TWAIL - Third World Approaches to International Law

The globalized classroom is a place for subtle and sometime intense political negotiation as all persons, students and instructors, are engaged in the ritual of knowledge production. How then can this process be engaged in without instantiating the risk of erasure of those without historical epistemic power in such a space? To address this question, this chapter appropriates an African pedagogical praxis for building consensus while holding in place the existential differences defining the persons who engage in such a process. Palaver pedagogy attempts to create spaces of visibility and to make credible a turn to the polyglottic in the process of teaching and learning in such a manner that the experiences and voices of first-generation college students are an essential part of the process. To do this effectively, this chapter sheds light on how the colonial agenda in Africa led to the erasure of differences and perspectives that go against the colonial project in shared spaces and in the educational system in colonial Africa. It offers a corrective response to this colonial culture of erasures that still exist today in postcolonial Africa by making the case for the need to resurrect the African pedagogical praxis of Palaver as consensus-building.

Environmental law innovation is a feature of jurisprudence in the Philippines, which is world famous for the decision of its Supreme Court in 1993 in the case Oposa v Factoranwhich is often, somewhat erroneously, perceived as having conferred legal standing on generations of people as yet unborn. Other environmental initiatives of the Supreme Court are also well-known. Further, the Court has promulgated decisions that incorporate the ideas of 'intergenerational equity' and 'continuing mandamus' as environmental tools. The Court has also promulgated 'Rules of Procedure for Environmental Cases' to provide, among other things, for faster responses to be taken to environmental emergencies through the Writ of Kalikasan ('kalikasan' meaning 'nature'). These initiatives, however, have not been as successful in practice as it was hoped they would have been. The Court's doctrines are commonly misunderstood and have faced opposition, even from within the Court itself; and the Writ of Kalikasan has been conservatively applied by courts, which allows continuing environmental trauma to occur. This article examines the gaps in both case law and the Rules of Procedure and makes recommendations for improving the Supreme Court's rules.

In this essay, I reflect on the problem of moral judgement with respect to the horrors we have been witnessing in Palestine, especially since October 2023. I offer these reflections primarily through philosophical comparison, advancing a complementary reading of anthropologist David Scott's treatment of the evil of New World slavery and Hannah Arendt's considerations on moral responsibility during the Holocaust. In particular, I think with two provocative texts, namely, Scott's insightful book from 2024, Irreparable Evil: An Essay on Moral and Reparatory History and Arendt's classical essay from 1964, "Personal Responsibility Under Dictatorship,"  to raise questions about judgement, justice, and responsibility in relation to Palestine. When treating the problem of moral judgement, I aim to demonstrate how the non-manifestness of manifest evil once again presents itself as a pertinent and perplexing question to think and act through today.

This book investigates the historical economic and legal regimes that legitimated the resource extraction and exploitation of Africa between the 15th and 19th centuries and led to the continent's trajectory of underdevelopment in the world system. The book interrogates the economic and legal structures that supported European intervention in Africa. It explores the trade and private property rights which were to shape the economic future of the continent, most notably the trade in human beings as legitimate private property by European powers. The book then looks at the techniques used to submerge African sovereignty under European sovereignty during the scramble for territorial control in the 19th century, concluding with the validation of occupation in international law following the 1884-1885 Berlin Conference. The book argues that the doctrines of trade and property rights sanctioned by international law led to a trend of African dispossession that set the continent on a path to underdevelopment, with long-reaching consequences. This book will be of interest to researchers and students across law, history, economics, international relations, and African studies.

The present paper discusses the legal standpoint of immunities of foreign state officials under Rwandan criminal law. It places its focus on the conflicting circumstances between diplomatic privileges known as immunities the state of criminal accountability. The paper dives into the fact that Rwanda, as post-genocide legal system which prioritizes eradication of impunity, but yet it has to compromise with the requirements of sovereign immunity found under treaties like the Vienna Convention on diplomatic immunities (1961) and numerous customary international laws it signed. The paper goes deep into the analysis Rwanda's constitutional and statutory provisions, judicial practices, and regional/international obligations, seeking to make the reader to understand the present status quo and at the same time revealing gaps in domestic legislation and procedural difficulties in handling immunity claims. The paper evaluates Rwanda's ability to make a balance between the commitment to combat impunity and the tolerance of immunity, particularly with regard to the conduct of international crimes, using comparative analysis as a tool. Following that, the paper concludes with suggestions for enhancing Rwanda's immunity laws. The suggestions include strengthening court rules for the treatment of individuals with immunities and passing explicit immunity procedural and substantive statutes.

This article encompasses the introduction and meaning of the terms in the title to a comprehensive overview of international courts. This article will help to enlightened the reader whether you are a layreader or a learned, it has been broken down to its simplest term to aid understanding.

Karl Marx’s famous aphorism about men (sic) making history, but not in
circumstances of their own choosing, has never looked more apposite. If
the environmental crisis that threatens the very future of humankind has
demonstrated one thing with brutal clarity it is that we—humanity is all
in this—life on planet Earth—together. Unfortunately, this does not
mean that political leaders around the world have suddenly recognised
the interdependent, mutually constitutive nature of human existence;
nor have they inaugurated a new era of enlightened cooperation. On the
contrary, while the geophysical boundaries that delimit individual and
collective human possibilities are becoming ever more apparent, the con-
temporary international order is distinguished by an entirely futile and
counterproductive effort to decouple and privilege the national over the
transnational.

Pela análise dos preâmbulos dos diversos instrumentos jurídicos que deram origem a Blocos de Integração latino-americanos, africanos e euroasiáticos verificamos, em maior ou menor grau, elementos decoloniais, sobretudo aqueles ligados à justiça social,
soberania, e prevalência da autodeterminação dos povos sobre o imperialismo cultural, como forma de afastar o temor da recolonização.

