One Hundred and Thirteenth Sovereign Debt News Update: African Countries and Eurobonds: An Avalanche of Buybacks in 2024

The African Sovereign Debt Justice Network, (AfSDJN), is a coalition of citizens, scholars, civil society actors and church groups committed to exposing the adverse impact of unsustainable levels of African sovereign debt on the lives of ordinary citizens. Convened by Afronomicslaw.org with the support of Open Society for Southern Africa, (OSISA), the AfSDJN's activities are tailored around addressing the threats that sovereign debt poses for economic development, social cohesion and human rights in Africa. It advocates for debt cancellation, rescheduling and restructuring as well as increasing the accountability and responsibility of lenders and African governments about how sovereign debt is procured, spent and repaid.

Book Review: South-South Migrations, and the Law from Below: Case Studies on China and Nigeria by Oreva Olakpe

Opening with the impact of untold narratives, Oreva Olakpe’s book, South-South Migrations, and the Law from Below, analyses South-South migrants in international law through a TWAIL lens. It considers ‘stories of building community, finding justice outside the protections of the state, and of their struggles against discrimination and exclusion within a state that does not recognize international migrant and refugee protections.’ (2) It weaves the experiences of undocumented migrants in the spaces that they are occupying while situating the impact of their experiences in international legal work. The book intentionally centers on undocumented communities as subjects of international law to map how they interact, shape, and resist in their own spaces. Doing so, the book critiques dominant literature that treats the Global South as objects of international law. The book attests to the agencies of undocumented migrants.

Book Review: South-South Migrations and the Law from Below: Case Studies on China and Nigeria

International legal scholarship on migration remains obsessively focused on migration from the global north to the global south. Even knowledge production anchored in critical traditions within international law, such as Third World Approaches to International Law (“TWAIL”), tends to skew in the direction of analysis that centers Third World encounters with the First. This general orientation comes at the costly expense of a deeper understanding of what Oreva Olakpe terms “South-South migrations” in her powerful intervention addressing this glaring shortcoming in the literature. Neglect of detailed study of experiences of international law in the global south, and in South-South relations, results in more than a merely incomplete picture of the nature of international law.

Book Symposium Introduction: South-South Migrations and the Law from Below: Case Studies on China and Nigeria

International court decisions, the corruption of the elite in the Global South, and the refusal of states to uphold their obligations towards people who are excluded from the privileges of citizenship shape how migrants experience law, as well as how they forge their paths to justice, recognition, and access. This book and symposium contribute to efforts to understand and document how international law impacts migrant communities, but also how these communities fill the lacunae created by law and migrant status through their acts of contestation and innovative approaches. It delves into the evolving approaches to migration and international obligations in the two states as they face new migration-related challenges.

News: 3.14.2024

The News and Events category publishes the latest News and Events relating to International Economic Law relating to Africa and the Global South. Every week, Afronomicslaw.org receive the News and Events in their e-mail accounts. The News and Events published every week include conferences, major developments in the field of International Economic Law in Africa at the national, sub-regional and regional levels as well as relevant case law. News and Events with a Global South focus are also often included.

Call for Papers: Lillehammer Workshop: International Investment Contracts

The workshop aims to gather scholars and practitioners interested in exploring - theoretically, doctrinally, empirically, comparatively, critically, and otherwise - the nature of international investment contracts in different contexts and its implications for elaborating transnational standards.

Good Governance, People-Centeredness and Transparency on the Spot: Somalia's Mysterious Journey Towards EAC Membership

This analysis dives deep into the Somalia's admission to the East Africa Community (EAC), with the objective of dissecting the admission procedure and analyzing Somalia's Accession Treaty, while scrutinizing the EAC Verification Mission Report. It was noted that while the EAC Treaty declares key principles like good governance, people-centeredness, transparency, and democracy, the specific procedures and rules that it provides for, do not do justice to those principles. This blog therefore, calls for a reform of the EAC institutions by moving the institutions further away from elitism and bureaucracy and bring it closer to the people-centeredness envisaged by the Treaty.

Call for Entries for Essay Competition: The 2nd Edition of the African Sovereign Debt Justice Network Student/Early Career Essay Competition

We invite essay submissions from undergraduate and postgraduate students and early career researchers focusing on any of the two themes. Case studies are encouraged, which could be single-country or comparative-country studies. Essays must engage in an analytical discussion of one or more of the research questions related to their chosen theme.

News: 29.2.2024

The News and Events category publishes the latest News and Events relating to International Economic Law relating to Africa and the Global South. Every week, Afronomicslaw.org receive the News and Events in their e-mail accounts. The News and Events published every week include conferences, major developments in the field of International Economic Law in Africa at the national, sub-regional and regional levels as well as relevant case law. News and Events with a Global South focus are also often included.