scholarly journals The Land of Nations: Indigenous Struggles for Property and Territory in International Law

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 115 ◽  
pp. 129-134
Author(s):  
Roger Merino
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Third World ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
Settler Societies ◽  
Western Law

Key studies have highlighted how Western law was central to the civilizing mission of colonialism, legitimizing conquest while presenting itself as a colonizer's gift for overcoming barbarism. But law was not just an imposition to dispossess resources and accumulate labor; it was also transformed by the contestations of First Nations and the new practices deployed in settler societies. In this context, the first international legal theories were aimed at subordinating third world societies and, at the same time, provided the foundations of Western legal apparatus, shaping racially the modern concepts of sovereignty, territory, and property.

scholarly journals CONSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGES OF THE SOUTH: INDIGENOUS WATER RIGHTS IN CHILE - ANOTHER STEP IN THE “CIVILIZING MISSION?

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 87-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amaya Álvez Marín
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Third World ◽  
Water Rights ◽  
Indigenous Rights ◽  
International Treaties ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Civilizing Mission ◽  
Legal Scholarship

This article explores the struggles of indigenous rights based on the adoption of the 1980 Chilean Constitution, under an authoritarian frame, that resulted in water being considered as a commodity and, therefore, subject to radical market rules that serves as a relevant local example in conflict with ratified international treaties. The argument proposes a critical approach to establish a continuum of the recurring rejection of the ancestral beliefs of Indigenous People since colonial times. In light of the actual constituent process for drafting a new constitution in Chile (2015), the article evaluates the emancipatory potential of Chile’s early sovereignty proposal on natural resources and later articulations of water as a human right. The argument assesses the possibility of including alternative views in the constituent debate over water, under the light of Third World Approaches to International Law [TWAIL] and Latin American International Law [LAIL] legal scholarship, aiming to find space in the Chilean constitutional realm for non-extractive perspectives.

scholarly journals Decolonial CIL: TWAIL, Feminism, and an Insurgent Jurisprudence

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 313-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vasuki Nesiah
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
First Nations ◽  
Third World ◽  
World Order ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
The Public ◽  
Fundamental Assumption ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Material Sources

In advancing a Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) analysis of customary international law (CIL) and its dominant doctrinal conceits, B.S. Chimni shows how the jurisprudence of custom has been co-constitutive with colonization and capitalism. He contends that CIL's most fundamental assumption—the “supposed distinction between ‘formal’ and ‘material’ sources of CIL”—privileges Western states while legitimizing CIL as a neutral and universal body of law. In dialogue with Chimni, this essay extends the conversation in two directions. First, I show that there are important resonances between Chimni's deconstruction of the distinction between “formal” and “material” sources of CIL, and a feminist critique of the public/private distinction in international law. Chimni describes his approach as postmodern. I argue that its analysis of the conceptual architecture of the dominant doctrine and its systematic exclusions is also, at its core, a feminist approach to international law. Second, and inspired by Chimni's critique, I explore insurgent jurisprudential traditions that challenge the hierarchies, inequalities, and biases in received doctrine regarding the sources of CIL. Chimni's decolonial approach acknowledges CIL's imperial past, and prepares the ground for democratizing and pluralizing sources by paying attention to a so-called opinio juris communis that incorporates the interests of those critical of, or oppressed by, the dominant world order. Building on this ground, I draw on the Panchsheel principles, first nations’ conceptions of sovereignty and citizenship, and practices of fugitive freedom by maroon communities to begin to supply content and form to a counterrepertoire of custom.

Self-Determination and Territorial Integrity: Southern Cameroons and the Republic of Cameroun

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 629-653
Author(s):  
Valerie Muguoh Chiatoh
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Third World ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
Present Issue ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Relationship

African states and institutions believe that the principle of territorial integrity is applicable to sub-state groups and limits their right to self-determination, contrary to international law. The Anglophone Problem in Cameroon has been an ever-present issue of social, political and economic debates in the country, albeit most times in undertones. This changed as the problem metamorphosed into an otherwise preventable devastating armed conflict with external self-determination having become very popular among the Anglophone People. This situation brings to light the drawbacks of irregular decolonisation, third world colonialism and especially the relationship between self-determination and territorial integrity in Africa.

Legal Perspectives

2018 ◽  
pp. 78-103
Author(s):  
José E. Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Scholarly Work ◽  
Soft Or ◽  
International Court Of Justice ◽  
Court Of Justice ◽  
International Court ◽  
State Actors ◽  
Legal Frameworks

This chapter surveys how international legal scholars have catalogued and sought to explain the legal impact of the UN even though its political and judicial organs have not been delegated the power to make law. It explains how the UN attempts to adhere to, but also challenges, the traditional sources of international law—treaties, custom, and general principles—contained in the Statute of the International Court of Justice. It enumerates how the turn to UN system organizations—amidst newly empowered non-state actors, increasing resort to ‘soft’ or ‘informal’ norms, and recourse to institutionalized processes—have led to distinct legal frameworks such as process or deliberative theories, interdisciplinary ‘law and’ approaches, feminist and ‘Third World’ critiques, and scholarly work that renews attention to or revises legal positivism.

scholarly journals Enacting Twailian Praxis in Nonacademic Habitats: Toward a Conceptual Framework

AJIL Unbound ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 20-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Obiora Chinedu Okafor
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
Civil Servants ◽  
Peasant Movements

The roles that Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholars could play in political and/or socio-economic struggles beyond the academy, and the relationships of these scholars to politicians, diplomats activists, civil servants, peasant movements, civil society, and other nonacademic actors are issues as important to TWAIL as they are understudied and underenacted. The three essays in this TWAIL Symposium take up this theme of praxis.

scholarly journals A questão desenvolvimentista na segunda metade do século XX: um olhar desde as TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law)

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrique Weil Afonso
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Third World

O objetivo do presente trabalho é analisar a tradição crítica do Direito Internacional no contexto da segunda metade do século XX no tocante aos desafios da inserção dos novos países à sociedade internacional de Estados. Para tanto, foi empreendido estudo qualitativo, amparado em bibliografia técnica e análise documental, nos contornos do recorte temporal assinalado. As Abordagens do Terceiro Mundo para o Direito Internacional (TWAIL, na sigla em inglês) consistem em movimento teórico de variadas influências, mas cujo propósito central é investigar as causas históricas, econômicas, políticas e culturais da perpetuação do subdesenvolvimento e da injustiça globais. São contempladas duas gerações de teóricos do movimento, a primeira compreendendo os desafios da emancipação política e desenvolvimento das décadas de 1960 e 1970, e a segunda, as dificuldades de proposição de alternativas institucionais e normativas favoráveis aos interesses do designado Terceiro Mundo no pós Guerra Fria. Constatou-se, após o exame das contribuições destas gerações, o que se denominou de armadilhas à emancipação dos países em desenvolvimento, que hoje precisam integrar a agenda do movimento.

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