In the book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff explains the existence of a reorganization of the capitalist system, which appropriates human experience and transforms it into behavioral data that, by their nature, is monetized and used as tools of dominance of those who have the power to prosecute them. This system is based on the use of what Nick Srnicek called "Digital Platforms" and the concept of "Surveillance Culture", exposed by David Lyon, which contribute to the individual being always under the influence of transnational technology companies holding the power to process data. Such interventions in the human will reinforce the colonial bases of capitalism, contribute to the process called by Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejías of Data Coloniality and infringe on individuals' human rights, requiring a critical analysis of the issue through TWAILs (Third World Approaches to International Law).

Todos os anos, saem aos jornais as mais trágicas notícias de fluxos migratórios de refugiados, os quais, ainda que temporariamente, tornam-se objeto de comoção internacional. Duas imagens, neste ano, capturaram a essência do mais íntimo desespero daqueles que não encontram outra solução senão fugir de seus países: as centenas de marroquinos que chegaram à costa espanhola, bem como os afegãos que se penduraram em aviões para fugir do Talibã. Foto: Bernat Armangué. Estes acontecimentos indicam que, por todo o globo, a questão dos refugiados tem sido encarada de maneira equivocada. Aos olhares mais atentos, visualiza-se que as migrações forçadas, por sua própria característica de fuga de um país para outro, ultrapassam as fronteiras nacionais, de modo que o seu manejo não pode ser reduzido meramente a políticas internas restricionistas, mas, ao contrário, exige um esforço conjunto da sociedade internacional para a efetivação de um acolhimento humanitário. 9/1/25, 6:35 AM A Proteção Internacional dos Refugiados antes de 1951: o contexto da Liga das Nações e a OIR -internacional-dos-refugiados-antes-de-1951-o-contexto-da-liga-das-nações-e-a-oir 1/6 É de se refletir, portanto, acerca da proteção, a nível internacional, dos refugiados e seus direitos. E, neste particular, quase que naturalmente a figura da Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) vem à baila. Afinal, é exatamente ela que, hoje, centraliza os esforços internacionais -mais conhecidos -de proteção aos refugiados. De um lado, institucionalmente, há o Alto Comissariado das Nações Unidas para Refugiados (ACNUR); de outro, o principal instrumento normativo sobre a matéria é derivada da ONU, a Convenção Relativa ao Estatuto dos Refugiados, também conhecida como Convenção de Genebra de 1951. A Organização das Nações Unidas, assim, é peça chave nesta moldura político-normativa de proteção aos refugiados. No entanto, é errôneo imaginar que os esforços da sociedade internacional a este respeito tenham se dado tão somente após o advento da ONU. O objetivo do presente artigo, nesse sentido, é demonstrar que a proteção aos refugiados tem relevância na sociedade internacional desde antes da ONU. Em específico, busca-se evidenciar como a Liga das Nações, em um contexto de pós Primeira Guerra Mundial, intermediou as crescentes preocupações relativas ao expressivo aumento do número de refugiados pelo mundo. Precisamente, explicitam-se as ações do Dr. Fridtojf Nansen, a frente da primeira organização internacional de proteção aos refugiados, o Alto Comissariado para Refugiados Russos. Em tempo, pretende-se abordar a existência de outras organizações internacionais anteriores ao ACNUR, sobretudo, a Organização Internacional para Refugiados (OIR), explicitando seu mandato e realizações. A proteção dos refugiados no contexto da Liga das Nações Primeira Guerra Mundial (1914-1918) remodelou a geopolítica mundial, fazendo com que o mundo se deparasse, pela primeira vez, com a aparição de uma quantidade nunca antes presenciada de refugiados e apátridas -pessoas, portanto, que não eram bem-vindas em seus países de origem, tampouco podiam ser acolhidas por lugar algum. Eram, nas palavras de Hannah Arendt, os "refugos da terra", isto é, pessoas sem lar, cidadania ou direitos. Para além da própria Grande Guerra, que fez milhares de pessoas se refugiarem em outros países, outros dois acontecimentos concomitantes levaram a este cenário: de um lado, a Revolução Russa (1917), que ocasionou a fuga dos "Russos Brancos", partidários das forças contrarrevolucionárias; e, de outro, o Genocídio Armênio (1915Armênio ( -1923)), protagonizado pelo Império Otomano, que perseguiu e expulsou a minoria armênia de seu território. Assim, na quantificação de Stefania Barrichello e Luiz de Araujo, após a Primeira Guerra, haviam deslocados ao menos 1.500.000 russos brancos, 700.000 armênios, 500.000 búlgaros, 1.000.000 de gregos, além de milhares de alemães, húngaros, romenos e demais minorias que não foram assimiladas pelos recém nascidos países após a queda dos grandes Impérios da centro-europa. Dentre esses deslocados, relevante preocupação se deu ao caso dos russos pela sociedade internacional. Isso porque, após a Revolução Russa, o novo governo, por intermédio dos decretos de 28 de outubro e 15 de dezembro de 1921, promoveu um sistema de desnaturalização em massa por motivos políticos. De tal forma, conforme tais decretos, desnaturalizou-se (i) todos os russos que estiveram no exterior por mais de 5 anos e que, até 22 junho de 1922 não tivessem obtido um novo passaporte perante as novas autoridades; e (ii) todos aqueles que fugiram do país em decorrência do novo regime implantado. Ante a enorme quantidade de apátridas e refugiados russos que estes decretos produziram, a Liga das Nações, em conjunto com o Comitê Internacional da Cruz Vermelha, criou, em 1921, a primeira Organização Internacional com o objetivo específico de proteção aos refugiados: o Alto Comissariado para Refugiados Russos. Sob a liderança do norueguês Fridtojf Nansen, referida organização tinha o objetivo de regular a situação jurídica desses desnacionalizados, bem como repatriá-los ou, então, assentá-los em outro país, colaborando na busca por residência e trabalho para eles. Para atingir tais objetivos, Nansen, através