Third World Approaches to International Law: A Manifesto

Abstract

* I would like to thank Antony Anghie for his comments on an earlier draft of the paper. The usual caveat applies. First published in: Antony Anghie, Bhupinder Chimni, Karin Mickelson and Obiora Okafor (Eds), The Third World and International Order: Law, Politics and Globalization (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2003). 1 The word “recolonisation” is being inter alia used to indicate first, the reconstitution of the relationship between State and international law so as to undermine the autonomy of third world States and to the disadvantage of its peoples. Second, the expansion of international property rights which are to be enforced by third world States without possessing the authority to undertake the task of redistribution of incomes and resources. Third, the relocation of sovereign economic powers in international trade and financial institutions. Fourth, the inability of third world states to resist the overwhelming ideological and military dominance of the first world. 2 See UNDP, Human Development Report (1999). 3 We adopt here the definition of domination offered by Thompson: “We can speak of ‘domination’when established relations of power are ‘systematically asymmetrical’, that is, when particular agents or groups of agents are endowed with power in a durable way which excludes, and to some significant degree remains inaccessible to, other agents or groups of agents, irrespective of the basis upon which such exclusion is carried out.” See J. Thompson, Ideology and Modern Culture, in The Polity Reader in Social Theory (1994) 133 at 136. Third World Approaches to International Law: A Manifesto