International Humanitarian Law

This post is a dissection of the contents of and processes that culminated in my very first experience of teaching international law with a view to regulate cyberspace as a domain of conflict between States.

If we are to take decolonization of international legal studies seriously, the production of literature, the history of International Law and especially methods of analysis must be destabilized

It is high time that pedagogical, methodological, ethical, and sociological challenges of this nature are discussed and addressed if IL is to be assessed for what it is without plummeting into the depths of myriad situated perspectives, colonialism, linguistic barriers, paucity of resources, and sheer divisions within the academic world.

So far, we have found that an uncritical Western perspective is favored in the teaching of international law in the region. In many cases, international law is generally presented as a single and objective law that must be applied uniformly in any part of the world and, therefore, leaving no place for regional contextualization or for questioning its premises. Likewise, it is widely preferred to teach it using a bibliography originated in the Global North, despite the substantive contributions of Latin American scholars in International Law and in the Humanities and Social Sciences. These contributions have been made invisible by the colonial past and globalization processes based on asymmetrical power-knowledge relationships.

This is a clarion call for Indian international law scholars to do collective work on strengthening and integrating the field within the domestic legal landscape and foreign policy, as well as with western scholarship. The restoration of the foundation of international rules well laid in ancient India is urgently required. The timely action could save the crumbling architecture of teaching and research of international law in India.

Legal education has begun in Myanmar since 1878 under the administration of British Colonial Government. Rangoon (Yangon) College was founded as an affiliation of Calcutta University (CU), India in 1884-1885. British Government passed the University of Rangoon Act in 1920 through which the University of Rangoon was founded and has come into existence.

The Central Asian States should learn to rely on international law, more proactively and consistently, as a tool for advancing their lawful interests, and for maintaining regional and international peace and security. Kazakhstan’s recent membership in the UN Security Council (2017-2018) was an excellent occasion to promote respect for international law at the regional level. Other recent examples of such reliance include the adoption of a Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea in 2018, or an ongoing reform of criminal law and procedure in Uzbekistan.

By infusing international economic law curriculum both with doctrinal and policy-based critical analysis future African legal experts will not only understand what the rules of international economic law are but also be able to challenge the assumptions and biases of those rules that work to the determinate of their respective states. While encouraging black-letter law teaching it should also be a requirement for students to take non-doctrinal international economic law courses.