Decolonising International Law

Abstract

The universal promise of contemporary international law has long inspired countries of the Global South to use it as an important field of contestation over global inequality. Taking three central examples, Sundhya Pahuja argues that this promise has been subsumed within a universal claim for a particular way of life by the idea of 'development'. As the horizon of the promised transformation and concomitant equality has receded ever further, international law has legitimised an ever-increasing sphere of intervention in the Third World. The post-war wave of decolonisation ended in the creation of the developmental nation-state, the claim to permanent sovereignty over natural resources in the 1950s and 1960s was transformed into the protection of foreign investors, and the promotion of the rule of international law in the early 1990s has brought about the rise of the rule of law as a development strategy in the present day.

The Emotional Backdrop of Legal Discourses in South China Sea Disputes

“…Positions relating to territorial disputes in the China Sea can thus be viewed from the perspective of its desire to 'decolonize' international law, i.e., to promote a 'transcivilizational' vision that takes into account all civilizations and cultures in its creation (Onuma, 2017;Pahuja, 2011). Indeed, the history of international law shows that international law is first and foremost a European law that has become American after the end of the Cold War.…”

The State and International Law: A Reading from the Global South

“…Typically, this 'backwardness' was explained either to be an expression of their incipient economies (i.e. poor infrastructure, low productivity, lack of industries, and insufficient human capital), 35 or related to the 'backward elements' within the state, such as indigenous and rural people, 36 or some combination of both. 37…”

Intellectual property protection and development: The case of sustainable sea transport in Pacific Island countries

“…The debates that have been generated in the field of intellectual property and development are largely centred around increasingly polarized positions defending or challenging the claims that intellectual property protection is necessary to stimulate the production of the new technology in the first place, and that it is necessary in order for there to be a transfer of the technology to countries in the developing world (Gehl Sampath, Mugabe, & Barton, ; Gehl Sampath & Roffe, ; Latiff, Maskus, Okediji, & Reichmann, ; Moon, ). There has in general been very little interrogation of several of the problematic assumptions that underpin the argument, in particular the relevance of technological solutions from the global North for the global South and the absence of innovative developments in the global South (Escobar, ; Pahuja, ; Rajagopal, ).…”

“…I argue, conversely, that there are multiple models of both. These other models, however, tend to be obscured by the dominant narratives around development and intellectual property that lead to the universalization of the models and approaches from the global North (For a discussion of the operationalization of universalism more broadly see Pahuja ()). Exposing the plurality of models should enable a far more creative and multidimensional approach to intellectual property policy in developing countries, particularly those in which the levels of technological development and social structures are very different to those in which the global intellectual models and frameworks have been, and continue to be, created.…”