What is the Point of International Law?

What has happened to international law during the current period of armed conflict? Has international law stopped “working” to contain or end our ‘forever wars’?  

At a time of a growing number of so-called ‘wars of aggression’, the siege and catastrophic loss of life and capacity for living in Gaza, and the destruction of climate and biodiversity, this series asks what capacity international laws and institutions have to intervene effectively in all of this.  

Sceptics have been quick to dismiss international law as being among the instruments of imperialism – as deployed against global pariahs mainly when it suits the major powers. For others, internationalism offers a language and conceptual apparatus to name universal harms and their prohibition, even if their application is imperfect. Still others remind us that rights discourses are often eschewed and diminished at the very moment they are successfully asserted by the most vulnerable and in need.  

It is in the context of a high-stakes transition in the world order that our speakers will ask the legal systems developed in the wake of the atrocities and genocides of the Second World War remain suitable for current needs. In the midst of ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Lebanon, the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere, can they be reformed? And if not, if current multilateral institutions simply serve the world poorly, what should take their place? 

These questions around the hopes and disappointments of international law will be taken up by three speakers whose perspectives will outline both enthusiasm for and critical treatment of international legal frameworks. 

This series is hosted in partnership with the Independent Social Research Foundation.