¹ History of the City of Peace and Justice, Hague (Mar. 16, 2017), https://www.denhaag.nl/en/in-the-city/international-the-hague/history-of-the-city-of-peace-and-justice.htm (introducing the role that The Hague has played in the international relations and international community over several centuries).

² See Upendra Baxi, Some Newly Emergent Geographies of Injustice: Boundaries and Borders in International Law, 23 Ind. J. Global Legal Stud. 15, 24 (2016) (“Human rights and social activists have begun, at least since the Bhopal catastrophe, to understand that the inner dynamic of PIL [Public International Law] constitutes an obstacle to the promotion, protection, and preservation of human rights. But the mystery and mystique of PIL protect the epistemic insularity of its constructs: forum non conveniens, comity, jurisdiction in personam and in rem, professio juris stipulations, lex fori, lex loci delicti, and even the seemingly flexible ‘public policy.’ These are coated in a historical and dogmatic opacity as yet impermeable to an activist gaze.”).

³ See, e.g., Ohio Omiunu, International Law Ass'n Study Grp., City Reports on International Law: Lagos in Focus (2020) (As part of the ongoing City reports on International Project commissioned by the International Law Associations’ Study Group on Cities in International Law, which focuses on non-Western cities in international legal history).

⁴ Anna Spain Bradley, Recent Books on International Law, 112 Am. J. Int'l L. 330, 334 (2018) (reviewing Oona Hathaway & Scott Shapiro, The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World (2017)) (arguing that when scholars are “descriptively omissive” and neglect a broader community of actors in their work, they miss an opportunity to recast international law for a new generation as truly international and inclusive).

⁵ See Ahmadou Sadio Diallo (Guinea v. Dem. Rep. Congo), Judgment, 2010 I.C.J. 639, 644 (Nov. 30) (The Democratic Republic of Congo law firm of Cabinet Tshibangu and Associés as an example).

⁶ See James Thuo Gathii, How International Is the International Court of Justice (forthcoming 2021).

⁷ E-mail from Yufnalis N. Okubo, Registrar, E. African Court of Justice, to James Thuo Gathii (Mar. 2, 2020, 09:13 CST) (on file with author) (listing advocates who have appeared before the East African Court of Justice).

⁸ See List of Counsel Before the ICC, ICC (Sept. 14, 2020), https://www.icc-cpi.int/about/registry/Pages/list-of-counsel.aspx (indicating some diversity in terms of the geographical location of the practitioners who are listed as counsel before the ICC); Sujith Xavier, Theorising Global Governance Inside Out: A Response to Professor Ladeur, 3 Transnat'l Legal Theory 268, 279 (2012) [hereinafter Xavier, Theorising Global Governance] (asserting that Western lawyers still dominate the investigations, trials, and legal research in the ICTR); Sujith Xavier, Looking for ‘Justice’ in All the Wrong Places: An International Mechanism or Multidimensional Domestic Strategy for Mass Human Rights Violations in Sri Lanka?, in Post-War Sri Lanka: Problems and Prospects (Amarnath Amarasingam & Daniel Bass eds., 2015), reprinted in 11 Osgoode Legal Stud. Res. Paper Series, no. 7, 1, 16–17 (2015), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2557478 (citing Elena Baylis, Tribunal-Hopping with the Post-Conflict Justice Junkies, 10 Or. Rev. Int'l L. 361.); see also Kurt Taylor Gaubatz & Matthew MacArthur, How International is ‘International’ Law?, 22 Mich. J. Int'l L. 239, 250–60 (2001) (providing the analysis of the compiled data on the lawyers who participated in proceedings of the ICJ from 1948 and 1998).

⁹ Accord U.N. Int'l Residual Mechanism for Crim. Tribs. [IRMCT], https://www.irmct.org/en/about (last visited Oct. 6, 2020) (explaining that the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) performs various essential functions previously performed by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)).

¹⁰ Anthea Roberts, Is International Law International? 271 (2018) (arguing that “the United States and the United Kingdom often enjoy the ‘exorbitant privilege’ of issuing the world's ‘reserve law,’” marginalizing major civil law traditions, like the French and German systems); Xavier, Theorising Global Governance, supra note 8, at 284 (“Depicting a very singular narrative that focuses on the facts, as witnessed by those in Berlin, Hamburg, London and New York, and theorising from this perspective may not yield any results that actually help us to understand the different political compromises involved and how these institutions are created and operate. The description of the international legal order cannot be a single story.”).

¹¹ Cristof Heyns & Magnus Killander, Africa in International Human Rights Textbooks, 15 Afr. J. Int'l & Comp. L. 130, 131–32 (2008) (noting that although international human rights law textbook writers have started to “integrate commentary on the African system into their work,” there are still valid concerns about continued neglect).

¹² See Solomon T. Ebobrah, A Rights-Protection Goldmine or a Waiting Volcanic Eruption?: Competence of, and Access to, the Human Rights Jurisdiction of the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, 7 Afr. Hum. Rts. L.J. 307, 328 (2007) (welcoming the emergence of a viable sub-regional human rights system because the African mechanisms were too far away and expensive for the majority of human rights violation victims and domestic legal system did not live up to the expectations of human rights advocates).

¹³ See generally Charles Jalloh, Kamari Clarke, & Vincent Nmehielle, Introduction: Origins and Issues of the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples’ Rights, in The African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples’ Rights in Context: Development and Challenges 2 (Charles Jalloh, Kamari Clarke & Vincent Nmehielle eds., 2019) (on the origins and issues of the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples’ Rights).

¹⁴ Rachel Murray, International Human Rights: Neglect of Perspectives from African Institutions, 55 Int'l & Comp. L.Q. 193, 193 (2006) (asserting that “international human rights law has focused primarily on European and Western sources and neglected those from other jurisdictions,” failing to use African institutions as examples of good practice).

¹⁵ Id.

¹⁶ Id. at 194–95; see Frans Viljoen, International Human Rights Law in Africa 571–72 (2012) (focusing on the African human rights system).