de competente diplomacia, em 1922, angariou 52 países para a ratificação do Ajuste Relativo à Expedição de Certificados de Identidade para os Refugiados Russos. Em que pese este ajuste não tenha definido o que seria um refugiado, instituiu-se o Passaporte Nansen, dando aos refugiados russos o status jurídico de "pessoa de origem russa que não adquiriu outra nacionalidade". Com este documento, seus portadores poderiam transitar dos lugares onde estavam "ilegalmente" para países dentro da Liga das Nações mais hospitaleiros. Voltar ao Topo 9/1/25, 6:35 AM A Proteção Internacional dos Refugiados antes de 1951: o contexto da Liga das Nações e a OIR -internacional-dos-refugiados-antes-de-1951-o-contexto-da-liga-das-nações-e-a-oir 2/6 Foto: World Digital Library. Pelo sucesso da iniciativa de Nansen, o Alto Comissário foi premiado com o Nobel da Paz em 1923, sendo que, no ano seguinte, o número de refugiados russos já teria caído pela metade. Em 1924, o Passaporte Nansen foi ampliado aos armênios vítimas da perseguição e deportação em massa do Império Otomano, por meio do Plano Relativo à Expedição dos Certificados de Identidade para os Refugiados Armênios. Note-se que, com os esforços do Alto Comissário Nansen, nos trabalhos da Liga das Nações para a proteção aos refugiados, nessa fase inicial, o refugiado era definido por sua nacionalidade ou grupo étnico, não por uma condição individualizada do sujeito refugiado. Tanto é assim que, em 1926, celebrou-se o Arrangement relating to the issue of identity certificates to Russian and Armenian refugees, no qual não se definiu o que seria refugiado, mas o que seria um refugiado russo e um refugiado armênio. O refugiado russo seria aquela pessoa de origem russa que não gozasse mais da proteção da URSS e nem tivesse adquirido outra nacionalidade, ao passo que o refugiado armênio seria a pessoa de origem armênia, anteriormente súdita do Império Otomano, que não gozasse de proteção da Turquia e nem tivesse adquirido outra nacionalidade. Ainda em relação aos refugiados russos e armênios, foram ratificadas, em 1928, os Arrangements relating to the legal status of Russian and Armenian refugees, no qual houve pela primeira vez, ainda que de maneira incipiente, a expressa previsão do princípio da não devolução (non-refoulement), uma vez que recomenda, em seu ponto 7, que a expulsão seja evitada ou suspensa quando o refugiado russo ou armênio não reunir condições de adentrar em outro país legalmente. Observa-se, portanto, que, sob a liderança de Nansen, no contexto do entre-guerras, a sociedade internacional deu os primeiros passos em direção à proteção aos refugiados à nível global. Todavia, do falecimento de Nansen (1930) até o fim da Segunda Guerra Mundial (1945), ainda que os trabalhos sob o âmbito da Liga das Nações sobre a temática tenham continuado , eles não tiveram a mesma efetividade, ou receberam tanto apoio, quanto às ações movidas por Nansen. Dentre eles, importante menção deve ser dada a Convenção relativa ao Estatuto Internacional dos Refugiados, de 1933, que é fruto do reconhecimento da Liga da necessidade de um sistema de proteção aos refugiados de maneira mais permanente. Sua principal contribuição -ademais de garantir direitos como o de educação, emprego e documentos de viagem -, foi a abertura do conceito de refugiados a "assimilados", não se restringindo somente aos refugiados russos e armênios. Igualmente, solidificou-se o princípio da não devolução em seu art. 3º, ao impedir a "não repulsão" dos refugiados que necessitem de proteção internacional. Já na ocorrência dos horrores do Holocausto nazista, a criação do Alto Comissariado para os Refugiados da Alemanha (1936), sobretudo para a proteção dos judeus, também é representativo de que, no contexto da Liga das Nações, já havia grande produção normativa e institucional no sentido de proteção dos refugiados internacionalmente. A Organização Internacional para Refugiados (OIR) Passando mais à frente no tempo, o fracasso da Liga das Nações em assegurar a paz e segurança internacional, a inescrupulosidade do regime nazista e a culminação da Segunda Guerra Mundial (1939-1945), encurtaram os esforços e o prazo de proteção dos refugiados no âmbito da Liga das Nações. Na incapacidade da Liga de assegurar a paz e segurança internacional, criou-se, em sua substituição, em 1945, a Organização das Nações Unidas. Afinal, com o fim da Segunda Guerra, a conjuntura em relação aos refugiados era completamente diversa daquela encontrada após o fim da Primeira Guerra. Estima-se que 53.536.000 pessoas foram deslocadas de suas cidades e países durante o período da Segunda Guerra, sendo que a ampla maioria retornou às suas origens após...

Relative wealth inequality between countries of the North and South has not improved since the era of decolonization, yet the LIO's economic regime has scarcely been challenged since the 1970s' New International Economic Order. This paper seeks to explain this puzzle by theorizing and empirically tracking a pervasive pattern of rhetorical “domestication” through which wealth inequality was framed as a domestic instead of an international problem. As part of a rhetorical process of “containment,” the NIEO challenge was met with two alternative, liberal discourses from the 1980s through the present: a “responsive” discourse embodied by the Brandt report and its social-democratic middle ground; and a “resisting” one typified by a speech delivered by Ronald Reagan in Cancun in 1983. Our empirical demonstration illustrates how LIO proponents discursively contained NIEO contestation through the spread of a domesticated rhetoric. Using a corpus of General Assembly annual debates from 1971 to 2018, our machine learning textual analysis reveals how a growing proportion of diverse countries address economic development in an increasingly managerial way. By tracking rhetorical tropes, we document a groundswell movement away from structural and political contestation of the LIO. Overall, our original methodology—based on an inductive and relational approach to machine learning text analysis—allows us to capture the many euphemisms that containment diplomacy at the UN entails, and more generally, how key political problems get muffled in global debates.

