This project has received funding via the EUI Research Council call 2024.
This project explores the redistributive tradition in international law. That there is such a tradition may come as a surprise, for normatively, as well as politically, social justice principles should not apply between states. Yet international lawyers and diplomats from the Global South have devised legal strategies to pursue North-South redistribution. This research examines three strategies: expanding the entitlements linked to sovereignty, from sovereignty over natural resources to viral or digital sovereignty; bargaining with sovereignty to get compensation when entitlements are limited in the common interest, from nuclear to environmental regulation; and enclosing global commons establishing a non-sovereignty regime.
Should principles of social justice apply beyond national borders to assess the fairness of the distribution of resources and burdens across the globe? Only in the past few decades have political philosophers and scholars of international law and international relations started to explore this question. Traditionally, distributive obligations have been recognized only between citizens and, therefore, redistributive mechanisms - like tax and transfer policies - have only been adopted within states.
The question about redistributive obligations beyond borders will be explored by examining the academic debates on global justice. The purpose is to simply survey the field in order to show that normatively, as well as politically, most scholars and statespersons believe that, in the absence of a global demos, there are no social justice obligations beyond state borders. However, in many international negotiations in the post-1945 era, well before the rise of global justice as an academic field, states from the Global South have demanded redistribution between North and South. For example, in discussions during the 1960-70s about changes that the international legal structure should undergo following decolonization, political leaders from recently independent countries and their international lawyers invoked distributive justice considerations. The repudiation of odious debt - that is, debt inherited from the colonial ruler -as well as the defence of the right to control exploitation and supply of natural resources against foreign owners in the territory of decolonized states, were both partly justified under distributive justice principles. Similarly, developing states invoked distributive fairness during discussions leading to the creation of international legal regimes governing common goods as part of a common heritage of humankind, like the outer space and the seabed, in the Outer Space Treaty and the U.N. Convention of the Laws of the Sea.
In which international negotiations have non-Western states, their international lawyers, and diplomats pursued North-South redistribution? When they have demanded redistribution, how have they conceptualized this demand? Is it a matter of justice? If so, is it commutative, redistributive, or restorative justice which justifies the nationalization of natural resources, or technology transfer obligations after renouncing to nuclear sovereignty? If. between 1945 and today. North-South redistribution has been demanded by international lawyers and diplomats from the Global South, is there an international legal tradition explaining that continuity? If there is relative continuity in these demands, when have international lawyers and diplomats succeeded, and when have they been defeated? If success means the recognition of redistributive obligations in formal international law, in regimes such as the law of the Sea and the Outer Space or the Nagoya Protocol, which establishes benefit sharing mechanisms, then what explains success? What experience have international lawyers and diplomats from the South gained in these and other examples? What legal strategies that they have developed?
This set of questions regarding redistributive international legal demands from the South will be explored, on one hand, from a historical and international legal point of view, examining a number of diplomatic negotiations, such as United Nations General Assembly resolutions in relation to the principle of permanent sovereignty over natural resources or the common heritage of mankind. On the other hand, the project will examine these questions from the perspective of legal advisers and diplomats from states of Global South who have had experience in negotiations with redistributive implications. In particular, diplomats from countries like Brazil and South Africa, as well as diplomats active in NAM and the G77, will be interviewed.