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Leading international scholars gathered at Osgoode Hall Law School, 91��ɫ, from Sept. 5-6, for a high-level international conference titled, A Structured Ambivalence? A Multidisciplinary International Conference on Third World Approaches to International Law and Governance in a Time of Global Crises.

The event brought together foundational theorists and early-to mid-career scholars in Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), critical human rights, and international relations. The conference explored urgent global issues through the lens of TWAIL, engaging with topics such as racialization and colonization in international law, global governance futures, war and violence, refugee crises and the implications of artificial intelligence.

The conference was convened by Professors Obiora Okafor (Johns Hopkins SAIS/Osgoode) and Sylvia Bawa (Sociology, 91��ɫ), with the explicit aim of helping generate both fundamental and policy-relevant knowledge—particularly from a TWAIL perspective—regarding the future of international legal order in a time of intensifying global crises. Central to the discussions was a focus on the reactions of peoples in the Global South to these crises and the international legal measures proposed or undertaken in response. Scholars collectively engaged with critical questions such as: What lessons can the world learn from the Global South’s alternative responses to previous global crises? How might these lessons inform more effective and just legal and discursive responses to future emergencies? What insights does the concept of “structured ambivalence” offer—or fail to offer—about the international legal order today? And what continuities and ruptures become visible through a trained critical lens?

In his welcome address, Dean Trevor Farrow of Osgoode Hall Law School remarked on the timeliness of the gathering and the stature of the participating scholars, whose work continues to shape critical scholarship on international law and human rights.

The conference was intentionally designed as an intergenerational and interdisciplinary dialogue, fostering exchange among established, early- and mid-career scholars, practitioners and activists. Throughout the sessions, participants examined the implications of an international legal system undergoing transformation without meaningful representation from the Global South. Professor Anthony Anghie critiqued the ongoing rewriting of international law as occurring without a truly inclusive global forum. PhD candidate Chika Madaukolam pointed to the complicity of some third world actors in reinforcing colonial legacies, urging a reimagination of global order rooted in the cosmologies and epistemologies of the Global South.

Speakers also addressed the paradoxes of hypervisibility in global conflicts—where war is consumed as spectacle while the suffering of those most affected is obscured, with reminders from Professor Vasuki Nesiah that “the work of critical thinking is also the work of critical remembering,” and that witness and memory play a vital role in shaping emancipatory visions of Justice and accountability.

Importantly, a major focus of the discussions was solidarity—what it means in an age of intersecting existential crises, and how to act decisively in its name. What does solidarity demand of us now, and how can our scholarship and praxis contribute meaningfully to social justice?

Innovatively structured keynotes paired junior with senior scholars for in-depth conversations. Jake O. Effoduh engaged Usha Natarajan in a dialogue touching on methodological whiteness, anthropocentrism, and the interlocking crises of colonialism, environmental degradation and gender injustice. Olaoluwa Oni, in discussion with Balakrishnan Rajagopal, explored themes of domicide, genocide, UN mandates and the recognition of academic freedom as a human right.

In closing, Professors Okafor and Bawa reiterated the conference’s core message: the urgent need to expand our frames of reference, reassert our common humanity through transformative solidarity, and imagine new legal and political orders grounded in justice. “On a daily basis,” they reminded attendees, “we must ask how our work and praxis engender solidarity and social justice.”

The event was sponsored by the Jack and Mae Nathanson Centre on Transnational Human Rights, Crime and Security, 91��ɫ.