¹⁷ Murray, supra note 14, at 196.

¹⁸ Id. at 195.

¹⁹ Id. at 196–97, 203 (arguing that failing to take into account the African human rights system “undermines the very validity of a universal system of human rights law . . . but also deprives the system of the respect necessary for the enforcement of its decisions”).

²⁰ Id. at 194–95.

²¹ Id. at 203.

²² Int'l Law Comm'n, Report of the Study Group of the International Law Commission to the General Assembly, Fragmentation of International Law: Difficulties Arising from the Diversification and Expansion of International Law, at 11, U.N. Doc. A/CN.4/L.682 (2006).

²³ See Adamantia Rachovitsa, On the New Judicial Animals: The Curious Case of an African Court with Material Jurisdiction of a Global Scope, 19 Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 255, 256 (2019) (asserting that “the distinctiveness of the ACtHPR's jurisdiction lies in the fact that its mandate extends to the interpretation and application of any other relevant human rights instrument ratified by the States concerned”).

²⁴ Rachel Murray, The Human Rights Jurisdiction of the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples’ Rights, in The African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples’ Rights in Context: Development and Challenges 965, 972, 974–75, 977 (Charles Jalloh, Kamari Clarke & Vincent Nmehielle eds., 2019) (affirming the broad jurisdiction of the African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights to interpret treaties other than the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights).

²⁵ Rachovitsa, supra note 23, at 266–88 (addressing concerns that legal issues such as forum shopping, the ACtHPR monitoring other human rights treaties, undermining the specificity of African human rights laws, and fragmenting African human rights law may lead to jurisprudential chaos).

²⁶ Id. at 275.

²⁷ Obiora Chinedu Okafor, The African Human Rights System, Activist Forces, and International Institutions 83–84, 86–88 (2007) (noting that despite the African human rights system's flaws, there has still been modest success); James Thuo Gathii & Jacqueline Wangui Mwangi, The African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights as an Opportunity Structure, in The Performance of Africa's International Courts: Using International Litigation for Political, Legal, and Social Change (James Gathii ed., 2020).

²⁸ See also Joseph R. Slaughter, Hijacking Human Rights: Neoliberalism, the New Historiography, and the End of the Third World, 40 Hum. Rts. Q. 735, 756–58 (2018) (noting that Western states preventing former colonies from self-determining their human rights regimes was a tool or “secret weapon” to resubordinate the post-colonial states).

²⁹ See Apollin Koagne Zouapet, ‘Victim of Its Commitment . . . You, Passerby, a Tear to the Proclaimed Virtue’: Should the Epitaph of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights be Prepared?, EJIL:Talk! (May 5, 2020), https://www.ejiltalk.org/victim-of-its-commitment-you-passerby-a-tear-to-the-proclaimed-virtue-should-the-epitaph-of-the-african-court-on-human-and-peoples-rights-be-prepared (“Admittedly, the practice of the African Court has encountered serious issues and has raised many reservations and criticisms from commentators. It is impossible to list here the many criticisms levelled at the Court. I had already expressed concern many years ago about the perceived lack of rigour in the reasoning of the ACtHPR judgments. States could legitimately be frustrated by the laconism of the Court's replies to some of their arguments, in particular on questions of jurisdiction and admissibility (see, for example, the Court's most recent Order).”); see also, Gathii, supra note 27; Başak Çali, Mikael Rask Madsen, and Frans Viljoen, Comparative Regional Human Rights Regimes: Defining A Research Agenda, 16 Int'l J. Const. L. 128, 129–31 (2018) (introducing that there is a new research agenda of putting the African human rights system in conversation with human rights systems from other regions).

³⁰ See, e.g., Olabisi D. Akinkugbe, Towards an Analyses of the Mega-Politics Jurisprudence of the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, in The Performance of Africa's International Courts: Using International Litigation for Political, Legal, and Social Change 149 (James Gathii ed., 2020) (contending that the jurisprudence of ECOWAS has social, economic, and political impacts and that compliance with the Court's decisions should not be the only measurement of juridical success).

³¹ See James Thuo Gathii, International Courts as Coordination Devices for Opposition Parties: The Case of the East African Court of Justice, in The Performance of Africa's International Courts: Using International Litigation for Political, Legal, and Social Change 35 (James Gathii ed., 2020) (noting that the EACJ served as a “go-to court for opposition political parties” whose rights were infringed upon by a dominant party and that such use of the EACJ strengthened the Court).

³² See, e.g., Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community art. 27(2), Nov. 30, 1999, 2144 U.N.T.S. 255 (“The Court shall have such other original, appellate, human rights and other jurisdiction as will be determined by the Council at a suitable subsequent date. To this end, the Partner States shall conclude a protocol to operationalise the extended jurisdiction.”); Karen J. Alter, James T. Gathii & Laurence R. Helfer, Backlash Against International Courts in West, East and Southern Africa: Causes and Consequences, 27 Eur. J. Int'l L. 293, 296, 301, 308, 312, 315 (2016) (noting that ECOWAS, EACJ, and SADC received human rights jurisdiction after their founding, either through adoption of human rights supplementary protocols or by establishing a cause of action without having a human rights supplementary protocol in place).

