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the framework of the united nations 157
as ‘domestic’, within the meaning of Article 2, paragraph 7 of the
Charter, then the United Nations is not authorised to intervene in the
settlement of this dispute, unless it constitutes a threat to the peace,
as envisaged in Chapter VII of the Charter. The practice of the
United Nations shows that States have regarded disputes between
them and their protectorates or dependencies as domestic matters
which do not come within the jurisdiction of the United Nations.
Examples of such disputes which were referred to, and decided by, the
United Nations are those relating to the complaints of Indonesia,
Hyderabad, and Morocco and Tunisia against their former protecting
Powers, the Netherlands, India and France, respectively.1 All those
disputes involving protected and protecting States were continuously
discussed by the United Nations during the first decade of its life,
despite the protecting States’ objections to their discussion on the
ground of the ‘domestic jurisdiction’ principle. On the other hand, the
questions of Indonesia, Hyderabad and Tunisia and Morocco show
that the intervention by the United Nations in disputes between
States members of the Organisation and their not fully independent
territories was actuated by the fact that those disputes gave rise to
situations which were likely to threaten the peace, as envisaged in
Article 39 of the Charter. Moreover, all those disputes were brought
before the United Nations not as colonial issues, where the domestic
jurisdiction clause has a stronger application, but as political issues
involving the resort to military actions by States against territories
which constitute neither part of their metropolitan territories nor
part of their colonies.2 Consequently, the recommendations of the
United Nations regarding those disputes were based on the principle
of seeking a reconciliation between the two disputing parties and thus
calling upon them to negotiate a peaceful settlement of their dispute
in the light of the principle of self-determination.
The question of Oman before the United Nations
The question of Oman may be discussed here as an example of a
dispute involving both the Sultanate of Muscat and the United
Kingdom: the first for denying ‘the Imamate of Oman the right to
self-determination’, and the second for sending British troops to
Oman for the suppression of the Omani revolt against the Sultan’s
1 On the question of Indonesia, see U.N.S.C., 2nd Year, No. 67, 171st mtg,
31 July 1947, p. 1616; ibid., No. 74, 173rd mtg, Resolution S/459, 1 August 1947.
On the question of Hyderabad, see U.N.S.C., 3rd Year, 357th mtg, 16 September
1948, pp. 7-15, 19 et seq. And on the questions of Tunisia and Morocco, see
U.N.G.A., 7th sess., 379th, 392nd, and 397th plen. mtgs, 16 October, 10-13 Novem­
ber 1952; ibid., 7th sess., 407th plen. mtg, 19 December 1952; ibid., 7th sess.,
Annexes, Item 69, Resolution 612 (VII), 19 December (1952).
2 For a fuller explanation of this point, sec Toussaint, C. E., ‘The Colonial
Controversy in the U.N.’, The Yearbook of World AJ/hirs 10 (1956), pp. 193-4.