Press Release No. 1757 Issued by the Mission at the United Nations, New York, September 28, 1953, Regarding Requests for Oral Hearings Concerning Trust Territories1
Mr. Chairman: I would like to explain the general position of my Delegation regarding oral hearings of inhabitants of trust territories in the Fourth Committee. It is our view that this Committee should hear inhabitants of trust territories when they request an opportunity to present their views on specific problems which are of sufficient importance to merit the direct attention of the full membership of the United Nations.
At the same time we are somewhat concerned over the practical problems involved in granting numerous oral hearings in a large Committee of sixty states. We have a long agenda of important problems which cannot be effectively dealt with unless the sixty Committee members have sufficient time to express their own views on these problems. In looking over the records of last year’s Fourth Committee, my Delegation has found that requests for oral hearings or the hearings themselves took all the Committee’s time at 12 meetings and a large part of 13 other meetings. This was a very large proportion of the Committee’s 66 meetings, and the Committee was unable to deal with every item on its agenda even though it held more meetings than in any previous year.
To my Delegation, therefore, it seems both logical and necessary for the Committee to avoid the indiscriminate granting of all requests for oral hearings. We believe that any procedural committee such as the one proposed by the distinguished representative of the United Kingdom in Document A/C.4/L.271, might give careful attention to this problem.
Mr. Chairman, may I now describe briefly some of the general principles which my Delegation believes should guide the Fourth Committee in deciding whether or not to grant an oral hearing. The first of these I have already mentioned. We believe that the problem raised by the petitioners should be specifically stated and should be of sufficient importance to merit a hearing. Secondly, we believe that the Committee should take into account the character of the petitioner and the organization he represents; the petitioner should be a person who can provide useful and relevant information and normally should be an inhabitant of the territory concerned. In the third place, we do not believe that the Committee should grant hearings to lawyers who are not residents of the territory concerned; this type of representation [Page 1336] is too susceptible of abuse which would be harmful both to the United Nations and to the petitioners themselves. Petitioners are of course free to obtain all the legal advice they want, but they should present their own problems to this Committee where, in any case, they will find numerous lawyers to help ensure that they receive a full and fair hearing. The fourth principle guiding my Delegation is this. We believe that petitioners from trust territories should normally be heard in the Trusteeship Council before they are granted hearings in this Committee. The petitions system of the Trusteeship Council has been carefully elaborated by a smaller body of twelve Members who have been given the specific task of devoting more time than other Members to the study of trust territory problems. We believe that the General Assembly would not wish to undermine the petitions work of the Trusteeship Council. Finally, my Delegation believes that in deciding whether or not to grant a hearing, the Committee should take into account the extent and character of past actions by the Trusteeship Council and the General Assembly on the problem raised by the petitioner.
These five principles, Mr. Chairman, are not applicable in every case, but they have been taken into consideration by my Delegation in deciding how to vote on each of the requests before us.
- Source: ODA files, lot 62 D 228, “Background, 28”. The right of petition and the problem of “oral” petitioners. This statement was made in Committee 4 on Sept. 28, 1953 by Frances P. Bolton of the U.S. Delegation to the Eighth Regular Session of the General Assembly. She was also the U.S. Member on the Fourth Committee.↩