of the observer would be misleading. Although it does not lessen the subjective content of the selection process, the guidelines used in determining which votes to include in this study are set forth later. Another important limitation on the use of voting analysis in a study of the United Nations derives from the nature of the Organization's political process in which so much negotiation takes place behind the scenes. If voting analysis is coupled with extensive qualitative analysis of the political system, the limitation is not so acute. Voting analysis, properly undertaken, is only one tool among many available to the political scientist in probing the nature of a given political system. When used in conjunction with the other tools of the profession, it is a valuable aid in examining those decisions in which states are forced to publicly take sides. Like any of the other tools of the profession when used alone voting analysis all too often presents at best a limited and somewhat facile picture of the system and at worst a picture of another system entirely.

58 Of course, one important criterion in the selection of votes was the availability of the voting records in a form usable for analysis. If one considers all the votes taken in any one session of the Assembly, in both plenary and main committee, it is found that the great majority are not recorded on a country-by-country breakdown as they are not roll-call votes. This inherent limitation in selection is somewhat mitigated by the general rule of thumb that the most important votes are those taken on a roll call.

59 Riggs, Robert E., Politics in the United Nations: A Study of United States Influence in the General Assembly (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1958), p. 170Google Scholar.

60 A majority in plenary sessions of the General Assembly is actually a two-thirds majority on “important questions.” (See Article 18 of the UN Charter.)

61 By comparison, the majority agreement scores of the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom were as follows: Soviet Union, 82.6 percent; United States, 47.8 percent; United Kingdom, 34.8 percent.

62 Of course, this says nothing about the types of measures adopted, the compromises made, or the ultimate goals sought, but these are questions most suitable for descriptive techniques and are so handled in other sections of this study.

63 The states which voted in opposition to the majority of the new nations on the 23 votes analyzed were Tunisia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Israel.

64 Haas, Ernst B., “Dynamic Environment and Static System: Revolutionary Regimes in the United Nations,” in Kaplan, Morton A. (ed.). The Revolution in World Politics (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1962), pp. 267–309Google Scholar.

65 Speech by the Earl of Home, December 18, 1961, to the Berwick-on-Tweed branch of the United Nations Association, reproduced in Moore, Raymond A. Jr, (ed.), The United Nations Reconsidered (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1963), pp. 128–130Google Scholar.