The Mandates System, and the Organization That Outlived the League

Its output before 1939. Conventions on hours of work, unemployment, maternity protection, night work for women, minimum age, workmen's compensation, freedom of association and forced labour in 1930, together with a reporting and inspection system.

By 1948 the second generation already had thirty years of binding international law and working supervisory machinery, and the first generation had none. Any account that presents economic and social rights as a late and untested addition has the history backwards, and this is the fact that proves it.

The one that survived

The League dissolved in 1946. The Organization became a specialized agency of the United Nations and continues.

Why, in one sentence: it had a constituency independent of governments, and the League did not.

Three consequences for this paper.

Its supervisory machinery is the oldest in the field, and [The International Labour Organization: Supervision and Complaints] takes it in detail.

It is a specialized agency under Charter article 57, which is the relationship MU's 2025-26 Q4 asks about for the World Health Organization and Q7(c) for this one.

And its Declaration of Philadelphia in 1944 states, four years before the Universal Declaration, that all human beings, irrespective of race, creed or sex, have the right to pursue both their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunity.

That sentence is worth memorising. It is the strongest human rights statement made by any international body before 1945, and it was made by a labour organisation.

What the interwar period proves

That machinery can exist without a general standard. The minorities system and the mandates both had procedures and neither rested on a statement of rights.

That selectivity destroys a system, which [The League of Nations and the Minorities Treaties] established.

That supervision needs a constituency, which the Organization proves by surviving.

And that a system can be well designed and still fail if the political conditions collapse. None of these arrangements survived the 1930s in working order, and the reason was not their design.

Worked example

A question asks why the League's human rights machinery failed while the International Labour Organization's did not.

Distinguish the three things first: the minorities treaties, the mandates and the Organization are separate arrangements with separate designs.

The minorities system failed on selectivity and group framing, and was exploited by a State that was not bound by it.

The mandates system did not fail so much as reveal itself: it was supervision of colonial administration, and no mandate became independent under it, so the principle survived and the practice did not.

The Organization survived because of tripartism. Governments alone could not abandon it, employers and workers had standing in it, and its standards were negotiated with those bound by them.

Close on the transfer: the League dissolved in 1946 and the Organization became a specialized agency, so the only interwar body still working is the one whose constituency was not governments.

What it does NOT mean

It does not mean the mandates were a human rights system. They were colonial administration with a reporting duty, and saying so is more accurate and more useful.

It does not mean tripartism could be copied everywhere. There is no obvious equivalent constituency for torture or for fair trial.

And it does not mean the Organization's record is unblemished. Its early conventions on colonial territories and on forced labour contain exceptions that would not be acceptable now.

Quick revision

• Article 22 of the Covenant: peoples not yet able to stand by themselves entrusted to advanced nations, their well-being a sacred trust of civilisation. Classes A, B and C, the last administered as integral portions of the mandatory's territory.
• Machinery: annual reports to the Council, examined by a Permanent Mandates Commission, which received petitions. No mandate reached independence under the League.
• What survived: administration of a territory can be internationally supervised, and the administering power owes a duty to the inhabitants.
• The International Labour Organization, 1919, on the proposition that universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice. Tripartite: two government, one employer and one worker delegate, the last two voting independently.
• By 1948 the second generation had thirty years of binding conventions and working supervision, and the first generation had none.
• The Declaration of Philadelphia, 1944: all human beings, irrespective of race, creed or sex, have the right to pursue their material well-being and spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunity.

Test yourself

1. What was the mandates system, and what did it establish? Article 22 of the Covenant provided that territories taken from the defeated powers and inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world should be entrusted to advanced nations, and that the well-being and development of such peoples formed a sacred trust of civilisation. There were three classes: A, former Ottoman territories provisionally recognised as independent subject to administrative advice; B, central African territories where the mandatory administered under conditions guaranteeing freedom of conscience and religion and prohibiting abuses such as the slave trade and the arms and liquor traffics; and C, South West Africa and certain Pacific islands, administered as integral portions of the mandatory's own territory. Each mandatory reported annually to the Council, and a Permanent Mandates Commission of experts examined the reports, questioned representatives and received petitions from inhabitants. In substance it was colonial administration with a reporting duty, and no mandate achieved independence during the League's existence. What it established nonetheless was the principle that the administration of a territory can be subject to international supervision and that the administering power owes a duty to the inhabitants, which carried into the Charter and, through it, into decolonisation.

2. Why did the International Labour Organization survive when the League did not? Because its structure gave it a constituency that does not depend on governments. It is tripartite: each member State's delegation to the International Labour Conference contains two government delegates, one employer delegate and one worker delegate, and the employer and worker delegates vote independently of their government and of each other. Two consequences follow. A government cannot quietly abandon the Organization, because two other benches with independent standing would object. And its standards are negotiated with the people who must live under them rather than only with the States that will be bound, which gives its conventions a practical purchase that a purely intergovernmental instrument lacks. When the League dissolved in 1946 the Organization became a specialized agency of the United Nations under Charter article 57 and continued, so it is the only interwar body in this book still working, and the reason is structural rather than accidental.

3. Why does the Organization's pre-1939 record matter for the classification of rights? Because it reverses the usual account. Before 1939 the Organization had adopted conventions on hours of work, unemployment, maternity protection, night work for women, minimum age, workmen's compensation, freedom of association and forced labour, and had built a reporting and inspection system to supervise them. By the time the Universal Declaration was drafted, therefore, the second generation of rights already possessed nearly thirty years of binding international law and functioning supervisory machinery, while the first generation possessed neither: there was no treaty on torture, on fair trial or on arbitrary detention, and no body to examine any State's conduct on those subjects. Any account presenting economic and social rights as a late, untested or merely aspirational addition to the framework therefore has the history exactly backwards, and citing the Organization's pre-1948 record is the shortest way to establish it.

4. What does the Declaration of Philadelphia contribute? It is the strongest human rights statement made by any international body before 1945, and it was made in 1944 by a labour organisation. Adopted by the General Conference at its twenty-sixth session at Philadelphia on 10 May 1944 and later annexed to the Constitution, it affirms that labour is not a commodity, that freedom of expression and of association are essential to sustained progress, that poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere, and, most importantly for this paper, that all human beings, irrespective of race, creed or sex, have the right to pursue both their material well-being and their spiritual development in conditions of freedom and dignity, of economic security and equal opportunity. That sentence precedes the Universal Declaration by four years and precedes the Charter by a year, it is universal in terms, and it joins material and spiritual development in a single formulation. It also states that the attainment of the conditions in which this shall be possible must constitute the central aim of national and international policy, which is a statement about the international order in the sense this paper uses.