Since the 2015 publication of Greg Poulgrain's The Incubus of Intervention: conflicting Indonesia strategies of John F. Kennedy and Allen Dulles we have known that Secretary-General Hammarskjöld was about to introduce a Decolonisation Program in Netherlands New Guinea whereby the West Papuan people would be recognised as the sovereign owners of their land, and UN officers would assist an independent West Papuan government for five years. Hammarskjöld intended to present the program to the 1961 General Assembly. His death just days before the opening of the Assembly meant the motion was debated without his authoritative and influential presence, and didn't garner the necessary two-thirds majority support. The UN’s failure to adopt a policy of self-determination for West Papua opened the way for an American diplomat—appointed by Acting Sec-General U Thant—to mediate an agreement that facilitated Indonesia’s incorporation of West Papua. And we all know the story after that.

This paper sets out the facts and the principles of International Law relating to the process of decolonisation of the former territory of Netherlands New Guinea during the period between May 1960 and 1969 culminating in a resolution (passed by a vote of 84 to nil with 30 States abstaining) formally "noting" but not formally rejecting the result of the "Act of Free Choice" that was stage managed and shrouded in a web of intrigue, bribery, duress by threat, and coercion by propaganda and fraudulent promises in which a mere 1025 carefully selected, indoctrinated and controlled members of its indigenous population of almost 800,000, under the close scrutiny of armed Indonesian security personnel, agreed unanimously to commit their peoples to integration of their homeland with the State of Indonesia. It asserts that by supporting that Resolution, 84 UN Member States with full knowledge of the relevant facts, and without consulting their own peoples, breached their obli