International territorial administration has an established tradition in international law. This type of administration emerged in the context of internationalisation at the beginning of the twentieth century and was later developed under the umbrella of UN peace-maintenance. Part I of this book traces the historical emergence of international territorial administration in international law. It describes the evolution of territorial administration within the tradition of five legal paradigms that have shaped its current form: the concept of internationalisation, the Mandate System, the Trusteeship System, the practice of occupation and the development of UN peacekeeping. The analysis of the genesis of international territorial administration is designed to serve a dual purpose: to trace the origins of international territorial administration and to distinguish it from related forms of territorial administration practiced in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

International territorial administration - a definition

There is some confusion about the definition of the concept of international territorial administration. Scholars have adopted different approaches in doctrine. Chopra defined international administration as the exercise of international civil authority over a territory - a conception that distinguishes the practice of territorial administration from the assumption of military authority by a state or a group of states. Other scholars conceive international territorial administration as a subset of the larger activity of foreign territorial administration. Wilde, for example, understands this paradigm as a policy device in which an international organisation exercises rights of supervision or control in the form of “a formally constituted, locally based management structure operating with respect to a particular territorial unit”.