Although in its resolution 242 (1967) regarding the Palestinian territories, the United Nations Security Council after the Second Arab - Israel War of 1967 emphasised the principle of "the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war", in fact the United Nations Security Council legalized the acquisition of the Palestine territory by force by calling for the “[w]ithdrawal of Israel armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict” . 
By demanding Israel to withdraw only from the territories it had occupied in the “recent” conflict in its Resolution 242 as if the Israel did not occupy any Palestine State territory in the First Arab Israel War , the United Nations Security Council not only violated the United Nations` Charter, but also created an illegal legalization of a right for the State of Israel to take over the entire territory of the League of Nations' Mandate of Palestine.
The International Court of Justice in its Advisory Opinions of Legal Consequences Arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Including East Jerusalem 2024 never had defined the legal boundaries of the State of Israel under the United Nations Charter which was an obligation to define the legal bases of occupation. The question of occupation subject to which law under the United Nations Charter was never answered by the International Court of Justice. The International Court of Justice had abstained to define the United Nations General Assembly resolution 106 as the Trusteeship Agreement under Chapter XII of the UN Charter and the United Nations General Assembly resolution 181 as an international treaty between Israel and the United Nations.  The International Court of Justice legal errors were originating by defining the questions posed by the United Nations General Assembly as "assumptions" rather than legal questions which is in fact violation of  Article 96.1 of the United Nations Charter. This legal error of the International Court of Justice is under the definition of international wrongful act of an international organization, the International Law Commission's Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations.

This is an interview I did with Third World Approaches to International Law Review (TWAILR) in August 2025. The online version is more readable than the PDF: https://twailr.com/nous-reclamons-le-droit-a-lopacite-glissant-and-the-ethics-of-human-rights/

This chapter delves into the intersection of Western and Indigenous legal systems in Latin America, focusing on the transformative power of Indigenous thought and the role of Indigenous women in reshaping narratives about international law. It critically examines how international law has historically colonized Indigenous jurisdictions while highlighting Indigenous resistance efforts to preserve their legal traditions. The chapter explores the tension between the silencing of Indigenous legal voices and the necessity of recognizing Indigenous jurisprudence as legitimate law. And in so doing it underscores the need to engage with Indigenous thinking to challenge dominant imaginaries and acknowledges the dual role of international law as both an obstacle and a tool for Indigenous peoples' human rights claims. Furthermore, the chapter reveals how Indigenous communities have continuously adapted their legal practices, either by enacting their own laws or reinterpreting state laws through Indigenous cosmologies, with Indigenous women playing a crucial role in transforming both historical narratives and legal interpretations.

This book is born out of necessity, out of a silence that has endured far too long across the continent of Africa. For over a century, the machinery of state-sanctioned violence has claimed millions of lives, eroded communities, and silenced generations. Yet, too often, the world turns away, and history remains unrecorded, hidden in archives, buried under political expediency, or erased from memory. Investigating Africa's State Killings seeks to confront that silence, to illuminate the truth with painstaking care, and to restore voice to those whom the state has tried to erase. In compiling this work, I have drawn from an expansive interconnected system of sources: archival documents dating from the early 1900s, survivor testimonies from conflicts across the continent, contemporary news reports, NGO investigations, scholarly research, and cultural and religious reflections that give meaning to human suffering. From the Congo Free State under King Leopold II to the massacres in Tigray, Darfur, North Kivu, and beyond, this book traces patterns of impunity, oppression, and brutality, revealing the structural and historical forces that allow state violence to persist. This study is not merely historical. It is profoundly ethical, moral, and urgent. African proverbs, literature, and oral traditions remind us that justice is both a communal and spiritual responsibility: "The axe forgets, but the tree remembers." In these pages, the voices of the victims, witnesses, and survivors speak alongside the words of philosophers, theologians, and human rights defenders, insisting that we confront the human cost of political power wielded without conscience. The work your eyes behold is intended for scholars, policymakers, activists, students, and any reader compelled to understand the mechanisms of state violence and its enduring impact on society. It is also for the victims, survivors, and witnesses themselves, in recognition of their courage and endurance. If history has often neglected them, this investigation affirms that their stories matter, their suffering is recorded, and their experiences will not be forgotten.

This chapter explores the political-legal dimensions of staging landscapes. The Spanish term dehesa refers to a substantive and a scenic landscape (K. Olwig) and thus to a human relation to landscape defined by customary law as opposed to one defined by vision. However, as the transhumance festival in the village of Siruela shows, it is precisely aesthetics and costumes that provide for the effective revindication of landscape participation.

This article examines the legal framework under the FAO Constitution that enables member states to hold other actors accountable for actions undermining food and water security. Focusing on Israel's measures affecting the Palestinian population, the study analyzes whether such actions constitute a violation of the FAO Constitution, and whether member states have standing to bring a complaint to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) even though Palestine is not a member. The research concludes that FAO members retain independent rights to address actions undermining the organization's objectives, and Israel's measures plausibly contravene FAO principles concerning the right to adequate food and water.

