ABSTRACT
International organizations first exercised territorial administration in the Free City of Danzig, where the League of Nations enjoyed certain governmental prerogatives from 1920 to 1939. The United Nations (UN) is engaged in one of its most ambitious roles ever: the administration of two territories—Kosovo and East Timor. This chapter explains the deployment of international organizations in the administration of territory. It challenges the popular idea that the Kosovo and East Timor projects are unique. The chapter establishes how the international administration projects operate. The exceptionalist appraisal of the Kosovo and East Timor projects ignores the place of these two projects as the latest manifestations of a historical policy institution, which have termed "international territorial administration". To understand the official purposes of granting administrative control over territory to international organizations, one must appreciate how such control operates. In certain circumstances, states hand over responsibility for running camps housing refugees and/or internally displaced persons to UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
