Written By: Maria Farooq
With the elimination of the remaining political obstacles to the expansion of world markets and the world economy, a truly globalized world of states exists now. International law provides the world of states with the means to establish a common policy that follows the same universal values and rules. Despite all the success, it had proven many times in the past to be arguable and incomprehensible. The deficiencies in the international legal system make it more difficult to bear and to timely respond to the number of new challenges. In particular, however, the classic threats and conflicts between states, which have always been the root in international law, are decreasing in relevance. Rather, the most serious and acute dangers to world peace currently emerge from the existence and/or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as terrorist groups combined with failing states, criminal and dictatorial regimes. Along with environmental disasters and pandemics, they currently represent the greatest political challenges to international law. Challenges are useful since it is not considered that globalization, the model of an all-encompassing process, will have no impact on international law. International law started to focus on the existence and status of a certain type of actor, the State, as well as how it interacted with other governments. Therefore, a phenomenon that completely undermines the rule of law in international law is the particular position and role of the state. The effects of globalization on international law, on the other hand, are fundamentally unclear and will likely remain so for a very long time because they are closely related to how international law has developed.
States must feel accountable for the dignity and fundamental human rights of their citizens, as well as for the protection of the common good of the international community, for a stable and peaceful international order to be maintained. Most people agree that the foundation of such an arrangement is the sovereignty of states. The community of states also bears a secondary responsibility for the state of affairs and conduct of those nations that have been admitted as members with full sovereign rights. Transnational human rights guarantees are one example of this, which act as a kind of trusteeship on the behalf of the international community for a minimal civilizational standard among nations. Under the current United Nations system, national governments are not sufficiently compensated for upholding their duties to create and maintain global common goods including peace, international security, global justice, and environmental sustainability. This is caused by a lack of effective incentives for individuals to behave responsibly as a group. Therefore, the creation of such incentives ought to be a key priority in any reform of the UN. Since the vast majority of governments that need to be convinced to join global collaboration are poor and underdeveloped, a significant emphasis should be placed on this group in any reform of international cooperation circumstances. We should convince institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the International Development Bank to take on the responsibility of implementing initiatives aimed at providing incentives to promote international common goods, as advised by the UN.
The paradigm most frequently used to explain the social foundation of international law today is the “society of states” model. According to this viewpoint, states are the objects of international law’s creation of a structured social environment. It begins by proposing a strong notion of state autonomy: just like people in domestic society, governments are seen as independent sources of moral goals that are immune to outside influence in international society. Even though there is no concept of distributive fairness that holds state governments accountable, it is nonetheless believed that they have a right to the resources they possess. Human rights, international economic law, and the formation of a worldwide civil society have all made the “society of states” paradigm more defective, both empirically and normatively, since the mid-20th century, when the pressure to move away from it started to build. It is argued that the present international law and institutions are flawed because they lack democratic involvement and legitimacy, as well as distributive fairness and security for everyone.
In terms of international law, globalization presents both a risk and an opportunity. A promise, given that international law, appears to be well-suited to handle the immense volume and scope of human activity that globalization has unleashed. This presents a problem since globalization actively influences the topics, goals, and basic foundation of international law rather than merely being a reality that waits to be ruled by it. In recognition of both their negative and positive contributions to international law, individuals have been partially recognized as subjects of that law. In the worst-case situation, certain activities may be subject to personal liability under international law. As a method of attribution, international criminal culpability appears to be replacing more traditional state blame. The importance, variety, and number of international organizations have increased as nonstate private participants have become more prevalent. International organizations date back to the late 1800s and have been there for a very long time. The realization that some issues are inherently global, covering inter-state as well as internal and transnational matters, has had a profound impact on existing institutions and spurred the creation of new ones. Traditionally, it was believed that inter-state issues like war and peace or diplomatic ties were the main focus of international law. International law still deals with these issues, but the way it does so has been radically changed by globalization. Perhaps more importantly, the phenomena of violence that international law seeks to curtail has undergone a significant transformation as a result of globalization. Large-scale instances of non-international violence, such as internal conflicts or the commission of mass crimes by the sovereign, have shifted attention both within and outside the state, even if interstate wars continue to be a key issue for the international community. However, it is important to remember that globalization is neither inevitable nor linear, and achieving fair globalization is no less challenging. To build the next generation of international institutions and doctrines capable of providing global justice for a worldwide community, which we may now refer to as global social reality, international legal theory, as it is currently defined, must draw on both classic domestic political theory and novel studies of our new global social reality.
Published in Daily Country News, December 29th, 2022.