Rethinking International Law: A TWAIL Retrospective

Abstract This EJIL Foreword is a personal retrospective of the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) movement. It provides an account of the origins of TWAIL and the political and intellectual context in which it emerged during the 1990s. It outlines some of the key themes and concerns of TWAIL – including ‘colonial continuities’, ‘capitalism, imperialism and political economy’, and ‘TWAIL and History’. It argues that the distinction between the ‘First’ and ‘Third’ Worlds continues to be relevant by examining the operation of this distinction in various fields of international law, such as the use of force, international migration law and human rights. The Foreword then outlines two of the author’s current research projects on themes that have been of major interest to TWAIL scholars: first, human rights and their relationship to imperialism; and second, race and reparations. The Foreword concludes by arguing that ‘Third World Approaches to International Law’ are relevant, not simply for the ‘third world’, but for the entire globe; it urges us to consider TWAIL as a cosmopolitan project.