Towards a Postcolonial Genealogy of International Organizations Law

This article sketches the contours of a postcolonial genealogy of international organizations law. Contrary to conventional accounts, which remain strongly Eurocentric, the article claims that international organizations law did not emerge until the closing stages of the Second World War, and that its evolution was strongly influenced by the accelerating processes of decolonization that accompanied its birth. More specifically, the article argues that the emergence of international organizations law was spurred by a series of perceived problems regarding the adequacy of the international legal system in the aftermath of the end of formal colonial rule, in which the relations of power constructed through colonialism remained profoundly implicated. The politics of decolonization thus shaped the practice of international organizations, provided the catalyst for many of the foundational cases in international organizations law, and motivated much of its early doctrinal scholarship. Moreover, the article argues that the functionalist logic of international organizations law is deeply embedded in a postcolonial imaginary which, by supporting the division of the world into formally equivalent nation-states, ostensibly cuts against the hegemonic territorialism of colonial governance.