Correcting twail’s Blind Spots

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-52
Author(s):  
Antonius R. Hippolyte
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
International Trade ◽  
International Law ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Third World ◽  
Economic Governance ◽  
Trade Regimes ◽  
Blind Spots

Third World Approaches to International Law (twail) may serve as an apt critique for examination of international economic governance from a Third World angle, given its intimate concern for the welfare of these States in international law. twail’s critique has improved significantly in terms of quality and quantity. Nevertheless, the critique continues to be plagued by a fundamental shortcoming, namely, it merely critiques international law systems and fails to provide suggestions for reforming them to suit the needs of Third World States. This is particularly true in relation to its critique of international economic governance. While twail has produced numerous critiques of the foreign investment and international trade regimes since its emergence, these have failed to provide any constructive suggestions for improvement in these areas. twail should therefore aspire to be more than a tool of system criticism and offer practical solutions to improve Third World States’ place within this system.

Decolonization in International Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mai Taha
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
International Economic Order ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Economic Order ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
The People ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Third World

In Gillo Pontecorvo’s evocative film The Battle of Algiers (1966), viewers reach the conclusion that the fight against colonialism would not be fought at the UN General Assembly. Decolonization would take place through the organized resistance of colonized people. Still, the 1945 United Nations Charter and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights provided some legal basis, albeit tenuous, for self-determination. When Third World leaders assembled in the 1955 Bandung Conference, it became clear that the UN needed to shift gears on the question of decolonization. By 1960, and through a show of Asian and African votes at the General Assembly, the Declaration for the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples was adopted, effectively outlawing colonialism and affirming the right of all peoples to self-determination. Afro-Asian solidarity took a different form in the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana, which founded the Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The conference gathered leftist activists and leaders from across the Third World, who would later inspire radical movements and scholarship on decolonization and anticolonial socialism. This would also influence the adoption of the 1974 Declaration on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order and later lead to UNESCO’s series that starts with Mohammed Bedjaoui’s famous overture, Towards a New International Economic Order (1979; cited as Bedjaoui 1979 under the Decolonization “Moment”). This article situates this history within important international-law scholarship on decolonization. First, it introduces different approaches to decolonization and international law; namely, postcolonial, Marxist, feminist, and Indigenous approaches. Second, it highlights seminal texts on international law and the colonial encounter. Third, it focuses on scholarship that captures the spirit of the “decolonization moment” as a political and temporal rupture, but also as a continuity, addressing, fourth, decolonization and neocolonial practices. Finally, this article ends with some of the most important works on international law and settler colonialism in the 21st century.

Locating Third World Resistance in the International Law on Foreign Investment

2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-444
Author(s):  
Ibironke Odumosu
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Foreign Investment ◽  
Third World ◽  
Grassroots Movements ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe international law on foreign investment incorporates several categories of actors within its domain, some traditional, others non-traditional. These actors' engagement with the law is situated within, and at the same time, challenges strategies of interaction that delineate the inside and outside of the international law on foreign investment. The engagements facilitate the development of the law on three norm levels – participation, interaction and regulation. The impact of grassroots movements' activities and frames, even if limited, on the development of these norm levels suggests that the international law on foreign investment and Third World resistance are more mutually constitutive than they seem at first glance.

Adapting International Law to the Development of the Third World

1982 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maurice Flory
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
International Law ◽  
Third World ◽  
Technical Assistance ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Developed Country ◽  
Daily Work ◽  
The Third World