³³ Rugumba v. Sec'y Gen. E. Afr. Cmty., No.8/2010, Judgment, E. Afr. Ct. Just., ¶¶ 18–23 (Dec. 1, 2011), https://www.eacj.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Plaxeda-Rugumba-2010-8-judgment-2011.pdf (concurring with the Katabazi Court in holding that the Court had jurisdiction to entertain the human rights violation case); Indep. Med. Legal Unit v. Att'y Gen. of Kenya, No.3/2010, Judgment, E. Afr. Ct. Just., at 3–6 (Jun. 29, 2011), https://www.eacj.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Reference-No.-3-of-2010-Independent-Medical-Legal-Unit-Vs-The-Attorney-General-of-the-Republic-of-Kenya-4-Others.pdf (concurring with the Katabazi Court in holding that the Court had jurisdiction to entertain the human rights violation case); Katabazi v. Sec'y Gen. E. Afr. Cmty., No.1/2007, Judgment, E. Afr. Ct. Just., at 16 (Nov. 1, 2007), https://www.eacj.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/NO._1_OF_2007.pdf (noting that despite the lack of jurisdiction over human rights claims per se, the EACJ is charged with interpreting the Treaty Establishing the East African Community, which requires Partner States to “undertake . . . maintenance of universally accepted standards of human rights”); James T. Gathii, Mission Creep or a Search for Relevance: The East African Court of Justice's Human Rights Strategy, 24 Duke J. Comp. & Int'l L. 249, 250–58 (2013) (discussing the development of the EACJ's human rights jurisprudence).

³⁴ See Alter et al., supra note 32, at 295–306 (discussing the backlashes against ECOWAS, EACJ, and SADC after they began hearing human rights cases).

³⁵ Max du Plessis, The Crimes Against Humanity Convention, (Overlooked) African Lessons, and the Delicate Dance of Immunity, 17 J. Int'l Crim. Just. 1, 3–4, 6, 7, 11 (2019) (arguing that the domestication of international criminal law strengthens the global human rights system because states, unlike the ICC, have universal jurisdiction, such as the Constitutional Court of South Africa holding that the South African Police Service had a duty to investigate crimes of torture in Zimbabwe because Zimbabwe was unwilling or unable to investigate the crimes itself) (citing the Constitutional Court's holding that “while the presence of the suspect in the country was required in order to prosecute the suspects, there was no analogous presence requirement for investigation under international or South African law)).

³⁶ James T. Gathii, Saving the Serengeti: Africa's New International Judicial Environmentalism, 16 Chi. J. Int'l L. 386, 397–410 (2016) (discussing the case filed at the EACJ against the Government of Tanzania in 2010 to stop a highway being built through the Serengeti).

³⁷ Id. at 431.

³⁸ Id.

³⁹ Afr. Network for Animal Welfare v. Att'y Gen. of the United Republic of Tanz., No.9/2010, Judgment, E. Afr. Ct. Just., ¶ 86 (Jun. 20, 2014), https://www.eacj.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Judgement-Ref.-No.9-of-2010-Final.pdf (issuing a permanent injunction on the basis that the proposed construction of the road was unlawful and infringed Articles 5(3)(c), 8(1)(c), 111(2), and 114(1) of the Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community).

⁴⁰ See, e.g., Giovanny Vega-Barbos & Lorraine Aboagye, Human Rights and the Protection of the Environment: The Advisory Opinion of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, EJIL:Talk! (Feb. 26, 2018), https://www.ejiltalk.org/human-rights-and-the-protection-of-the-environment-the-advisory-opinion-of-the-inter-american-court-of-human-rights (discussing the Court's Advisory Opinion on States’ obligations under the American Convention on Human Rights regarding infrastructure projects that risked significant environmental damage to the marine environment of the Wider Caribbean Region).

⁴¹ Id. (noting that the Court found a legal basis in both the San Salvador Protocol on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights to view the right to live in a healthy environment as a human right).

⁴² Jacqueline Peel & Jolene Lin, Transnational Climate Litigation: The Contribution of the Global South, 113 Am. J. Int'l L. 679, 725–26 (2019) (noting that climate litigation in the Global South takes a different approach from that of the Global North to climate change by articulating it as a climate justice issue and incorporating constitutional and human rights arguments).

⁴³ R.P. Anand, Industrialization of the Developing Countries and the Problem of Environmental Pollution, 4 Mazingira 16, 16–17, 20–24 (1980) (arguing that large-scale pollution is damaging the “thin envelope of life-sustaining atmosphere” and that coordination between rich and poor countries to facilitate development and lift people out of poverty is necessary to protect the environment); R.P. Anand, Development and Environment: The Case of the Developing Countries, 20 Indian J. Int'l Law 1, 8–9, 16–18 (1980) (arguing that there needs to be an effective body of global environmental law to save the environment from destruction by both developed and developing countries); R.P. Anand, Legal Regime of the Sea-Bed and the Developing Countries 4–6, 256–57 (1975) (noting that the 1958 Law of the Sea Conference did not regulate undersea activities beyond the continental shelf, which left a vacuum in which developed countries could exploit the resources of the seabed and further pollute the oceans).

⁴⁴ Karin Mickelson, South, North, International Environmental Law, and International Environmental Lawyers, 11 Y.B. Int'l Env't L. 53, 53–60 (2000) (arguing that environmental lawyers in the Global North have failed to properly address the Global South's needs by not taking into account the broader economic, social, cultural, and historical context necessary to build an inclusive legal framework that represents their interests and perspectives).

⁴⁵ Usha Natarajan, TWAIL and the Environment: The State of Nature, The Nature of the State, and the Arab Spring, 14 Or. Rev. Int'l L. 177, 186 (2012) ( “Third World states, peoples, and scholars have long been wary of the international environmental law project, perceiving it as an attempt to ameliorate Western development mistakes at the expense of Third World development.”); Kishan Khoday & Usha Natarajan, Fairness and International Environmental Law from Below: Social Movements and Legal Transformations in India, 25 Leiden J. Int'l L. 415, 416 (2012) (disagreeing with the prevailing assumptions about the developing world's negative role in the development of international environmental law and suggesting that inspiration for creative solutions to the international environmental law problems may come from the developing world); Usha Natarajan, International Environmental Law: How Does International Law Contribute to and Tackle Climate Change?, Think Africa Press (Nov. 8, 2012), https://thinkafricapress.com/international-law-africa/environmental-law (“As the last remaining pockets of many natural resources exist in poorer parts of the world, and as poorer regions are more vulnerable to ecological crises, [international environmental law] is an increasingly strategic site from which vulnerable peoples, and the movements, scholars, and states that represent them, can contest, negotiate, and resist international economic and development paradigms.”).

