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What Is an International Protectorate?

Emily YoffePosted Wednesday, March 28, 2001, at 5:14 PM ET

This New York Times article says that part of the reason for the recent fighting in Macedonia is that militant ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are exploiting that province's weakly enforced borders, the result of its status as an international protectorate, to invade Macedonia. What is an international protectorate?

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An international protectorate is an area--a country or a province, for example--in which civil society has broken down to such a degree that the international community, through the United Nations, steps in to temporarily provide the functions of government. In 1999 the U.N. installed the U.N. Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo [UNMIK], which has overseen everything from the creation of a police force, to re-establishment of radio broadcasting, to resumption of university classes, to reopening of post offices. Whether Kosovo is officially or just de facto an international protectorate is ambiguous. At Russia's insistence, the U.N. Security Council resolutions on Kosovo have acknowledged that it remains a province of Serbia, which is part of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. But as a practical matter, Yugoslavia does not run Kosovo; the province doesn't even use Yugoslav currency.

One place that is officially an international protectorate is East Timor, formerly a colony of Portugal, which was invaded and annexed by Indonesia in the 1970s. East Timor came under U.N. control in 1999 after the East Timorese, in a U.N.-supervised election, voted for independence. East Timor is now run by the U.N. Transitional Administration in East Timor [UNTAET]. That mission is working toward the establishment of East Timor as an independent country.

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Emily Yoffe is the author of What the Dog Did: Tales From a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner. You can send your Human Guinea Pig suggestions or comments to .

COMMENTS

Reader Comments From The Fray:

Basra was the first international protectorate. The British took control under the auspices of the League of Nations after the Ottoman Empire collapsed. (Yugoslavia was formed at the same time, after the collapse of Austro-Hungary.) Of course, Winston Chruchill and Lord Fisher had their eyes on Basra since 1914 when they secretly got the British Parliament to put up the money for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (now BP).
This is the missing element in the Lawrence of Arabia saga--no discussion of what British policy was really all about. East Timor was originally hoping that the oil reserves within its purview would finance their independence, but Suharto/Kissinger/Ford put an end to those dreams.

Don't be surprised if there is a big oil/gas field off the coast of Italy or Albania.

--The Count

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