FCON PUCK
CONFERENTIAL
L
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United Kingdom Mission
PUCK 0221892
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HK/UN
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Your reference
A C Galsworthy Esq
Hong Kong Department
Our reference
Foreign and Commonwealth Office LONDON SW1
Date
27 November 1984
Dea Tony,
HONG KONG: PARTICIPATION IN UN ORGANISATIONS AND AGENCIES
1. In the wake of the initialling of the agreement with China over the future of Hong Kong, we have been looking into the territory's exact legal standing within each Geneva-based UN organisation as a pointer to any action that might be required between now and 1997. The results unsurprisingly show that Hong Kong's position varies significantly from organisation to organisation.
2. The organisations we deal with in Geneva fall into two distinct UN categories: first, those which are related organs or programmes of ECOSOC (ECE, UNCTAD, UNHCR and the Centre for Human Rights); and secondly UN specialised agencies or other inter- governmental organisations (WHO, ILO, ITU, WMO, WIPO and GATT).
3.
For the first group Hong Kong's status is clear. Based on our understanding that Hong Kong is considered for UN purposes to be a "non self-governing territory", Article 73 of the UN Charter states that "Members of the United Nations which have or assume responsibilities for the administration of territories whose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self government ... accept .... the obligation to promote to the utmost
the well being of the inhabitants of these territories
This, in itself, implies that any territory coming within Article 73 is dependent upon the relevant member state to represent its UN interests.
4.
In practice, Hong Kong's status has rarely given rise to any significant difficulties; and the following represent our own experiences to date:
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