UN General Assembly
1954

Trujillo stated [485th meeting, para. 92] :“Last year in the Fourth Committee, my delegation maintained that it is incompatible with the letter and spirit of Chapter XI of the Charter to plead Article 2, paragraph 7, in support of the claim that matters connected with the administration of Non-Self-Governing Territories are matters of domestic jurisdiction. My delegation maintained, then, and repeats now, that nations which have not reached full self-government are, as it were, incomplete States which, while possessing the elements of population and territory, but lack only government, or, in other words, the capacity of self-determination and self-rule. For that reason, possession of their own territory is the inalienable right of non-self-governing peoples and never of the administrators, whose only power over such territory can be compared with the powers under civil law of a guardian over a ward. We can no more speak of the sovereignty of an administering Power over a Non-Self-Governing Territory than we can speak of a guardian’s ownership of his ward’s property.