While there have been increasing demands for strengthening UN capacity for peacebuilding, recent peacebuilding operations under UN transitional territorial administration have obscured and downgraded the importance of normative and legal questions and have failed to address the right to self-determination in substance. It is argued that the legal issues surrounding such operations, including the legal basis for establishing transitional administrations, the legal status of the territories under administration and the legal regulations governing the powers given to UN administrators, must be contemplated in such a way as to focus fully on the internal and substantive aspects of the peoples' right to self-determination.