⁴⁶ See Gathii, supra note 36, at 388 (The linkages between the environment and human needs are widely recognized by the decisions of Africa's international courts); James Thuo Gathii, Geographical Hegelianism in Territorial Disputes Involving Non-European Land Relations: An Analysis of the Case Concerning Kasikili/Sedudu Island (Botswana/Namibia), in The Third World and International Order: Law, Politics and Globalization 75–76, 80–81 (Antony Anghie, Bhupinder Chimni, Karin Mickelson, & Obiora Okafor eds., 2003) (Third World jurists like Justice Christopher Weeramantry's powerful pro-environmental dissenting opinion in the ICJ's 1999 decision Kasikili/Sedudu Island is particularly noteworthy); see also, Peel & Lin, supra note 42, at 683 (Courts in the Global South have been very active with climate change litigation, and those cases can “promote a reframing of our understanding of climate litigation”); James Thuo Gathii, Geographical Hegelianism in Territorial Disputes Involving Non-European Land Relations: An Analysis of the Case Concerning Kasikili/Sedudu Island (Botswana/Namibia), in The Third World and International Order: Law, Politics and Globalization 75–76, 80–81 (Antony Anghie, Bhupinder Chimni, Karin Mickelson, & Obiora Okafor eds., 2003) (Third World jurists like Justice Christopher Weeramantry's powerful pro-environmental dissenting opinion in the ICJ's 1999 decision Kasikili/Sedudu Island is particularly noteworthy).

⁴⁷ Mickelson, supra note 44, at 78.

⁴⁸ See id. (criticizing the international climate law discipline has excluded but only the issues that the Global South considers as crucial, but also the issues that should be considered by all as critical to the possibility of providing a meaningful response to the global environmental challenges).

⁴⁹ Socio-economic Rights & Accountability Project (SERAP) v. Nigeria, No. ECW/CCJ/APP/08/09, Ruling, Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States [ECOWAS] ¶ 3 (Dec. 14, 2010), http://www.worldcourts.com/ecowasccj/eng/decisions/2012.12.14_SERAP_v_Nigeria.pdf (In these preliminary rulings by the court, while grappling with important international law principles, the court dismissed the claims against the following companies: the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Elf Petroleum Nigeria Ltd., Agip Nigeria Plc, and the Multinational Companies (MNCs): Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), a subsidiary of the Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron Oil Nigeria Plc, Total Nigeria Plc, and ExxonMobil Corporation.).

⁵⁰ SERAP Niger Delta Ruling, No. ECW/CCJ/APP/08/09, ¶ 8 (2012) (holding that the Court does not have jurisdiction over private multinational actors); Kangikoé Bado, Good Governance as a Precondition for Subsidiarity: Human Rights Litigation in Nigeria and ECOWAS, 57 Commonwealth & Comp. Pol. 242, 255–56 (2019) (“[T]he court held that the appropriate avenue open to the victims for seeking redress as regards their grievance against private parties would be the domestic court system of the Federal Republic of Nigeria”).

⁵¹ See Matiangai Sirleaf, The African Justice Cascade and the Malabo Protocol, 11 Int'l J. Transitional Just. 71, 76–77 (2017) (“The [Malabo) Protocol permits jurisdiction over both natural persons and entities on established bases—consent, territorial, nationality, passive personality and protective principles. This represents a significant advancement of [international criminal law]. The devastating impact of corporate malfeasance in Africa explains this development. The Protocol could enable African states to respond more effectively to challenges posed by corporations, thereby transforming the justice cascade.”); Joanna Kyriakakis, Article 46C: Corporate Criminal Liability at the African Criminal Court, in The African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples Rights in Context: Development and Challenges 793, 834–35 (Charles C. Jalloh, Kamari M. Clarke, & Vincent O. Nmehielle eds., 2019) (arguing that the African Criminal Court's decision to enable corporate prosecutions is an evidence of corporate involvement in serious crimes and the distinctive nature of corporate criminality and suggesting that the changes to the ICC may come from the African leadership).

⁵² See Anna Spain, African Women Leaders and the Advancement of Peacebuilding in International Law, in Black Women and International Law: Deliberate Interactions, Movements, and Actions 120, 135 (Jeremy I. Levitt ed., 2015) (explaining how an unnamed witness testimony before the predominantly male judges (with the exception of female Judge Navi Pillay) led the court to ask later witnesses about acts of sexual violence); see genearlly Adrien Katherine Wing, International Human Rights and Black Women: Justice or Just Us?, in Black Women and International Law: Deliberate Interactions, Movements, and Actions 37, 49 (Jeremy I. Levitt ed., 2015) (explaining the significance of the Akayesu case, which was “the first to punish sexual violence in a civil war and determine that systematic rape could amount to genocide, as well as being an act of torture”).

⁵³ Chile Eboe-Osuji, Navi Pillay in Her Age: An Introduction, in Protecting Humanity: Essays in International Law and Policy in Honor of Navanethem Pillay 3, 10 (Chile Eboe-Osuji ed., 2009); see also, Kelly D. Askin, A Decade of the Development of Gender Crimes in International Courts and Tribunals: 1993 to 2003, 11 Hum. Rts. Brief 16, 17 (2003) (“In the midst of trial, a witness on the stand spontaneously testified about the gang rape of her 6-year-old daughter. A subsequent witness testified that she herself was raped and she witnessed or knew of other rapes. Fortunately, the sole female judge at the ICTR at that time, Judge Navanethem Pillay, was one of the three judges sitting on the case. Having extensive expertise in gender violence and international law, Judge Pillay questioned the witnesses about these crimes. Suspecting that these were not isolated instances of rape, the judges invited the prosecution to consider investigating gender crimes in Taba and, if found to have been committed and if attributable to Akayesu, to consider amending the indictment to include charges for the rape crimes Consequently, an amended indictment was filed, charging Akayesu with three counts of rape and other inhumane acts as crimes against humanity. The genocide court in the amended indictment also referred to the alleged sexual violence.”).

