Mandates and Trusteeships - Micronesia: the road to self-governance

By the mid-1970s, the complex process of negotiating the eventual end of the U.S.-supervised Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands was well underway. The UN Trusteeship Council report in the July 1974 issue of the UN Monthly Chronicle noted the council's concern as discussions between the United States and the Micronesian congress continued to be oriented toward the choice of free association for six districts represented in the congress. The district comprising the northern Marianas engaged in separate negotiations concerning commonwealth status under United States sovereignty. Reported discussions between representatives of the Marshall Islands and the United States also disturbed the council, which wondered how they would affect the inhabitants of the Carolines. Micronesia's landmass was only about 700 square miles, comprising more than 2,000 islands in the three major archipelagoes and spanning some 3 million square miles of ocean. The northern Marianas's apparent movement toward becoming the first territory acquired by the United States since the purchase of the Virgin Islands in 1917 was considered by the Trusteeship Council to be a literal violation of the trust arrangement intended to keep Micronesia together as an integral unit.

Members of the Trusteeship Council insisted that the United States should not proceed with incorporation of the area unless satisfactory arrangements were made with the Micronesian congress. The congress agreed to separate discussions, and a commonwealth agreement was signed on Saipan in February 1975, climaxing two years of formal negotiations; it was then to go to the sixteen-member Marianas district legislature for approval. In June 1975 the agreement was submitted to a United Nations–administered plebiscite, which was overseen by a committee of the Trusteeship Council. The council reported that it was properly conducted and that the results, which favored joining the northern Mariana Islands to the United States by commonwealth status, represented the will of the people. The islands were to be self-governing, and when all steps were carried out to accomplish this, the Trusteeship Agreement would be terminated for the entire Trust Territory as well as for the northern Marianas.

In 1979 four districts (Kosrae, Pohnpei, Truk, and Yap, in the Carolines) established themselves as the new Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), while two other districts formed republics, the Marshall Islands (1979) and Palau (1981). In 1986 the United States declared that the Trust Territory was terminated, and though the Soviet Union blocked UN Security Council approval of this measure, it was approved by the UN Trusteeship Council. In 1994 Palau became, like the FSM and Marshall Islands, a self-governing sovereign state with the United States responsible for its defense.