Secessionist Conflicts: Unresolved Legacies of United Nations Trusteeship

ABSTRACT

We argue that the United Nations Trusteeship System after World War II, in its attempts to release states into independence, was simultaneously complicit in perpetuating secessionist conflicts, with which former trust territories continue to struggle until today. Secessionism was framed as a threat to state-building and not as an expression of self-determination. We use a Critical Security Studies framework and compare the conflict on Ewe/Togoland unification in bordering regions of the British Gold Cost and the Trusteeship Territories of Togoland (1950s), with the conflict on secessionism of Bougainville from the Territory of Papua and New Guinea (1970s).

KEYWORDS:

• Decolonisation
• securitization
• independence
• Ghana
• Papua New Guinea

Acknowledgements

We want to thank the anonymous reviewers, the editors, and especially Katrin Travouillon for helpful critique and comments. Furthermore, we want to thank Theresa Bachmann and Luisa Siemens for their support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 With their colonial names: Western Samoa, Tanganyika, Rwanda-Urundi, Cameroons under British administration, Cameroons under French administration, Togoland under British administration, Togoland under French administration, New Guinea, Nauru, the Strategic Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and Italian Somaliland.

2 During the first decade of the Trusteeship Council, for example, the Belgian permanent representative was Pierre Ryckmans (Governor-General of Belgian Congo, 1934–46). French permanent representatives were Henri Laurenti (promoted to ‘Governor of the Colonies’ in 1942 and in charge of the organisation of the Brazzaville Conference), Léon Pignon (High Commissioner in Indochina, 1948–50), Robert Bargues (High Commissioner in Madagascar, 1950–4), and Jacques Kosciusko-Morizet (cabinet director of Félix Houphouët-Boigny in Côte d’Ivoire, 1956–57), successively. The British permanent representative was Sir Alan Burns (Governor of Belize, Nigeria, and the Gold Coast, including British Togoland, 1934–47). Burns was strongly marked as Private Secretary to Sir Frederick (later Lord) Lugard during their times as Governors of Nigeria. Lugard was the ideological promoter of British colonialism and a member of the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations (1923–36).

3 Interview between Julius Heise and Charles Kwame Kudzordzi, Ho, 19 November 2018.

4 Quote by the Special Representative Mr. Olewale from the National Government of PNG in the Trusteeship Council.

Additional information

Funding

The research was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft under grant number TRR 138/2–2018.

Notes on contributors

Werner Distler

Werner Distler is a postdoc research fellow at the Collaborative Research Center SFB/TRR Dynamics of Security and the Center for Conflict Studies at the University of Marburg. His research focuses on security practices and discourse in interventions and statebuilding, knowledge and peacebuilding, and the political economy of peace.

Julius Heise

Julius Heise is a doctoral research fellow at the Collaborative Research Center SFB/TRR Dynamics of Security and the Center for Conflict Studies at the University of Marburg. His research focuses on Critical Security Studies, decolonisation, and trusteeship.