⁵⁴ Erik Møse, On the Bench with Navi, in Protecting Humanity: Essays in International Law and Policy in Honor of Navanethem Pillay 25, 26 (Chile Eboe-Osuji ed., 2009) (noting that it is “common knowledge that Navi actively asked questions concerning sexual crimes, and the Prosecution subsequently filed an indictment which later led to the finding in Akayesu that rape may under certain circumstances constitute genocide”).

⁵⁵ Eboe-Osuji, supra note 53, at 10 (“[W]ithout Navi Pillay's presence on the Bench that tried that case, there might never have been an opportunity to consider the question of sexual violence in that judgement.”).

⁵⁶ Id. at 4.

⁵⁷ Id. at 10.

⁵⁸ Beth Van Schaack, Engendering Genocide: The Akayesu Case Before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, in Human Rights Advocacy Stories 193, 199–201 (Deena R. Hurwitz & Margaret L. Satterthwaite eds., 2009) (After one witness “confirmed that she had never been questioned about [the rape] by any investigators of the Tribunal,” the “President of the Tribunal and then Judge Aspergen returned to this line of questioning, and [the witness] testified further that she had heard that other girls had been raped in Akayesu's bureau communal.”) (“[F]eminist activists formed a non-governmental organization (‘NGO’), the Coalition for Women's Human Rights in Conflict Situations (‘Coalition’), in 1996 specifically to monitor the ICTR and ensure that it protected the rights and interests of women appearing before the Tribunal. In light of [the witnesses’] testimony, the Coalition submitted an amicus curiae brief.”); see Niamh Hayes, Creating a Definition of Rape in International Law: The Contribution of the International Criminal Tribunals, in Judicial Creativity at the International Criminal Tribunals 129, 155 n.170 (Shane Darcy & Joseph Powderly eds., 2010) (discussing the work of Patricia Viseur Sellers and the progressive impact of her work on charging gender-based and sex-based crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda).

⁵⁹ Eboe-Osuji, supra note 53, at 3–4.

⁶⁰ See Kamari Maxine Clarke, Affective Justice: The International Criminal Court and The Pan-Africanist Pushback 204–05 (2019) (discussing how the Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU) drafting the protocol for the Malabo Protocol aimed at centralizing dispensation of judicial decisions and several other significant changes).

⁶¹ Id. at 212.

⁶² Id.

⁶³ Id. at 224.

⁶⁴ Id. at 228.

⁶⁵ Id. at 214.

⁶⁶ Id. at 261.

⁶⁷ Id. at 263.

⁶⁸ Id. at 8.

⁶⁹ Anne Orford, Scientific Reason and the Discipline of International Law, 25 Eur. J. Int'l L. 369, 384 (2014).

⁷⁰ See James Thuo Gathii & Jacqueline Wangui Mwangi, The African Court of Human and Peoples’ Rights as an Opportunity Structure, in The Performance of Africa's International Courts: Using International Litigation for Political, Legal, and Social Change (James Gathii ed., 2020) (utilizing an in-depth case-study approach that emphasizes thick-description and analysis about how cases filed [African international] courts enables, spurs, and emboldens political and legal mobilization); Patrick Chabal & Jean-Pascal Daloz, Culture Troubles: Politics and the Interpretation of Meaning 222–23 (2006) (arguing in favor of a practical analysis to international law as opposed to mere abstract models).

⁷¹ Annelise Riles, The View from the International Plane: Perspective and Scale in the Architecture of Colonial International Law, 6 L. & Critique 39, 48 (1995); see Annelise Riles, Aspiration and Control: International Legal Rhetoric and the Essentialization of Culture, 106 Harv. L. Rev. 723, 723 (1993) (cautioning that a challenge to “an essentialization of culture that privileges the role of international law as a mechanism for bridging the void between cultural boundaries” may require a “radical critique of the rhetorical authority of international law”); Babatunde Fagbayibo, Some Thoughts on Centering Pan-African Epistemic in the Teaching of Public International Law in African Universities, 21 Int'l Cmty. L. Rev. 170, 171–72 (2019) (stating that education surrounding international law in Africa is “steeped in Eurocentric canons.”).

⁷² See James T. Gathii, The Agenda of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), in International Legal Theory: Foundation and Frontiers (Jeffrey Dunoff & Mark Pollack eds., forthcoming) (arguing that while Western imperialism and its consequences no longer involve territorial conquests, but have morphed into self-serving policies that affect contemporary international law of Third World peoples).

⁷³ See Antony Anghie, Finding the Peripheries: Sovereignty and Colonialism in Nineteenth-Century International Law, 40 Harv. Int'l L.J. 1, 23 (1999) (discussing the historical trend towards “excluding the uncivilized states” from the law of nations).

⁷⁴ See Makau Mutua, What is TWAIL?, 94 Am. Soc'y Int'l L. Proc. 31, 31 (2000) (arguing that the international law regime is predatory that it “legitimizes, reproduces and sustains the plunder and subordination of the Third World by the West” and that universality of the international law or its promise of global order and stability justify it).

⁷⁵ See Luis Eslava, TWAIL Coordinates, Groningen J. Int'l L. Blog (Apr. 1, 2019), https://grojil.org/2019/04/01/twail-coordinatess (stating that the purpose of TWAIL scholarship is to “cross-examine international law's assumed neutrality and universality in light of its longstanding association with imperialism, both historical and ongoing”).

⁷⁶ See Obiora Chinedu Okafor, Re-defining Legitimate Statehood: International Law and State Fragmentation in Africa 73 (2000) (explaining how 17^th ,18^th, and 19^th century European nation building models have directly influenced and projected modern international law's homogenous political standards to the entire world); Makau Mutua, Why Redraw the Map of Africa: A Moral and Legal Inquiry, 16 Mich. J. Int'l L. 1113, 1125 (1995) (finding that the recognition of statehood is deeply rooted in colonial standards); Usha Natarajan, John Reynolds, Amar Bhatia & Sujith Xavier, Introduction: TWAIL – On Praxis and the Intellectual, 37 Third World Q. 1946, 1949 (2016) (noting that TWAIL has its own biases including issues of indigeneity, gender, and caste).

