As international relations become increasingly fractured and multipolarity rises, challenges to key international institutions have prompted questions about the efficacy and legitimacy of the global system. These fissures also create opportunities for structural transformation. Grassroots reparations movements addressing colonial legacies frame contemporary inequalities through historic violations, exploitation, and injustice, while reshaping how states position themselves in a changing world order. This presentation examines how reparations movements resonate across international law and how institutions respond to demands for transformative change. It explores: shifts within UN and regional human rights systems; reparations claims by formerly colonized states for slavery and colonization; climate and environmental harms rooted in colonial extraction; efforts to address slavery and the slave trade in international criminal law; and how TWAIL and other critical approaches illuminate reparations’ liberatory potential.

Moderator:

S. Priya Morley, Director, Racial Justice Initiative, Bernstein Institute for Human Rights, NYU School of Law

Speakers:

Gay McDougall, Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence, Leitner Center for International Law and Justice, Fordham University Law School

Britta Redwood, Assistant Professor of Law, Cardozo Law

Barbara G Reynolds, Member (Guyana), Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent; VP for Administration, Advancement and Planning, University of the Southern Caribbean

Paul Rink, Associate Professor, Seton Hall University School of Law

This panel is part of International Law Weekend hosted at Fordham Law School. For further details and registration visit the International Law Weekend website.