국제연맹규약의 위임통치제도에 대한 비판적 검토

The countries that emerged victorious from World War I established the mandate system, codifying it in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. This study analyzes whether the mandate system was a modified colonial system or whether it helped end colonialism. First, the study explains the structure of the mandate system by reviewing which countries Article 22 deemed mandatory powers and where it established mandated territories; it also discusses the “sacred trust of civilization” principle behind the mandate system. Second, the article critically reviews the problems within the system after examining in two aspects the meaning of the system's creation under modern international law by comparing the mandate system with colonial one. The first problem is that although, unlike the colonial system where mother countries had full sovereignty over colonies, the mandate system did not grant mandatory powers sovereignty, the mandatories still claimed sovereignty over their mandated territories. The second problem is that while the system gave mandatories substantial and procedural obligations, they violated these obligations. The article reviews cases of violations of substantial obligations such as violations of the well-being and development of the peoples of Papua New Guinea and Nauru, apartheid in Southwest Africa, the national annihilation policy for Micronesia, the protection of ethical, linguistic, and religious minorities within Iraq, and the protection of Arab and Jewish populations in Palestine. It also reviews cases of violations of procedural obligations such as the problem of the implementation of obligations for annual reports and petitions. Through its critical review of the mandate system, this article reaches two conclusions. First, even though sovereignty was not granted to the mandatories, the mandatories claimed sovereignty over the mandated territories and the mandatories’ violations of their substantial and procedural obligations meant that the system did not differ significantly from the colonial one. Second, the mandate system differed from the colonial system in that it did not give sovereignty to the mandatories and explicitly stipulated the mandatories’ obligations in Article 22. Therefore, the creation of the system could be understood as progress in the decolonization of international law.