⁷⁷ James (Sákéj) Youngblood Henderson, Postcolonial Indigenous Legal Consciousness, 1 Indigenous L.J. 1, 21 (2002) (discussing the “cognitive imprisonment and imposed inferiority” of indigenous peoples embedded in international law).

⁷⁸ Id. at 7.

⁷⁹ Id. at 4, 13.

⁸⁰ See Adrien Katherine Wing, Healing Spirit Injuries: Human Rights in the Palestinian Basic Law, 54 Rutgers L. Rev. 1087, 1088–89 (2002) [hereinafter Wing, Healing Spirit Injuries] (applying “spirit injury” to the Palestinian people, namely that they have suffered many violations of their human rights (including exile, family dissolution, land dispossession, death, torture, and imprisonment) and have faced racism, cultural stereotypes, political imperialism, and dehumanizing ideology); see also Adrien Katherine Wing, The South African Transition to Democratic Rule: Lessons for International and Comparative Law, 94 Am. Soc'y Int'l L. Proc. 254, 256 (2000) [hereinafter Wing, South African Transition to Democratic Rule] (applying “spirit injury” to the harms arising out of Apartheid in South Africa and the Palestinian independence movements).

⁸¹ Wing, Healing Spirit Injuries, supra note 80, at 1089.

⁸² Nick J. Sciullo, Note, Spirit Injury and Feminism: Expanding the Discussion, 83 Proc. Ga. Comm. Ass'n 26, 27 (2013).

⁸³ See Vasuki Nesiah, Toward a Feminist Internationality: A Critique of US Feminist Legal Scholarship, 16 Harv. L. Women's L.J. 189, 189–90 (1993) (arguing that the universalization of American feminist ideals is problematic because it ignores many differences that separate women around the world).

⁸⁴ See Adrien Katherine Wing, Global Critical Race Feminism Post 9-11: Afghanistan, 10 Wash. U.J.L. & Pol'y 19, 20 (2002) [hereinafter Wing, Global CFR: Afghanistan] (describing Critical Race Feminism as a theory “concerned with the legal status of women of color around the world,” while recognizing that women of the third world are uniquely discriminated against).

⁸⁵ See Mari J. Matsuda, Associate Professor of L., U. of Haw., Keynote Address at the Yale Law School Conference on Women of Color and the Law: When the First Quail Calls: Multiple Consciousness as Jurisprudential Method, reprinted in 14 Women's Rts. L. Rep. 297, 298 (1992) (finding that women—especially women of color—inherently adopt multiple consciousnesses as a result of society's patriarchal and racial hierarchy structure).

⁸⁶ See Wing, Global CFR: Afghanistan, supra note 84, at 20 (noting that racial categories like “people of color” are socially constructed, and thus differ based on the subject's location).

⁸⁷ Id. at 25.

⁸⁸ See J. Oloka-Onyango & Sylvia Tamale, “The Personal Is Political,” or Why Women's Rights Are Indeed Human Rights: An African Perspective on International Feminism, 17 Hum. Rts. Q. 691, 700 (1995) (explaining how discussions concerning feminism are given far more weight when examined from the lenses of the Global North, leaving Southern voices out of the dialogue, and thus leading to the conclusion that there is universality amongst feminist perspectives); see, e.g., Dianne Otto, The Gastronomics of TWAIL's Feminist Flavourings: Some Lunch-Time Offerings, 9 Int'l Community L. Rev. 345, 346, 350 (2007) (stating that the identity of the “African Woman” and the “Lesbian Woman” was seen by others as “divided and ranked by a myriad of dualized identity significations”).

⁸⁹ Henry J. Richardson III, Excluding Race Strategies from International Legal History: The Self-Executing Treaty Doctrine and the Southern Africa Tripartite Agreement, 45 Vill. L. Rev., 1091, 1096–97 (2000).

⁹⁰ Id. at 1094; see also James T. Gathii, Henry J. Richardson III: The Father of Black Traditions of International Law, 31 Temp. Int'l & Comp. L.J. 325, 325 (2017).

⁹¹ Henry J. Richardson III, The Origins of African-American Interests in International Law xxiii, 448 (2008) (asserting that other sources included “the law of God, to British postures and policies in the American Revolution, to the model of liberation presented by the Haitian Revolution, to natural-law based principles of freedom invoked by white American colonists”).

⁹² Id. at 340.

⁹³ Id. at 341.

⁹⁴ Antony Anghie, Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law 318 (2005).

⁹⁵ See Alejandro Alvarez, American Problems in International Law 74–79 (1909).

⁹⁶ See, e.g., R. P. Anand, New States and International Law 46 (2008) (claiming that the expansion of society has upset the “equilibrium” and changed the “geography” of international law. The new majority now consists of “small, weak, poor, underdeveloped, former colonies filled with resentment against their colonial masters, and needing and demanding the protection of the international society.” This new majority has new needs and demands and thus, the change in “geography . . . must be accompanied by an alteration in law.”).

⁹⁷ See Wang Tieya, The Third World and International Law, in The Structure and Process of International Law 956, 959, 961–62 (R. St. J. Macdonald & D. M. Johnston eds., 1983) (“[A]lthough Third World countries are adamantly opposed to the imperialistic, colonialistic, oppressive and exploitative principles and rules of traditional international law, they do not reject international law itself . . . the attitude of the Third World towards international law is very clear: it neither accepts nor rejects international law in its entirety pages.”).

⁹⁸ See Yusaki Onuma, International Law in a Transcivilizational World 4 (2017).