Recognized as a master in the emerging discipline of comparative jurisprudence, which he helped to create, William Twining set out to write about law and institutions from a truly global perspective. This meant resisting the urge to assume that it is possible to continue doing sound work in legal theory, or the philosophy and sociology of rights and institutions, solely from within Western traditions. The standpoint of Western legal-political traditions vis-à-vis other practices of law and the political ontologies of the world remains unclear. All too often, Western law and politics presents themselves not only as one among various ways of regulating human relations, but also as the unique representative of human regulation. That is, as being the one that measures and defines all the multitude of normative ways in the world, having the capacity to travel everywhere and be more or less universally applicable. Twining's lesson challenged such facile representations. He argued that to accept the profoundly influential character of the rich heritage of Western legality and socio-political theory did not mean having to deny that, from a global standpoint, academic law

Recognized as a master in the emerging discipline of comparative jurisprudence, which he helped to create, William Twining set out to write about law and institutions from a truly global perspective. This meant resisting the urge to assume that it is possible to continue doing sound work in legal theory, or the philosophy and sociology of rights and institutions, solely from within Western traditions. The standpoint of Western legal-political traditions vis-à-vis other practices of law and the political ontologies of the world remains unclear. All too often, Western law and politics presents themselves not only as one among various ways of regulating human relations, but also as the unique representative of human regulation. That is, as being the one that measures and defines all the multitude of normative ways in the world, having the capacity to travel everywhere and be more or less universally applicable. Twining's lesson challenged such facile representations. He argued that to accept the profoundly influential character of the rich heritage of Western legality and socio-political theory did not mean having to deny that, from a global standpoint, academic law

Course description: This course is designed to introduce students to how empire and colonialism shape the past and present of international law's theories, doctrines and practices. Adopting a crossdisciplinary and cross-regional perspective, the course will explore how empire and colonialism coconstituted international law's main actors, including the post-Westphalian state and the evolving notion of an 'international community'. By drawing on the theories and doctrines of international law, the course will examine topics like the use of force, global trade, human rights, and environmental protection that continue to be marked by (post-)imperial and (post-)colonial asymmetries. Drawing on classic legal texts as well as critical scholarship, the course will examine both the experiences of Western (European) empires vis-à-vis the Global South and the imperial and colonial legacies of international law in semi-peripheral regions like East-Central Europe. Its overall aim is to help students reflect critically on both the promise and limitations of international law in addressing inequalities and injustice in the contemporary world.

This article examines the interaction between race, cultural heritage and law. To this end, it provides an overview of how race manifests itself when it comes to cultural heritage, with reference to the restitution of colonial cultural objects, statues related to slavery and colonialism, intangible cultural heritage but also its protection during armed conflict. It puts forward the argument for the existence of a racial regime of international cultural heritage law, by pointing out that there is no monolithic way in which these three parameters interact with each other. Forms and manifestations it takes include its confirmation in an explicit manner, reaching its apogee with the concept of cultura nullius introduced in this paper, its negotiation in various directions, its disregard or its indirect confirmation. This exposition instigates a series of critical reflections within the domain of international cultural heritage law and heritage studies concerning the conceptualisation of cultural heritage and its concomitant narratives. While this paper acknowledges the existence of a more nuanced picture, it still suggests that the racial regime of international cultural heritage law is whiter than is usually surmised or acknowledged.

Calls for reparations can differ widely in nature, with the greedy, exploitative, and overentitled better placed to obtain reparations compared with the exploited, deserving, and needy. Hence, it is important to keep in mind the myriad multiplying forms that contemporary litigation for climate reparations could take, providing prospects for a wide panoply of actors and interests. This chapter is interested in whether litigating for climate reparations can aid the cause of climate justice; that is to say, whether litigation can help those who are facing climate harms that they did not cause. Climate justice advocates tend to look beyond victory or defeat in a single case but rather litigate tactically if a particular case may be a helpful part of a broader advocacy strategy for systemic change. This chapter considers (i) the meaning of climate reparations, which entails among other things the central need to tell the truth about mass suffering and its causes; and (ii) some initial thoughts on the limits and possibilities offered by litigation for obtaining such reparations.

This paper explores how Europe’s colonial legacy continues to shape the contours of its collective identity, creating inherent tensions in the process of integrating refugees. It argues that the European identity, often constructed in opposition to the "other," remains deeply embedded in narratives of cultural superiority and historical amnesia. As a result, refugees are not only treated as outsiders in practical terms, but are also symbolically excluded from the imagined European community. By examining this colonial texture, the paper sheds light on the deeper ideological and historical barriers to meaningful inclusion.

This foreword explores the conceptualisation of “lawfare” through the diverse definitions found in the existing literature and examines its influence on how international crimes are perceived within the broader international community, including the emerging poles of today’s multipolar world order. It departs from two main categories: “external / international lawfare” and “internal / domestic lawfare”, each of which shapes the legal fields discussed in contemporary debates. Particular emphasis is placed on “external / international lawfare”, reflecting both the dominance of this category in the literature and the thematic orientation of the contributions to this issue of Athena, which are then connected to intersections with “internal / domestic lawfare” in contexts such as unilateral coercive measures and “denialism” laws.

In this light, the foreword challenges the prevailing “us” versus “them” dichotomy that has long characterised the lawfare discourse, and calls for the development of a neutral, universally accepted definition that moves beyond the impulse to counter an adversary’s supposed “lawfare strategies”. It concludes by arguing that legal scholars must acknowledge today’s multipolar reality and prioritise dialogue over the weaponisation of law.

