B. Identifying the Problem: The Exclusiveness in the International Legal Order

The discussions on the lack of diversity within the field of international law have started already for some time. The international blawgosphere publishes more and more posts about the problems that exist in international law academia and practice.Footnote ⁴ These problems are not new: International law is Western, white, and male.Footnote ⁵ Like many other spheres and professions, international law has been predominantly developed by male elites, who brought their perspectives, which mostly benefited their interests. Yet, why are the issues of these entrenched paternalistic white male views so actively challenged by international legal academics and practitioners not only from the Global South but also from the North? The answer is: International law is international.Footnote ⁶

It is not only international by design but also meant to be representative and diverse in terms of produced scholarship and legal practice. International institutions celebrate diversity —although not always succeed in having one—and welcome different views, approaches, practices, and interpretations. Looking at the ‘World Court’, the Statute of the International Court of Justice encourages national diversity on its bench.Footnote ⁷ Even more generally, the United Nations Charter, which is based on the principles of equality of all states, despite their size, power, or resources, can be seen as a standard-setter for the field.Footnote ⁸ Yet, we see that the real picture does not reflect the intentions of the creation of such institutions. Unfortunately, today’s international law academia and practice accommodate only a few people from the Global South, who managed to become authoritative members of the international legal community. This inequality has been institutionalized already for a while: Academic publishers and international organizations, like the UN, repeat their practices by reinforcing existing hierarchies of the Global North and South. These groups recruit or publish mostly the graduates of prestigious Western universities because only those students can afford unpaid internshipsFootnote ⁹, and they are more likely to master English and obtain the necessary doctrinal legal education to produce the scholarship that fits the topical and writing style preferences of the Western publishers.

The field becomes more and more competitive from year to year and it is already impossible to follow who is doing or writing what, since the mushrooming journals and edited volumes overwhelm us with new analyses, theories, and interpretations on a daily basis. It became impossible to keep up with all the publications of different authors and journals. This overproduction made us, the students of international law, to rely only on the names we know. Also, we see the names we already know much more often because those who verify the quality of the scholarly work are very often those coming from exactly the same academic circles. In this tsunami of publication, we pick the authors already verified by us or our more senior colleagues which leads to the problem that we read again and again only about the western perspective of international law.

Another big problem in this non-stop scholarly production is that females are largely excluded. Tenured professors are mostly men; high-ranking international law journals publish visibly more men than women; men tend to cite men even though there are women researching the same questions and so forth.Footnote ¹⁰ Although women are now allowed to walk across grass plotsFootnote ¹¹ in Oxbridge,Footnote ¹² unlike Virginia Woolf in the first half of the last century, challenges still exist when it comes to a woman from academia raising her voice. A more recent study of the two biggest publishing houses in the field of international law showed that, out of sixty-five authors who published with the Oxford University Press (OUP) since 1988, only eighteen, the 27.7 percent, were female authors;Footnote ¹³ while, out of 141 authors who published with the Cambridge University Press (CUP), only fifty-four, the 38 percent, were women since 1997.Footnote ¹⁴

Academic publishing is very important because in current realities those who publish also speak international law: “international law is no longer about what states do but, rather, about what academic international lawyers do.”Footnote ¹⁵ Indeed, academics and the textbooks and articles they produce are vital for the development of the field. Academics are often the ones taking up the positions of judges, arbiters, advocates, leading councils in international courts, and tribunals, and—not less important—the work products of academics are considered to be a subsidiary source of international law.Footnote ¹⁶ These materials are passed on the future generations of international lawyers, and excluding women from publishing and raising their voice might be extremely damaging for the future perceptions of international law simply because it might become severely outdated and never catch up with the world realities.

Various studies suggest that one of the causes of the heavy maleness in the academic world —not only in international law—is that women still experience various types of harassment within the academic setting: ranging from sexual harassment and discrimination based on the marital status and presence of children.Footnote ¹⁷ The latter appears to have an enormous impact on women’s academic promotions, such as getting tenure-track jobs.Footnote ¹⁸ The childcare also impacts a woman’s availability to travel to conferences and build networks, both of which are extremely important for promoting one’s work and enhancing the chances to climb the career ladder.Footnote ¹⁹ The lack of time caused by the unequal care responsibilities also very often pushes women to reject working on journal articles as they require more time and resources, and instead focus on shorter and easier-to-publish pieces like book chapters or conference papers.Footnote ²⁰

