Reynolds, John --- "Third World Approaches to International Law and the Ghosts of Apartheid" [2012] ELECD 794; in Keane, David; McDermott, Yvonne (eds), "The Challenge of Human Rights" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: The Challenge of Human Rights

Editor(s): Keane, David; McDermott, Yvonne

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857939005

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Third World Approaches to International Law and the Ghosts of Apartheid

Author(s): Reynolds, John

Number of pages: 25

Extract:

10. Third world approaches to
international law and the ghosts of
apartheid
John Reynolds

The concept and practice of apartheid was central to the post-war evolu-
tion of international law as a site of contestation between imperial inter-
ests and anti-imperial discourse, and as a rallying call for the international
human rights movement and global solidarity action. This essay glances
back at the recent history of international law through the looking glass
of apartheid, and argues for the continuing relevance of its prohibition.
The prohibition of apartheid serves both as a reminder of the role played
by former colonized nations in the development of legal doctrine, and as
a potentially valuable normative and analytical framework in situations
where segregation and institutionalized racial discrimination persist or
re-emerge.


1. INTERNATIONAL LEGAL IMPERIALISM

When we as historians, legal scholars or statesmen/women cast our minds
back to the beginning of the United Nations era and the new dawn of
human rights protection that it aspired to, our accounts tend to be tinged
with nostalgia and awe. Nostalgia for the hope and potential of a new and
improved global order emerging from the ashes of almighty death and
destruction; awe of the visionaries and paragons who would lead us out of
the shadows of war and totalitarianism, towards the twin beacons of peace
and human rights.
The occasions on which we have lost sight of those beacons in the
decades that have followed ­ and there have been many ­ are put down ...