Even as it passed its seventieth anniversary, the 1953 coup in Iran has remained a hotly debated political topic. This is true in the public spheres of Iran, which saw its last democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddeq, overthrown in the coup, and in those of the United States and the United Kingdom, which helped stage the ouster. 1 There also has been an attempt at historical revisionism about the coup, usually by overemphasizing the domestic factors that led to the coup and placing less importance on the role of the CIA or questioning Mossadeq's democratic credentials. This revisionism has been robustly rebutted by the scholarly community, which has held to a general consensus on the basic narrative of the coup: that it overthrew a popular leader and that it took place with significant interventions from London and Washington. 2 The release of the final batch of US documents related to the coup in 2017 (following many years of undue delay) also bolstered evidence for this consensus. 3 But, although most public debates about the coup center on questions such as the constitutional process of Mosaddeq's dismissal or the relative weight given to domestic and international actors behind the coup, there is another historiographical question that has been subject to widely divergent perspectives in the field: the relationship of the coup to the Cold War. In other words, can the 1953 coup be considered a Cold War confrontation, or is this a misleading frame of reference? Both sides of this argument have often focused on the motivations of coup plotters (mostly those in Washington, DC, and London) and whether they are more readily explained by a genuine fear of the communist movement in Iran or whether this was a rhetorical smokescreen, masking the neocolonial drive for the control of Iran's resources. This tension is not limited to scholarship on Iran. Even as new global histories of the Cold War have grown in recent years, some have cautioned against the use of this framework for understanding politics in the Global South. Jeremi Suri, for instance, speaks of a "group of scholars" who have

The implementation of the Bilateral Investment Treaty in Indonesia with foreign investors must still pay attention to the existence of Indonesian state sovereignty. State sovereignty must be maintained by the host state to maintain the existence of the country in the international world. BIT has the main function as an international legal instrument that is useful in foreign investment activities with reciprocal relations in obtaining benefits between the guarantee of legal protection of the home state of foreign investors and the economic growth of the host state. BIT signatories are theoretically balanced and reciprocal, but they are often detrimental to host states, most of which come from developing countries. This research aims to find out the extent of Indonesia's implementation of BIT and still protect the existence of state sovereignty. The method used in this research uses normative and comparative juridical and this research has an analytical descriptive nature. Normative legal research is obtained by studying the Churchill Mining case approach and collecting data from articles, web, books, and websites and then comparing the implementation of BITs in Indonesia as a developing country and the United States as a developed country and comparing the implementation of BITs in fellow developing countries between Indonesia and Brazil. The first victory achieved by Indonesia against Churchill Mining in the resolution of the international investment dispute at the ICSID forum proved the BIT reform in Indonesia that continues to develop. This study showed that: first, The Bilateral Investment Agreement provides legal protection guarantees for foreign investors and settlement of settlement disputes through ICSID, an international investment settlement arbitration agency between the two countries that signed the BIT so that the BIT is a protection guarantee for investors. Second, Indonesia's victory against Churchill Mining proves that it has reformed the BIT that applies to Indonesia in a balanced manner to provide legal protection (host state) and the existence of state sovereignty (home state).

Content moderation by social media platforms, once hailed as the holy grail for stamping out illegal content such as hate speech and disinformation, is failing in the Global South. Global conversations on content moderation and governance have primarily centred around an individualistic conception of human rights, largely dominated by responses grounded on international human rights law (IHRL). While IHRL is a dominant normative framework on content moderation, it often invisiblises (and ignores) the concerns of users in the Global South, mainly in Africa. By analysing insights from Africa and incorporating Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), this Article explores the limitations of IHRL as a governing framework for content in Africa, which stem from its Eurocentric legal foundations, epistemic and linguistic blind spots. The Article ultimately advocates for an African approach to content moderation, anchored in a communal conception of human rights as articulated in African human rights law.

Amidst heightened hype in the capacity of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to address climate change, this article begins by elaborating some of the risks and concerns that arise from AI technologies’ extractive climate consumptionism, deployment within climate mitigation and adaptation projects, entanglement in processes of climate securitisation, and contribution to climate discourse. The article then turns to explore the extent to which human rights law (HRL) may be harnessed to address such risks and concerns across three registers of human rights struggles – argumentative, aesthetic, and affective. The article emphasises that if HRL is to be oriented towards addressing the risks and concerns that arise at the intersection of climate change and AI, it is crucial that the terms of human rights mobilisations are driven and informed by the communities most and disproportionately impacted by climate applications of AI across the entire AI lifecycle.

The US social work profession has historically claimed primarily middle-class white women as the "founders" of the profession, including Jane Addams and Mary Richmond. Scholarship of the history of the profession has focused almost entirely on settlement houses, anti-poverty advocacy, and charity in the late 1800s in the northeastern United States as the groundwork of current social work practice. Courses in social work history socialize students into this historical framing of the profession and perpetuate a white supremacist narrative of white women as the primary doers of social justice work that colonizes the bodies and knowledge of Indigenous people and their helping systems. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in the US have always had indigenous systems of social care. Yet, the social justice work of BIPOC, and especially Indigenous people in the US, is left out of the dominant narrative of the history of social work practice for several reasons including...

This chapter examines the crime of aggression through the lens of the principle of non-retroactivity in international criminal law, with particular reference to Justice Radha Binod Pal’s dissenting opinion at the Tokyo Tribunal. It traces the historical development of the prohibition of aggression, from early interwar treaties and the Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals, to the Rome Statute and the 2010 Kampala Amendments, culminating in the establishment of a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. Through a critical analysis of legal texts, jurisprudence, and postcolonial scholarship, the chapter interrogates the legitimacy of retroactive prosecutions and the structural asymmetries embedded in the international legal order. It argues that while the prosecution of aggression holds normative promise, its credibility depends on strict adherence to legality, consistent application, and the avoidance of political selectivity. Justice Pal’s principled rejection of victor’s justice is presented not as a denial of accountability, but as a call for a more coherent and equitable system of international criminal law. The chapter concludes by urging a future-oriented approach to aggression prosecutions—anchored in legality, shaped by historical awareness, and committed to genuine universality in the enforcement of international norms.

