UN decolonization panel calls for cooperation with visiting missions

Aware that visiting non-self-governing territories can provide an effective way to study the situation on the ground and determine the aspirations of the peoples, a United Nations special panel dealing with decolonization issues called on administering Powers to cooperate with efforts to send UN visiting missions to the such territories.

With the unanimous adoption of a resolution on the question of sending missions to territories – one of three texts approved without a vote yesterday – the Special committee on decolonization also stressed the need to dispatch periodic missions to the world’s remaining Non-Self-Governing Territories to facilitate the full, speedy and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples with respect to those Territories.

The Committee also requested its Chairman to consult with the administering Power of Guam to facilitate the dispatch of a UN visiting mission to that Territory.

The Special Committee on decolonization, a 24-member panel that discusses the developments in the 16 remaining Non-Self-Governing Territories and hears statements from appointed and elected representatives of the Territories and petitioners, resumed its annual session yesterday at UN Headquarters in New York.

Adopting a text on the dissemination of information on decolonization, the Committee requested the Departments of Political Affairs and Public Information to take into account its suggestions to continue their efforts to take measures through all the media available, including publications, radio and television, as well as the Internet, to give publicity to the work of the United Nations in the field of decolonization.

In other action, the Committee requested the administering Powers to transmit or continue to transmit to Secretary-General Kofi Annan the information prescribed in Article 73e of the UN Charter, as well as the fullest possible information on political and constitutional developments in the Territories concerned, within a maximum period of six months following the expiration of the administrative year in those Territories.

Under Article 73e, Member States which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of Territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government, undertake to transmit regularly to the Secretary-General information relating to economic, social and educational conditions in the Territories for which they are responsible.