The list remains controversial in some countries for various reasons:
Referendums One reason for controversy is that the list includes some dependencies that have democratically chosen to maintain their current status, or have had a
referendum in which local government requirements were not met regarding the number of votes required to support a change of status or the number of voters participating (e.g.,
in the United States Virgin Islands).
Falkland Islands The
Falkland Islands is a
British Overseas Territory that is
claimed by Argentina.
Gibraltar Gibraltar is largely a self-governing British territory on the tip of the
Iberian Peninsula with a population of about 30,000 people, whose territory is claimed by Spain. It continues to be listed as an NSGT though its residents expressed a preference in two referendums to retain the
status quo. In 1967, they were asked whether to retain their current status or to become part of Spain. The status quo was favoured by 12,138 votes to 44. In 2002, a proposal for a joint British–Spanish administration of the territory was voted down by 17,900 votes to 187. (The "no" vote accounted for more than 85% of Gibraltar's entire electorate). The United Nations did not recognise either referendum, with the 1967 referendum being declared in contravention of previous UN resolutions. The Spanish government does not recognize any right of the current Gibraltar inhabitants to self-determination, on the grounds that they are not the original population of the territory, but residents transferred by the colonial power, the United Kingdom.
Tokelau The territory of
Tokelau divides political opinion in New Zealand. In response to attempts at decolonizing Tokelau, New Zealand journalist Michael Field wrote in 2004: "The UN ... is anxious to rid the world of the last remaining vestiges of colonialism by the end of the decade. It has a list of 16 territories around the world, virtually none of which wants to be independent to any degree." Field further notes that
Patuki Isaako, who was
head of Tokelau's government at the time of a UN seminar on decolonization in 2004, informed the United Nations that his country had no wish to be decolonized, and that Tokelauans had opposed the idea of decolonization ever since the first visit by UN officials in 1976. In 2006,
a UN-supervised referendum on decolonization was held in Tokelau, where 60.07% of voters supported the offer of self-government. However, the terms of the referendum required a two-thirds majority to vote in favor of self-government. A
second referendum was held in 2007, in which 64.40% of Tokelauans supported self-government, falling short of the two-thirds majority by 16 votes. This led New Zealand politician and former diplomat
John Hayes, on behalf of the
National Party, to state that "Tokelau did the right thing to resist pressure from [the New Zealand government] and the United Nations to pursue self-government". In May 2008, the United Nations' Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon urged colonial powers "to complete the decolonization process in every one of the remaining 16 Non-Self-Governing Territories". This led the
New Zealand Herald to comment that the United Nations was "apparently frustrated by two failed attempts to get Tokelau to vote for independence from New Zealand".
Viability A lack of population and landmass is an issue for at least one territory included on the list: the British overseas territory
Pitcairn Islands, which has a population of less than 50 descended primarily from indigenous
Polynesians and
mutineers from HMS Bounty. Regardless, the territory's colonial status was disputed during the
2004 sexual assault trial where the seven defendants – comprising a third of the adult male population – unsuccessfully argued that the islanders had rejected British control ever since the 1789 mutiny and, as a result, British criminal law did not apply to them. Four other territories – Tokelau, Montserrat, the Falkland Islands and Saint Helena – are also less populous than any current UN member state. In addition, some territories are financially dependent on their administering power.
Completely autonomous dependencies Another criticism is that a number of the listed territories, such as
Bermuda (see
Politics of Bermuda), the
Falkland Islands and
Gibraltar, consider themselves completely autonomous and self-governing, with the "administering power" retaining limited oversight over matters such as defence and diplomacy. In past years, there were ongoing disputes between some administering powers and the Decolonization Committee over whether territories such as pre-independence
Brunei and the
West Indies Associated States should still be considered "non-self-governing", particularly in instances where the administering power was prepared to grant full independence whenever the territory requested it. These disputes became moot as those territories eventually received full independence.
Removed under other circumstances Territories that have achieved a status described by the administering powers as internally self-governing – such as
Puerto Rico, the
Netherlands Antilles, and the
Cook Islands – have been removed from the list by vote of the General Assembly,
List not complete Also controversial are the criteria set down in 1960 to 1961 by the
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV),
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1541 (XV), Principle 12 of the Annex, and
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 1654 (XVI) which only focused on colonies of the
Western world, namely Australia, Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This list of administering powers was not expanded afterwards. Nevertheless, some of the
111 members who joined the UN after 1960 gained independence from countries not covered by Resolution 1541 and were themselves not classified as "Non-Self-Governing Territories" by the UN. Of these that joined the UN between 1960 and 2008, 11 were independent before 1960 and 71 were included on the list (some as a group). Twenty new UN countries resulted from breakup of
Second World states and of
Yugoslavia: six were part of Yugoslavia, two were part of
Czechoslovakia, and 12 were part of the Soviet Union (Ukraine and Belarus already had UN seats before the dissolution of the USSR, whose seat was reused by the Russian Federation without acceding anew). Out of the other ten, seven (mostly Arab) were colonies or protectorates of the "Western" countries, and one each was a non-self-governing part of Ethiopia (later independent Eritrea), Pakistan (East Pakistan, later independent Bangladesh) and Sudan (later independent South Sudan). Also, the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), which considered themselves illegally occupied by the Soviet Union, were not on the list either.
Western New Guinea (also known as West Papua), which was ceded to Indonesia, is also not on the list as well as
Sarawak and
Sabah, which were handed to Malaya during its territorial expansion through the formation of
Malaysia in 1963. In 2018, the government of
Vanuatu started seeking international support to have West Papua added to the list in 2019. After the revocation of
Norfolk Island's self-governing status by the Australian government in 2015, an island community group requested the UN add the island to the list of non-self-governing territories. ==See also==