During the last decade of the twentieth century, international transactions that involve the movement of capital throughout the world achieved unprecedented frequency of usage. The consequences of this were felt at international and national levels. On the international level there was a creation of a great amount of Bilateral Investment treaties (BIT) between states that regulate and provide substantive norms as well as dispute resolution mechanism that bring out enormous numbers of unarticulated arbitral decisions. On the national level, many states modified national legislation to attract foreign investment. These modifications created a complex system that regulates international transactions. However, during the last years there have been two trends in investment among developing countries: one that supports the current legal framework, and another that seeks to find a new ordering of the field. The present article will explore these trends from the Latin America experience by analyzing how this law evolved in the region by studying the structure of the investment regulation of the main integration processes, and finally, by formulating a new understanding of the way that this type of law should be interpreted while dealing with sensible issues.

This chapter focuses on the challenge of time for a global legal response to chronic emergencies. As chronic emergencies are not instantaneous and spectacular, but slow, structural, and incremental, the question arises of whether the legal and political reactive strategy should be premised on a different temporal perspective. Studying parallel debates in historiography, the chapter critically examines how international law's 'crisis-focus' relies on a modernist temporality that is increasingly undermined by environmental chronic emergencies. On this basis, the chapter offers reflections as to how international law can reconceptualize its sense of time to address the underlying, continuous, and unevenly distributed impacts of State conduct that results in environmental degradation and violence.

The original critique of human rights is well known. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, scholars drew attention to various blind spots in the human rights project. Feminists demonstrated its failure in representing and protecting women, just as parallel limitations were targeted by queer and disabled activists, finding powerful institutional battlegrounds in the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations. TWAIL and post-colonial scholars critiqued the colonial imagery of ‘victims, savages and saviors’ that underpinned the movement, and many critiques intersected multiple communities.

By 2010, an entente had been reached. The movement was neither defeated nor perfected, but certain failings were acknowledged and their proponents promised to reflect and do better. “Both beginners and seasoned veterans are far more savvy and pragmatic than any of us were when I started in the field almost thirty years ago,” David Kennedy admitted in 2012. “Painful lessons hard-learned have sown nagging doubts.”  Blind enthusiasm towards human rights was now “so 90s” and, with its original target gone, critiques against the movement’s blindness were rendered kitsch, summarizable in “eighteen vignettes.” Yet critique has not vanished – on the contrary, critical scholarship on human rights has steamed on ahead, over the past decade replacing its old tactics with new methods and approaches.

It is this relationship, the generational tipping point from the first to the second wave of human rights critique, that this chapter investigates. It aims at providing a broad overview of recent critical approaches to human rights in order to draw out its distinct features compared to previous decades. Like Mégret’s vignettes, the chapter operates in “a broad panoramic and strategic genre,” bringing to the surface themes that recur across critique today. I do not claim that every theme is present in every piece of critique written in the past ten years. These themes will be present in differing degrees of intensity in different types of scholarship. That said, my hope is that the chapter captures a broad, holistic picture of dominant trends: the kind of features one would pick out if asked “what’s new in critical human rights?”.

What was the turn to history in international law? Some two decades after its occurrence, the discipline remains vexed by this question. When contemporary international legal history first emerged as a field in the early 2000s, scholars hailed it as a new agenda for research, one which could answer the sense of anxiety and opportunity felt in the wake of the end of the Cold War.

But the boundaries of the turn have become increasingly difficult to maintain. In recent years, scholars have raised a series of questions which probe at the distinctiveness of international legal history as a field. In one direction, questions have been asked as to how international legal history can be separated from other forms of international law practice, with the tools of international law already full of the analysis of past events, cases, and processes when determining obligations in the present. In response, others have asked whether international legal history would be better shoring up its identity through recourse to "proper" historiographical methodsthat is to say, the methods used by "accredited" historians to write about the pastor whether this would risk losing international legal history's most distinctive features altogether.

These questions invite a reckoning with why international lawyers are said to have "turned" to history in the first place. This article argues that the distinctiveness of international law's turn to history is better understood not as a question of method, nor of materials, but rather as part of a wider taking up of time as a new space of contestation within international legal thought.

International human rights law is currently struck by a potentially redefining tension. While the developments of international human rights law have long presupposed the state as its architect, object, and the very condition for its operationalization, nowadays there have been decisive steps towards extending the purview of international human rights beyond the state by institutionalizing them as a normative baseline for the operation of a wide range of global governance regimes. This raises a crucial question: what happens to human rights when they are extracted from their constitutive presumptions? This introductory chapter dwells on this question and tension to elaborate an overall framing for the present volume. Drawing upon the century-old jurisprudence by Santi Romano and Maurice Hauriou, the chapter suggests that this crucial question can be productively approached by tracing the modes of relevance that human rights law has gained in diverse global governance contexts—as the several contributions to this volume illustrate. This century-old jurisprudence nonetheless also entails a theory of crisis. Their insights can largely explain the legitimation crisis that international human rights law is currently experiencing and what is required to overcome it.

This essay situates Lisa Siraganian’s important book, Modernism and the Meaning of Corporate Persons, within the law and literature field and in relation to the more specialized subfields of literature and liberalism, legalism, and critical race studies of fugitive property. It discusses Siraganian’s nuanced account of corporate personhood, exploring its implications for legal arguments pertaining to fetal personhood post-Dobbs, and for broader political struggles over dignity, recognition, due process, and bodily autonomy.

