What Is International Law for in Rethinking the Future of the World Order: New Global South Perspective
Miloš Hrnjaz, a researcher in the New South Institute’s South-South Dialogues programme, has published a chapter in Institutions as Battlegrounds: State Capture, Resistance and Academic Freedom under Siege (Belgrade, 2026). The chapter builds on his NSI Working Paper Conceptualising the New (Global) South: Perspectives from International Law (2025).
Hrnjaz starts from an observation by the international lawyer Martti Koskenniemi. States and organisations agree that international law should serve justice, peace and security, yet these broad values hide deep disagreements over political choices and the distribution of resources. The chapter asks how the Global South could use international law to influence the creation of a new world order. Appeals to a “neutral” international law, or calls for “more international law” in global governance, cannot settle those disagreements, because any new law will reflect the political choices behind it. Yet international law is not only an instrument of power. Its rules, institutions and standards of legal argument limit how far it can be bent to political ends.
Drawing on Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), the chapter looks back at decolonisation. Newly independent states used international law to turn self-determination into a binding norm and won formal statehood, but statehood did not bring economic independence. Hrnjaz then turns to current avenues, such as Global South states taking cases to the International Court of Justice (including South Africa’s case against Israel under the Genocide Convention), regional organisations such as the African Union, and new financial institutions such as the New Development Bank. He doubts that Chinese or Russian approaches to international law offer a progressive alternative, since both powers use it largely instrumentally, much as the West does.
The chapter concludes that delegitimising the existing order is not enough. The Global South needs to set a clear agenda and answer concrete questions on sovereignty, human rights, redistribution, and the relationship between peace and justice.
The volume is edited by Jelena Lončar and Katarina Lončarević and published by the Serbian Political Science Association and the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science. It brings together papers from the Association’s 19th Annual International Conference, held in Belgrade in October 2025, on the student and citizen protests in Serbia, academic freedom, state capture and the changing international order. The volume is open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence.
