American Samoa has been trying for decades to be removed from the UN list of Non-Self Governing Territories…but as KHJ News Washington Correspondent Matt Kaye reports, attitudes on the UN panel that handles such requests, may be changing…
When the UN was established in 1945, 750-million people, almost a third of the world’s population lived in non-self-governing-territories.
Today, fewer than 2-million people, including more than 55-thousand in American Samoa, live in such territories.
The Office of the UN Secretary-General would not provide a spokesman to be interviewed on American Samoa’s situation, but directed us to the Office’s website dealing with decolonization.
The Special Committee on Decolonization in June approved a favorable draft recommendation on French Polynesia.
A June release states the panel’s Chair reflected on the “need to move past the stagnation characterizing the current state of decolonization efforts around the world.”
Rafael Dario Ramirez Carreno of Venezuela noted that 17 territories remain on the panel’s agenda, continuing to live under the “stigma of their colonial situation.”
He says the Special Committee must work to completely implement the General Assembly resolution that calls for ending colonialism in the Non-Self Governing Territories.
Ramirez Carreno says the recent Pacific Regional Seminar on Decolonization that American Samoa attended in Nicaragua, plus UN meetings in New York, gave a closer look at decolonization.
Governor Lolo Moliga’s UN statement delivered in Nicaragua by American Samoa’s Attorney General last year, argues the territory’s current political status is unsustainable, but suggests it’s perhaps best it stay on the list until it can chart a future political status.
But Ramirez Carreno calls for a new commitment by his panel and the UN to the “cause of decolonization,” lest the impression be given the status quo is preferred.
The Chair says he’s been struck by the many requests to the Special Committee for greater support from French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Puerto Rico and others.
But Ramirez Carreno says he’s disappointed by the absence of all the UN agencies invited to the Nicaragua Seminar.
The General Assembly proclaimed in 1990, the “International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism” and adopted an action plan. In 2001, it proclaimed the “Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism.
It is now 2016, in a decade proclaimed, the “Third International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism.”