⁹⁹ See Cyril E. Black & Richard A. Falk, Introduction, in The Future of the International Legal Order, Volume 4: The Structure of the International Environment i, vii-xi (Cyril E. Black & Richard A. Falk eds., 1972); Georges M. Abi-Saab, The Newly Independent States and the Rules of International Law: An Outline, 8 How. L.J. 95, 96–99, 120–21 (1962); Georges M. Abi-Saab, The Third World and the Future of the International Legal Order, 29 Revue Egyptienne De Droit Int'l 27, 27–31, 66 (1973); see also Laurence Boisson de Chazournes, Portraits de Georges Abi-Saab, in The International Legal System Quest of Equity and Universality: Liber Amicorum Georges Abi-Saab 3, 6 (Laurence Boisson de Chazournes & Vera Gowlland-Debbas eds., 2001).

¹⁰⁰ See Mohammed Bedjaoui, Towards a New International Economic Order 11–16 (1979).

¹⁰¹ See T. O. Elias, Africa and the Development of International Law 21–24, 32–33, 62 (1972); T.O. Elias, New Horizons in International Law 3–4, 17–18, 21, 30–32 (1979); T. O. Elias, The Modern Law of Treaties (1974); see also James T. Gathii, A Critical Appraisal of the International Legal Tradition of Taslim Olawale Elias, 21 Leiden J. Int'l L. 317, 317–19 (2008); Carl Landauer, Things Fall Together: The Past and Future Africas of T. O. Elias's Africa and the Development of International Law, 21 Leiden J. Int'l L. 351, 351–53 (2008).

¹⁰² See B. S. Chimni, International Law and World Order: A Critique of Contemporary Approaches 8, 15–17, 23 (2d ed. 2017); B. S. Chimni, Class and International Relations, in International Relations: Perspectives for the Global South 68, 68–69, 347, 356 (Bhupinder S. Chimni & Siddharth Mallavarapu eds., 2012).

¹⁰³ See Upendra Baxi, Human Rights in a Posthuman World: Critical Essays 111–14 (2007); Upendra Baxi, The Future of Human Rights 286–87, 291, 306–09 (3d. ed. 2008); Upendra Baxi, What May the ‘Third World’ Expect from International Law?, 27 Third World Q. 713, 713–15 (2006).

¹⁰⁴ See Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger & C. G. Weeramantry, Introduction to Sustainable Justice: Implementing International Sustainable Development Law, in Sustainable Justice: Reconciling Economic, Social and Environmental Law 1, 2–6 (Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger & C. G. Weeramantry eds., 2005); Christopher Weeramantry, Nauru: Environmental Damage Under International Trusteeship 12–15 (1992); Christopher G. Weeramantry, Armageddon or Brave New World? Reflections on the Hostilities in Iraq 152–58 (2003).

¹⁰⁵ See Cynthia Farid, Legal Scholactivists in the Third World: Between Ambition, Altruism and Access, 33 Windsor Y.B. Access to Just. 57, 57 (2016) (examining the work of Dr. Kamal Hossain, an accomplished Bangladeshi lawyer who “voiced subsltern and Third World concerns on the global stage through a variety of mediums including domestic and international legal practice, advocacy, international organizations.”).

¹⁰⁶ See Vasuki Nesiab, Decolonial CIL: TWAIL, Feminism, and an Insurgent Jurisprudence, 112 Am. J. Int'l L. Unbound 313, 317–18 (2018); see also Carl Landauer, The Polish Rider: CH Alexandrowicz and the Reorientation of International Law, Part I: Madras Studies, 7 London Rev. Int'l L. 321, 321 (2019) (analyzing the prominent international legal historian CH Alexandrowicz, who was known for advocating the impact of the East on the law of nations of the West, and for his work on international law generally).

¹⁰⁷ See, e.g., Umut Özsu, “In the Interests of Mankind as a Whole”: Mohammed Bedjaoui's New International Economic Order, 6 Humanity 129, 131 (2015) (providing an example of Mohammed Bedjaoui's role in Algeria, “Bedjaoui devoted the bulk of his energy to a series of reform proposals. At root, nearly all such proposals promoted the establishment of new international institutions to complement existing United Nations agencies and departments, encouraged resistance to attempts on the part of developed states to co-opt or otherwise deracinate the ‘common heritage of mankind’ doctrine, and called for greater use of General Assembly resolutions as a means of circumventing the influence of a Security Council dominated by great powers. . . . For Bedjaoui, the Third World was entrusted with the responsibility of militating for the new order that would make such development possible, acting not simply on its own behalf but as a representative of the ‘whole world community.”).

¹⁰⁸ Tieya, supra note 95, at 961–62.

¹⁰⁹ See Karin Mickelson, Rhetoric & Rage: Third World Voices in International Legal Discourse, 16 Wis. Int'l L.J. 353, 361–62 (1997) (noting that a major purpose of TWAIL scholarship is to end the silencing and marginalization of third world voices that make visible the marginalization and oppression of third world peoples); see also Gayatri C. Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?, in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture 271, 271–316 (Cary Nelson & Lawrence Grossberg eds., 1988) (providing another example of how international law can provide a voice to those traditionally oppressed as a result of imperialism and capitalism); Prabhakar Singh, Indian International Law: From Colonized Apologist to a Subaltern Protagonist, 23 Leiden J. Int'l L. 79, 87 (2010) (noting how the rise of TWAIL scholarship looked at international law from the perspective of marginalized populations around the world).

¹¹⁰ Siba N'Zatioula Grovogui, Beyond Eurocentrism and Anarchy: Memories of Orders and Institutions 49 (2006).

¹¹¹ Dianne Otto, Subalternity and International Law: The Problems of Global Community and the Incommensurability of Difference, 5 Soc. & Legal Stud. 337, 338 (1996).

¹¹² Luis Eslava, Michael Fakhri, & Vasuki Nesiah, The Spirit of Bandung, in Bandung, Global History, and International Law: Critical Pasts and Pending Futures 6 (Luis Eslava et al. eds., 2017).

¹¹³ Id. at 25.