What is the connection between international law and economic development? The answer will very likely be different according to whether the question is asked in a developed country or in one of the 120 less-developed countries. Consequently the answer can only be found in international law itself.Criticism has been levelled against the International Law Commission on the ground that its work only deals with the traditional topics which constitute the core of international law. Such criticism implies that the Commission has failed to perceive the need for developing international law adequately to encompass new areas.Of course this assertion could be disputed. However, the General Secretary of the United Nations, in a Survey of International Law published in April, 1971, clearly points to a number of newly emerging areas of concern, including the law relating to economic development which comprises the following headings:1. international legal rules and measures concerning regulation and coordination of the economic activities of states;2. international trade;3. economic and technical assistance.In order to assess the full implication of this question, it should be appreciated that the activities of the U.N. and of a growing number of international economic institutions are now devoted increasingly to development. The numerous relevant publications issued especially, but not only, by Third World lawyers show how this matter is becoming of fundamental importance. Indeed, there can be little doubt that Foreign Office legal advisers would readily admit that much of their daily work involves questions of international economic law. Nevertheless, if one looks at the role allocated to this subject by what may loosely be called the established international law, one must recognise that this is, indeed, a very modest role.

TRAIL-ing TWAIL: Arguments and Blind Spots in Third World Approaches to International Law

2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 383-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
John D. Haskell
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Global Governance ◽  
Third World ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Global Regulation ◽  
Future Possibility ◽  
Colonial Experience ◽  
Blind Spots

Beginning in the early 1990s, Third World Approaches to International Law scholarship (TWAIL) destabilized the mainstream narrative within international law that its doctrines were constituted by the historic search for order between formally equal state sovereigns. Instead, TWAIL scholars argued that the key constitutive dynamic of the discipline was the colonial experience, which continues to hold powerful sway over the legal architecture of global regulation whereby international law functions to perpetuate inequality and oppression. At the same time, however, TWAIL scholarship regularly posits international law as an emancipatory force that may be mobilized on behalf of former colonized populations and other marginalized social identities. The rise of post-Marxist scholarship, and more generally, the turn to interdisciplinary within the profession in recent years offers an opportunity to analyze this curious paradox and construct alternative modes of analysis for future TWAIL scholarship. In the first section, the paper draws upon a diverse array of TWAIL scholars over the last thirty years to map the argumentative logic within TWAIL literature. In the second section, the paper incorporates debates and insights from complimentary academic disciplines to illuminate some blind spots within TWAIL’s central arguments, and potentially ‘radicalize’ its future possibility of critique against the growing inequality within global governance.

Trade and Development in International Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles-Emmanuel Côté
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
International Trade ◽  
International Law ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Third World ◽  
International Economic Order ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
Trading System ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The World

The intersection between trade and development in international law appeared in the wake of the decolonization movement, in the second half of the 20th century. Newly independent states joined the older Latin American republics in the shared awareness of their underdevelopment and identified themselves as the Third World, most notably after the landmark Bandung conference of 1955. Developing countries soon gained majority in the UN General Assembly and tried to reshape the rules of international law in order to restore fairness in the multilateral trading system. Its governing instrument, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was perceived as fundamentally flawed since it did not address development and the typical economic issues associated with it. The organization of the first UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 1964 and its establishment as an organ of the General Assembly were instrumental in the proposal of rules to take developing countries into account in international trade law. The GATT incorporated special and differential treatment (S&DT) provisions for developing countries, and other legal regimes were created to deal with issues of specific interest to them, such as international trade in commodities. This process culminated with the attempt by developing countries to establish a New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the 1970s. The NIEO agenda was dominant on the international stage and in legal thinking on trade and development until the early 1990s. International recognition of a right to development connected the topic of trade and development with the field of human rights. The establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 and globalization profoundly shook the foundations of the rules governing trade and development. It marked a paradigmatic shift in international law, where trade liberalization came largely to be seen as the key to development. Renewed critical theories emerged fleshing out Third World approaches to international law, dealing notably with trade-related issues. The topic of trade and development remains relevant in early-21st-century international law, as exemplified by the Doha Development Round of multilateral trade negotiations and by the fact that most WTO members still identify as developing countries in the world trading system. The need to further address the issues faced by developing countries remains pressing. The topic of trade and development focuses on North-South or South-South trade relations and must be disambiguated from the concept of sustainable development. The latter does not deal specifically with developing countries and refers to development that meets current needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own.

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