In 1979, Edward Said attended a colloquy on Middle East politics hosted by Jean-Paul Sartre and Les Temps Modernes in the apartment of Michel Foucault. He would later go on to publish his reflections on this experience in a short piece titled “Diary.” Reading this piece alongside Said’s larger oeuvre, as well as those of his predecessors Foucault and Antonio Gramsci, this article attempts to offer a theory of intellectual responsibility that may be applied to the BDS movement today. In turn, Orientalism and The Question of Palestine, published in the same year as the colloquy, offer a salient political allegory for the relation of the United States to the question of Palestine writ large when read as a dyad as they are intended to be. In closing, the article attempts to apply the theory of intellectuals derived from Said’s work by reflecting on the potential for the particular case of BDS to speak to a set of universal concerns on the Left.

When created, international criminal tribunals (ICTs) were not only expected to do justice but also to provide stabilization to postconflict regions, contribute to reconciliation and curb the potential denial of atrocities. Based on media content analysis, this article examines whether controversial ICT decisions triggered changes in narratives or frames about the conflicts which formed the background of the respective ICT decisions. There is no evidence for dramatic changes in the preexisting narratives about these conflicts, but we found some cases in which tribunal decisions caused changes in media frames and in elements of such frames, mostly by emphasizing outgroup victimhood and individual responsibility of ingroup perpetrators, as well as triggering effects of collective guilt externalization. Although frame changes were often observed in both democratic and nondemocratic countries, only in democratic countries with pluralist and competitive media systems could they be attributed to tribunal decisions.

This paper offers a critical reappraisal of the right of states to regulate within the framework of international investment law, using South Africa's Protection of Investment Act 22 of 2015 (POIA) as a central case study. It explores the theoretical underpinnings of regulatory sovereignty in international law, examining how South Africa's unique historical context and constitutional mandates, particularly regarding socio-economic transformation, have necessitated a reorientation of its investment policy away from traditional Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs). The study analyzes how POIA reflects the state's assertion of its right to regulate, evaluating its provisions concerning expropriation, compensation, and dispute resolution in light of both customary international law and domestic constitutional obligations. Through comparative insights, including alignment with emerging regional investment codes, the paper demonstrates that while POIA firmly entrenches the state's policy space, it also presents challenges regarding legal certainty for foreign investors. Ultimately, this research contributes to the global discourse on balancing investor protection with a host state's sovereign right to regulate in the public interest, suggesting that South Africa's approach reflects a broader trend towards more nuanced and development-oriented international investment governance.

Enhanced interrogation" techniques included shackling a detainee in stress positions and confined spaces, prolonged sleep deprivation, and 83 episodes of waterboarding. During one waterboarding session, a detainee-Zubaydah-"became completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth." He described the experience as follows: "It felt like an eternity, to the point that I found myself falling asleep despite the water being thrown at me by the guard[.]" 1

Since its founding adoption in San Francisco in 1945, the Charter of the United Nations has established an unprecedented legal and political framework, embodying humanity's aspirations to preserve peace, promote fundamental rights, protect human dignity, and establish an international order based on cooperation, justice, and the sovereignty of peoples【1】. The United Nations (UN), as the central institution of contemporary multilateralism, has enabled significant progress in conflict prevention, the development of international law, and the recognition of global interdependence【2】. However, as the 21st century unfolds, geopolitical tensions, transnational challenges, humanitarian and ecological crises, and the erosion of trust in international institutions highlight the structural and political limitations of the current UN system【3】. Although the Charter remains a major legal reference, it is clear that some of its provisions-particularly the concentration of power within the Security Council-no longer adequately meet the needs of a multipolar and interdependent world aspiring to more equitable governance【4】. In this context, the present document offers a normative and institutional reflection aimed at the emergence of a New Democratic United Nations Organization (ND-UN). This initiative is not intended as a radical break nor as a unilateral substitute for the existing UN, but rather as an informed attempt to rethink, on legal and ethical grounds, the founding principles of global governance【5】. It is rooted in the continuity of public international law, particularly the principles of sovereign equality, non-interference, the right of peoples to self-determination, and universal respect for human rights, as recognized by the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and foundational multilateral treaties【6】. This project acknowledges the complexity of the dynamics at play, both at the geopolitical and diplomatic levels. It offers neither an immediate solution nor a single model to be imposed, but seeks to open a space for critical and constructive dialogue. Objections and reservations raised by various partners-regarding, among other things, political feasibility, representative legitimacy, or the democratic coherence of the initiative-have been integrated into this version 【7】. The approach adopted is lucid, pragmatic, and inclusive, while maintaining an ambitious and structuring vision【8】.

Global constitutionalism refers to the continuing debate on the character of contemporary international law in the context of the increasing integration in the realm of constitutional law of states. It is also an umbrella term that overarches pro-constitutionalist theories within the international legal theory. However, it largely consists of contributions from Western scholars, with negligible opinions from the rest of the world. The article evaluates a position for the Third World within the debate on global constitutionalism. While doing so, the article not only draws attention to the Western-centric nature of the debate, but also examines the changing structures and paradigms in the Third World.

Population growth was a pivotal issue in the United Nations during its first decades. The global population was growing steeply, and most of this growth took place in the formerly colonized states. Population trends were framed as an aspect of development and became object of extensive international activities, outside the UN and within. The paper explores the population discourse of those years with a focus on the UN and on the relationship with international law. It traces, firstly, the UN documents engaging directly with population growth and aiming to influence national population policies. Secondly, the paper suggests that the framing of population growth as problem of development stressed its causal role for poverty and food insecurity. The struggles for a New International Economic Order coincided with the international focus on population growth, partly with competing interpretations of reasons for global economic inequality. Thirdly, the paper suggests that the activities within the UN played a central role in shaping the discourse. While the activities of governments and private organizations were significant, it was through the authority of the UN that the development-population-nexus achieved such dominance.