¹¹⁴ See Mohammad Shahabuddin, Ethnicity and International Law: Histories, Politics and Practices 1–2 (2016) (examining the relationship between ethnicity and the development of international law and how salience associated with ethnicity formed political identities in international law).

¹¹⁵ See Balakrishnan Rajagopal, International Law from Below: Development, Social Movements, and Resistance 293 (2013) (arguing that the problem with liberal internationalism is that it excludes marginalized persons and that international law needs to become inclusive of these populations).

¹¹⁶ Balakrishnan Rajagopal, From Resistance to Renewal: The Third World, Social Movements, and the Expansion of International Institutions, 41 Harv. Int'l L.J. 529, 577 (2000).

¹¹⁷ See Appellate Body Report, United States – Subsidies on Upland Cotton, ¶¶ 763(e)(ii), (iv), WTO Doc. WT/DS267/AB/R (adopted Mar. 3, 2005) (holding “that the United States’ export credit guarantee program are prohibited subsidies” under WTO obligations); see also Carmen G. Gonzalez, Institutionalizing Inequality: The WTO Agreement on Agriculture, Food Security, and Developing Countries, 27 Colum. J. Envtl. L. 433, 456–57 (2002) (explaining that various compensation payments of the European Union and United States violate WTO obligations by crediting the two markets for non-existent domestic subsidies).

¹¹⁸ Jason Hickel, Aid in Reverse: How Poor Countries Develop Rich Countries, Guardian (Jan. 14, 2017), https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jan/14/aid-in-reverse-how-poor-countries-develop-rich-countries.

¹¹⁹ Id.

¹²⁰ See Michael Fakhri, A History of Food Security and Agriculture in International Trade Law, 1945–2017, in New Voices and New Perspectives in International Economic Law, 55, 60, 62, 80, 84 (J.D. Haskell & A. Rasulov eds., 2020) (arguing that recent agricultural trade law and policy harms the most vulnerable populations of the world and that international trade law should act as a remedy and support domestic farm programs).

¹²¹ See Titilayo Adunola Adebola, The Regime Complex for Plant Variety Protection: Revisiting TRIPS Implementation in Nigeria, (Sept. 2017) (unpublished PhD Thesis, Warwick Law School) (on file with Warwick Research Archive Portal) (demonstrating how TWAIL scholarship is used to evaluate international law for small-scale farmers affected by current international agriculture trade policies in Nigeria).

¹²² See Founding Statement, Third World Approaches to Int'l L. Rev., https://twailr.com/about/founding-statement/ (last visited Oct. 12, 2020) (“Scholarly agendas associated with TWAIL are diverse. They incorporate perspectives from across the fields of Third Worldist, Marxist and feminist thought, postcolonialism and decoloniality, Indigenous studies and critical race theory, and more. The common themes of TWAIL's interventions are to unpack and deconstruct the colonial legacies of international law, and to engage in efforts to support the decolonisation of the lived realities of the peoples of the Global South and the rupture or radical transformation of the international order which governs their lives.”).

¹²³ See Antony Anghie & JR Robert G. Real, Teaching and Researching International Law in Asia (TRILA) Project Report, NUS Centre for Int'l L. 1, 7 (2020), https://cil.nus.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/TRILA-Project-Report-Final-compressed-v2.pdf (analyzing how Asian societies can increase their role in developing current international law). See generally About, Afronomics L., afronomicslaw.org/about/ (last visited Oct. 12, 2020) (focusing on international law and international economic law as it relates to Africa and the Global South) (Another forum is the International Economic Law Collective, which “provides a space for critical reflection on the complex interactions in the growing field of international economic law and exploring how epistemological and methodological diversity in the discipline can contribute towards the development of a more holistic landscape of scholarship on law and the governance of the global economy”); About, The IEL Collective, https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/research/centres/globe/ielcollective/about/ (last visited Oct. 12, 2020) (analyzing the effectiveness of international economic law at incorporating a range of diverse voices and viewpoints within the discipline).

¹²⁴ See John Reynolds & Sujith Xavier, “The Dark Corners of the World”: TWAIL and International Criminal Justice, 14 J. Int'l Crim. Just. 959, 966 (2016) (providing an example of legal scholarship from the perspective of the global South that does not conform with traditional Western law in the field of international criminal law).

¹²⁵ See Tiyanjana Maluwa, Reassessing Aspects of the Contribution of African States to the Development of International Law Through African Regional Multilateral Treaties, 41 Mich. J. Int'l L. 327, 329 (2020) (arguing that postcolonial African states have been active participants in developing new rules of international law).

¹²⁶ See Chimni, supra note 100, at 306 (noting that “[d]espite being interested in the history of international law, Kennedy never gave serious consideration to the role of colonialism and imperialism in the development of international law” and that “[i]t was not until his third world students produced work on the relationship between imperialism and international law that the theme found its way into his writings”).

¹²⁷ See James Gathii, Writing Race and Identity in a Global Context: What CRT and TWAIL Can Learn from Each Other, 67 UCLA L. Rev. 37, 40 (forthcoming 2020) (arguing that TWAIL and CRT provide a unique opportunity for understanding race throughout imperialism, which inevitably shows how race influences international law).

¹²⁸ See Am. Soc. Int'l L. Ad Hoc Comm., Final Report from The ASIL Ad Hoc Committee Investigating Possible Exclusion or Discouragement of Minority Membership or Participation by the Society During Its First Six Decades Submitted to the President for the Executive Council of the Society, 1, 8, 9, 13 (Jan. 2020) (noting that ASIL, throughout the course of its existence, “excluded domestic persons of color” and recommended that ASIL enforce policies within the professional organization to “attract domestic persons of color”); see also Statement by President Catherine Amirfar Regarding Racial Violence and Injustice in the United States, Am. Soc. Int'l L. (June 3, 2020), https://www.asil.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/ASIL_Statement_Racial_Violence.pdf (condemning systemic racial injustice of American society as exemplified by the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor).