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In the aftermath of the 1990-1991 Gulf War, the UN Security Council determined that Iraq was liable under international law for any direct damage resulting from its unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait. The United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC) was established to process the claims against Iraq. Since 1991, the UNCC has received approximately 2.6 million claims, which it has subdivided in six categories, depending on the status of the claimant, the type of loss, and the amount claimed. For certain claims, the UNCC has established fixed compensation standards, rather than assessing the exact amount of the loss. Other innovative features include mass claims resolution techniques and methodologies such as data matching, grouping, and sampling. The reparation process was funded through oil exports under the oil-for-food program. A share of originally 30% and later 25% of the proceeds was reserved for compensation. The oil-for-food program was terminated after the new war in Iraq in 2003, and the share of oil revenues dedicated to reparation was lowered to 5%. As of June 2005, the UNCC has decided nearly all claims.

The first part of this chapter briefly explores the history of international administrations since the early 20th century, including administrations under the League of Nations and in the context of decolonization during the cold war. It provides the historical context in which contemporary international administrations are embedded, identifying precedents, ideas, and traditions on which contemporary international administrations draw. The second part discusses the sources of authority of international administrations. Drawing on the discussion of authority in the preceding chapter, it identifies five sources of authority, and analyses to what extent they are reflected in the mandates of the international administrations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and East Timor. It concludes by discussing the issues of accountability and liability of international administrations.

This third case study chapter analyses the statebuilding activities of the United Nations Transitional Administration of East Timor (UNTAET). It is divided into three parts. The first part outlines the background to the intervention, the scope and evolution of international authority, and the transition to self-governance and Timorese independence. The remaining two sections are case studies of statebuilding in East Timor: the establishment of a new judicial system, and the reform of the civil service. The case studies show how these reforms are informed by the new ‘standard of civilisation’, and how these norms compete with other, local traditional normative frameworks and understandings of authority, compromising the effectiveness of the reforms.

This chapter analyses the statebuilding efforts of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) that was established after the Kosovo war in 1999. It is divided into three parts. While the first part outlines the background to the intervention, analyses the scope of the international authority, and discusses the transition to local rule, the other two sections contain detailed case studies of statebuilding: the reform of the judicial system, and the privatization of socially owned enterprises, one of the most controversial reform efforts of UNMIK. The chapter not only shows the influence of norms on UNMIK's statebuilding policies, but also the problems of ‘statebuilding without statehood’: building political and administrative institutions if the future legal status of a territory remains unresolved.

This chapter discusses the first phase of UN involvement in Iraq, in which it acted as a Cold War Peacemaker and peacekeeper, using its neutral position eventually to broker a settlement between Iran and Iraq in 1987-88. It focuses on several critical moments during the Iran-Iraq war, the significance of which was overlooked at the time. First, the Security Council’s inadequate, indeed misguided, reaction to Iraq’s attack on Iran in 1980 that contributed to Saddam Hussein’s contempt for the UN. The UN’s involvement over the next decade provides a catalog of the measures available to it as a peace-broker in the Cold War years. A new phase is introduced, in which, with Cold War tensions subsiding, the P-5 working together could be more creative (and quietly assertive) than previously. A new era in P-5 relations and in the capacity of the UN to address hitherto intractable conflicts had dawned.

Considers the evolution of Council practice in the area of transitional administration. As in much of the Council's work, practice has led theory , with some members of the Council and the wider UN community apparently allergic to the development of doctrine. The chapter also provides a brief account of the various operations that have taken place under the auspices of the Council and of other bodies since the Second World War. Analysis of these operations tends to be chronological or organized by the scope of powers assumed by the international presence. In keeping with the call for political clarity in such operations, this book takes a thematic approach, addressing five distinct political purposes for which a transitional administration (or comparable mission) has been established.

This chapter discusses the third phase of UN involvement in Iraq, characterized by creeping unilateralism, occurring within the context of a more multidisciplinary approach to peace operations. That approach often incorporated humanitarian objectives into peace operations, as reflected in the deployment of UN ‘Guards’ to northern Iraq; but it was also characterized by the early resort (or reversion) by several Security Council members to unilateral action. The chapter specifically examines the imposition by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States of no-fly zones over Iraq in 1991 and 1992, and the launch of Operation Provide Comfort to protect Kurdish refugees in northern Iraq. This creeping unilateralism was a harbinger of further unilateral enforcement measures to come that would sunder the unity of the Security Council’s purpose on Iraq by 1998.

This chapter discusses the second phase of UN involvement in Iraq, which seemed to herald the emergence of the Security Council as a New World Order Policeman. The Security Council’s capacity to legitimize the use of force provided a legal basis for international action to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991. The chapter recounts the diplomatic and military success of Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm — mandated to compel the withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait and conducted by a coalition of states — drawing legitimacy from Security Council decisions under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Chapter VII also provided a newly assertive basis for traditional activities, such as ceasefire implementation and border-monitoring tasks, the Council gave to a new mission, UNIKOM, deployed along the border between Iraq and Kuwait. This new police role for UN peace operations was part of a larger ‘New World Order’ heralded by President George H. W. Bush, which seemed to hold the promise of an international rule of law, enforced by a united P-5 operating through the Security Council.

Despite the conceit that transitional administration was invented in the 1990s, much can be learned concerning the development of an institutional capacity to administer territory from examining the manner in which the colonial empires were regulated and subsequently dismantled. An age less attuned to political sensitivities also provides a clearer‐eyed assessment of the requirements of such administration, challenging the conventional wisdom that ‘ownership’ on the part of the local population is essential to the process.

This introductory chapter begins with a brief description of the UN Security Council’s involvement in Iraq. It then provides background information on the Iraqi state, Saddam Hussein, the mood in the UN Security Council, post-Cold War US multilateralism, and the split between the P-5 (Permanent Five members of the Security Council). An overview of the chapters included in this volume is presented.

The draft proposals for the United Nations Charter that emerged from Dumbarton Oaks allowed only for one brief mention of human rights. The final version agreed at San Francisco gave human rights a much higher profile. Why did this change take place? There is a substantial body of literature that accounts for it exclusively in terms of the activities of the US Consultants (representatives of NGOs), attached to the US Delegation. However, the role of Latin American states, as well as of the Soviet Union, needs to be remembered. The chapter draws attention to the problems surrounding the heroic role of the US consultants. It traces the evolution of thinking about human rights during the war years, culminating in the attendance of some 1,200 representatives of NGOs at the San Francisco conference. There is no doubt, therefore, that state officials were conscious of wide public expectations on the human rights front. Since popular support for the UN would be vital to its future effectiveness, respect for human rights can be seen as a kind of ‘social wage’ in return. This gave the individual a new standing in international society and international law.

Underlying all these issues is the most basic question of whether the United Nations and other international actors should be undertaking this sort of function at all. This chapter returns to the three sets of contradictions discussed in this Introduction—that the means are inconsistent with, inadequate for, and, at times, irrelevant to the ends—and recasts them in light of the changing role of the United Nations and its relationship to the United States. This relationship is important not merely because US political, economic, and military power may determine the success or failure of a transitional administration, but because US perceptions of its national security dictated the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq in the first place. While the United Nations may be politically constrained from viewing transitional administrations through the lens of military occupation, the United States has sometimes appeared incapable of viewing them as anything else.

Beginning with the establishment by the League of Nations of the first High Commissioner for Refugees in 1921, the scope and functions of assistance programmes for refugees gradually expanded, as efforts were made to regularize the status and control of stateless and denationalized people. During and after World War II, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency (UNRRA) and the International Refugee Organization (IRO) further expanded the international organizational framework for refugees. Since 1951, an international refugee regime—composed of UNHCR and a network of other international agencies, national governments, and voluntary or non‐governmental organizations—has developed a response strategy that permits some refugees to remain in their countries of first asylum, enables some to resettle in third countries and arranges for still others to be repatriated to their countries of origin.

The delivery of humanitarian assistance in the midst of armed conflict, the creation of putative safe areas, and arrangements for temporary relocation and stays abroad were policy innovations tested in the case of the former Yugoslavia over the past decade. While increasingly prevalent, ‘state building’ in connection with the return and reintegration of refugees resulted in uneven outcomes over the past decade. Despite the mixed outcomes, the international community is likely to resort to such approaches in the future. Recent experience, however, teaches that expectations relating to state building should be modest. But the UN system and other international organizations must strengthen their capacities to meet even modest expectations.