(2024) 5 TWAIL Review
ISSN 2563-6693
Published under a Creative Commons licence.
Matheus Gobbato Leichtweis ~ Bob Marley and the TWAILers: Music, Decolonization, and the Critique of International Legal Education ~ pages 1-29
Abstract
This article explores the lyrics of Bob Marley in the light of a TWAIL approach to international legal education. It starts by identifying an ‘aesthetic turn’ in critical international legal scholarship, discussing the use of music for educational purposes. The second part devises four TWAIL-inspired questions that should guide the interpretation of Marley’s lyrics. The third part finally proceeds with the analysis of Marley’s song lyrics. It is concluded that, to the extent that lyrics depicted or reflected international legal processes, institutions, movements, and ideas from specifically Third-Worldist points of view, Bob Marley’s work can be seen as providing valuable lessons for learning and unlearning international law, for developing critical, anti-colonial historical sensitivities, and for strengthening a spirit of the Third World, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist solidarity. The analysis found four main thematic axes relevant for TWAIL scholarship: 1) the continuity of colonial patterns of oppression and exploitation after the end of formal imperialism; 2) the ubiquitous presence of imperialism in the daily life experiences of oppressed peoples; 3) the transformative power of Rastafarianism in reclaiming African history, fostering a political identity against slavery and racial oppression, and addressing contemporary challenges of regional integration, human rights, and decolonization; and 4) Marley’s project of epistemological emancipation, a spiritual and political call for the decolonization of the mind, of ideas and also material practices that continually reproduce injustices and oppression across the globe.
S. Ali Malik ~ ‘Making the New Developmental State: International Law and Neoliberal State Formation in India’ ~ pages 30-50
Abstract
International law is largely assumed to be the product of sovereign states who freely create, join, and adhere to international treaties and other international legal instruments. Recent TWAIL scholarship, however, suggests that it is international law that creates, modifies, and legitimates states. In this paper, I advance this provocation through a case study of the neoliberalization of the Indian state and, specifically, that of Indian agrobiodiversity. I argue that the neoliberal transformation of the Indian state was a result of dialogic and multiscalar processes in which the neoliberal Indian state was constructed as a legitimate actor by international institutions and through the disciplinary power of international law. It further shows how evolving modes of capital accumulation are mutually constitutive of changes in international law, which ultimately rely on novel but nonunique technologies of government. Interrogating the ensemble of technologies, discourses, and institutions within this recent history illuminates the overlapping complexities structured by the productive power of international law.
Jane Ezirigwe ~ TWAIL As A Scholarly Approach To Teaching International Economic Law In Selected African Universities: Pedagogy And Challenges ~ pages 51-72
Abstract
In rethinking legal education in Africa in ways that reject the patterns of intellectual colonization that have characterized its past, Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) serves as both a deconstructive and reconstructive tool in teaching international economic law (IEL). Commendably, such engagements have begun even at the undergraduate level, helping to address perpetuated narratives embedded in global inequalities from an early stage. Although the goal of TWAIL is to unpack the colonial legacies of international law and engage in decolonizing efforts, the methodology of how this is achieved is largely left to scholars. This article adopts a socio-legal method to examine the pedagogy that guides the teaching of IEL in selected African universities. It aims to present a report on how IEL is taught using TWAIL. Employing structured interview questions, it interviewed instructors from countries in sub-Saharan Africa to determine if there is a unique emerging approach by African scholars in teaching IEL using TWAIL. It further highlights peculiar challenges and opportunities from these experiences. The article adds to the body of knowledge that presents not just what is being done but how it is being done to develop robust and cumulative scholarly traditions.
Conrad Bryan ~ The Pursuit of Justice for Children of African Irish Descent: Can International Law provide a pathway to justice? ~ pages 73-97
Abstract
In recent decades, there has been an increasing demand for reparatory justice for the historical enslavement and trafficking of Africans across the Atlantic, as well as for the associated colonisation and racial segregation. This article highlights a similar call for reparatory justice from an unusual quarter: Ireland. This country is not always regarded as having a historical role in the enslavement and trafficking of Africans. However, in 2023, a group of children of African descent (now adults) born in Ireland initiated a case at the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, seeking reparations for racial discrimination in childcare institutions between the 1940s and 1990s. The article covers this journey and provides an overview of the historical and colonial context for racism in Ireland. It also provides insights into the domestic and international legal challenges and the political campaign and praxis relating to this ongoing case.
Ọláolúwa Òní ~ Nigeria’s Settler-Colonial Present: Review Essay of Folúkẹ́ Adébísí’s Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge ~ pages 98-119
Abstract
In her 2023 text, Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility, Folúkẹ́ Adébísí explores what it means to transcend colonial logics in the study, practice, and teaching of law. She implores legal academics to participate in the project of decolonization and decoloniality through careful examination of the concepts, theories, and categories that organize the discipline of Law. This review essay engages with the project of the text by exploring the colonial logics that inform the separating of colonial experiences into “settler” and “non-settler” categories. In particular, this paper argues that Nigeria, which is traditionally classed as a “non-settler” state, should be understood as operating within a settler-colonial logic, and that its Indigenous peoples should be understood as similarly situated to Indigenous peoples in traditional settler-states.
