Description
After the Second World War and again in the post-Cold War era, the UN oversaw the paths to independence of particular territories or even actively shaped the building of new states. In the mid-20th Century, the UN institutionalised the Trusteeship System for so-called Trust Territories, which seized its activities in 1994. In the 1990s, we saw the rise in practices often defined as neo-trusteeship, or liberal state-building and peacebuilding, in conflict-ridden societies based on Security Council mandates – now also a disappearing practice. The presentation will engage with two cases, one from each form of state-building, namely Papua New Guinea (independence in 1975) and Timor-Leste (independence in 2002), and reflect on the effects and (unintended) consequences of the deinstitutionalisation of international mandates on stability and conflict dynamics in the concerned societies. However, the end of (neo)trusteeship mandates and the emergence of independence are not merely domestic events but understood as internationalised events and processes, allowing us insights into regional and transnational power dynamics and practices and ideas of international institutions and sovereignty in their particular historical period.
