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STATE BUILDING E SICUREZZA NELL’ESPERIENZA
DELL’AMMINISTRAZIONE FIDUCIARIA ITALIANA IN SOMALIA

The political need to establish a new order in relations between States and
Peoples found consecration both in the solemn enunciation of the legal prin-
ciple of self-determination within art. 1, par. 2, of the UN Charter which and
in the related and articulated regime foreseen by Chapter XI (Articles 73-74) for
non-autonomous territories and by Chapter XII / XIII (Articles 75-91) for ter-
ritories under trusteeship. According to the then new (juridically speaking) prin-
ciple of self-determination, all Peoples subjected to the “subjugation, domina-
tion and exploitation” of a foreign State (colonial domination, military occupa-
tion, etc.) have the right to decide “freely on their own political status” and to
pursue just as freely (i.e. without internal or external interference) “their own
economic, social and cultural development” (in these terms, ex multis, point 2
of the “Declaration on the granting of independence to colonial countries and
peoples” adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 14, 1960). In
fact, the principle of self-determination is resolved in the obligation imposed
on all States of the international community (and, first of all, on the State that
subjugates, dominates or exploits) to create the conditions for the People to be
able to freely choose its future and not, instead, in a “right” of the People since
the People are the object and not the subject of the judicial relationship related
to the self-determination institution.
Considering the post-war socio-political and economic context and the
wishes of the representative colonial Powers, it was deemed necessary, in the
Charter, to distinguish into two categories the territories intended for self-
determination: non-autonomous territories, corresponding to the still existing
colonies, and intended for self-government (but not also for independence)
under the leadership of the former colonial Power (renamed Power “responsi-
ble for their administration”), now obliged by the Charter to promote their
well-being and progress according to a new solidarity perspective and therefore
to abandon the colonialist traits of exploitation and denied emancipation; the
territories under trusteeship, corresponding mainly to the territories placed
under the mandate of the League of Nations after World War I (Syria,
Lebanon, Cameroon, New Guinea, etc.) or - as in the case of Italian Somalia -
to the territories “removed from enemy States as a result of the Second World
War” (Article 77, paragraph 1, of the Charter).
In the case of the territories under trusteeship, the responsible State beca-
me the administrative authority and, unlike the administrative Powers of the
non-autonomous territories (substantially free in determining the policies appli-
cable to those territories and Peoples), was obliged to act in the name and
under the authority of the UN Trusteeship Council (one of the six main organs

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