Christiana Essie Sagay ~ Transnational Labour Mobility and Issue-Linkages in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration: A TWAIL Analysis ~ pages 120-148
Abstract
Growing transnational mobility resulted in the development and adoption of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) under the auspices of the United Nations in 2018. Though a soft law document, the GCM was presented as a consensus document and a pivotal moment in the institutionalisation of a migration global governance regime that accounted for all the fragmented issues around transnational mobility – one of which was transnational labour mobility. Objective 5 of the GCM seeks to enhance the availability and flexibility of pathways for regular migration in a manner that facilitates labour mobility. Yet, despite the GCM containing twenty-three objectives and corresponding commitments, transnational labour mobility continues to face increasing political resistance through a complex system of inclusion and exclusion hinging on the issue-linkage of transnational labour mobility with border security, sovereignty and economic demands. Using Third World Approaches to International law (TWAIL) as a methodology and aided by a close examination of Objective 5, I assert that the GCM has deeply entrenched foundations often perceived as value-neutral. But, in fact, the normalisation of sovereignty, border security, and economic demands as embedded in the GCM furthers a racialised hierarchy of international norms. Finally, this piece concludes with a TWAIL way of thinking about transnational labour mobility as presented in the GCM, which centres the global south and its workers.
Kamari Maxine Clarke ~ El imperio del derecho a través de la economía de las apariencias: la construcción discursiva de “El Señor de la Guerra Africano” ~ pages 149-179
Abstract
El alcance global del derecho internacional se ha vuelto relevante para la microgestión de la vida diaria. En los Estados africanos poscoloniales, la ampliación de las jurisdicciones nacionales hacia la jurisdicción internacional está transformando las acciones cotidianas y sus significados. En relación con estas tecnologías cambiantes que se ocupan de gestionar las transformaciones del poder político, este artículo explora cómo el espectáculo del imperio del derecho está conectado con el espectáculo del capitalismo. Mediante la exploración de testimonios de víctimas y testigos en el Tribunal Especial para Sierra Leona, este texto examina las formas mediante las cuales los espectáculos del derecho y sus articulaciones del sufrimiento desplazan las realidades de las causas últimas de la violencia y redistribuyen la responsabilidad penal. A partir del análisis de los líderes rebeldes que propagan la violencia, del saqueo de los recursos naturales y de los niños soldado que son tanto víctimas como perpetradores, en este texto examino la artesanía discursiva del “Señor de la Guerra Africano” y el consecuente espectro de la víctima al mostrar cómo el derecho y la justicia están anclados en procesos y conceptos que frecuentemente enmascaran sus supuestos normativos. Mediante su enfoque en la justicia de las víctimas y no en el consumismo que estimula la producción, el Tribunal Especial para Sierra Leona funciona no sólo como el creador de nuevos principios jurídicos de la responsabilidad penal, sino también como un mecanismo de poder fundamental a través del cual el derecho oscurece las condiciones que influyen en su producción. Tal como ocurre con otros espectáculos del poder, el derecho es capaz de hacer que su funcionamiento sea invisible, mientras que desplaza la acción humana y la remplaza con instancias espectaculares que afirman el imperio del derecho el cual adquiere mayor fuerza. El derecho oscurece su producción no sólo mediante la escenificación y la creación de ritos, sino también mediante estrategias narrativas que consolidan un régimen afectivo de sufrimiento en el marco del cual el humanitarismo contemporáneo adquiere su poder.
Usha Natarajan y Kishan Khoday ~ Situando la naturaleza: hacer y deshacer el derecho internacional ~ pages 180-203
Abstract
Este artículo sostiene que el derecho internacional está estructurado de manera que refuerza sistemáticamente el daño ecológico. Al explorar el entorno cultural del que surgió el derecho internacional ambiental, argumentamos que produce una comprensión empobrecida de la naturaleza, incapaz de responder adecuadamente a las crisis ecológicas. Muchos de los conceptos básicos del derecho internacional, como la soberanía, la jurisdicción, el territorio, el desarrollo y los derechos humanos, han evolucionado en trayectorias inadecuadas para percibir o respetar los límites ecológicos. El derecho internacional trata a la naturaleza como un recurso para la generación de riqueza y a la degradación ambiental como una externalidad económica que debe gestionarse a través de regímenes especiales. Este capítulo rastrea la coevolución de tales supuestos sobre la naturaleza junto con los conceptos claves que formaron la disciplina, argumentando que tales entendimientos han sido centrales para la creación del derecho internacional y que la disciplina ha ayudado a universalizarlos y normalizarlos. Por lo tanto, para abordar los desafíos ambientales, los principios de la disciplina tendrían que evolucionar en direcciones que transformen radicalmente la naturaleza del derecho.