The gender imbalance in international law academia cannot be a surprise looking at the ultra-low number of international law female practitioners taking prestigious positions. Only four women—in comparison with 104 men—sat on the bench of the International Court of Justice since its very inception.Footnote ²¹ The International Law Commission shows even a worse picture: of the 229 members, there are only seven women.Footnote ²² Although the situation with gender parity in UN human rights organs and mechanisms seems better,Footnote ²³ still, higher positions at the majority of these bodies are being held by men, including country mandates of Special Rapporteurs, where the female appointment rate is just 18.52 percent.Footnote ²⁴ Women remain underrepresented in large law firms practicing international law as well. For instance, McKinsey recently analyzed its gender representation in senior management teams and corporate board in fifteen countries and found out that the average percentage of females equals fifteen percent only.Footnote ²⁵ This is a very discouraging number for young female international law scholars and students who are willing to fight their way and stay in this competitive field. Obviously, these problems are still deeply rooted in the national legal systems of almost all jurisdictions of the globe. The question of why we see such low numbers of female international lawyers both in academia and practice should be approached more generally—states and private higher education institutions should monitor what happens to women enrolled in law schools and where they go after graduation. In the academic world, there are some initiatives to these gender gaps. Top international law journals, like the European Journal of International Law and I•CON Journal, are monitoring these problems, although the long and challenging path is still to be paved before coming closer to gender equality in the international legal sphere.Footnote ²⁶

The segregation inside the field points at the current status of the universality of international law academia and practice. Instead of being the ‘invisible college of international lawyers’, this ‘college’ is rather Western-elitist, “in which academics from the so-called Global South are relegated to the role of the eternal students.”Footnote ²⁷ I personally think that we all have to learn throughout our lifetime, yet, this stark separation between those who can become experts and those whose gender, educational background, race, social class, and multiple other factors serve as an artificial barrier should be eliminated first of all, for the sake of field’s prosperity. It is quite encouraging that more attention is being paid to the existing gender and racial imbalances both from Western lawyers and academics and those coming from the Global South. This article does not argue under any circumstances that the possibilities for young scholars from the West should be limited, but rather that we all have to start to practice self-reflexivity—to be aware of our own experiences and background, as well as to try to explore what is there beyond our international legal environments. By doing that, we could become a real global society and building a stronger, diverse, and respectful field of international law.

C. Non-Western Legal Education: A Barrier to Advance International Law?

It would not surprise anyone: The majority of young international scholars aim at being educated and be recruited by Western institutions because fighting the general inequalities is not in their hands—and maybe not even in their plans. Many think that once they enter the elite environment of the international legal field in well-off countries and institutions they will have more power and authority to actually influence international law and change current perceptions. The third-world approaches to international law and the rising popularity of Asian and African legal journals with editorial teams from prestigious institutions are already a promising step towards the internationalization of international law. This article does not try to prove that young lawyers should give up their ideas to move from peripheries but it rather tries to discuss what barriers scholars from the Global South have and whether law schools all over the globe should rethink their scholarly approaches to international law.

As someone coming from Kyrgyzstan, I try to analyze problems that exist with the Central Asian law schools and what pushed me to seek a job abroad. Even though I studied at a private university which adopted an American higher education system, I still felt that my academic freedom is limited by the government. It would not be a mistake to claim that most of the law schools in Central Asia are controlled by different ministries, mostly of education, which set standards for examination and required courses. To graduate, I had to pass exams in the Kyrgyz language and the History of Kyrgyzstan. Both exams took a lot of time for preparation, leaving little time to concentrate on my thesis and other exams in law courses. While studying law in all jurisdictions is a challenge with various bar exams and required internships, the problem with Kyrgyz law schools is that when it comes to qualification exams, the focus shifts from law to other—mostly—irrelevant subjects.

Comparing public and private institutions, the situation in public universities is even worse in relation to academic freedoms. Students there follow the already prescribed curriculum for each semester without the possibility to switch courses. Another problem is that inside Kyrgyz legal academia, international law in the post-Soviet space is perceived as something not truly legal but is instead a mere branch of political science that does not even have power in the international arena.Footnote ²⁹ As a corollary, international law tracks in law schools are heavily marginalized, which is also reflected in the decision-making of the ministries of education when they decide on required training for law students.

Moreover, the lack of resources at Central Asian law schools cannot be ignored. Again, I was privileged to attend a private university where we had subscriptions to some online databases like LexisNexis and Hein Online. Meanwhile, my peers from public law schools have never even heard of these platforms and used only paper materials available at their libraries, mostly written by Russian or Soviet scholars and of course translations of the core Eurocentric international law textbooks. Logically, the question of how to introduce students to quality materials in English arises when the costs of subscriptions and books are unbearable for state-funded—or even private—law schools. During my first law degree studies, I never heard of the top international law journals and was not familiar with the journal system at all. I realize now that it is extremely important to explain to students where and how they can find reliable and high-quality material since it is an essential skill for both scholars and practitioners. This illiteracy leads to a myriad of problems such as publications in predatory journals by academics from the Global South and the inability of young lawyers to distinguish good scholarship from bad ones.

The lack of resources is reflected not only in the unfamiliarity of law students with the traditional—in the Western sense, of course—databases, journals, and publishers but also in the opportunity to take part in international law moot courts. During four years of my legal studies in Kyrgyzstan, there were no attempts to assemble a moot court team and we were not even aware of the possibility such as a moot court. The problem here is three-fold: Neither governments nor public and private law schools are ready to pay for their students to go abroad and compete with other teams who are better trained in international law in general. The private sector is also reluctant to support these kinds of initiatives because they refuse to believe that international law is actually law. Thus, there is no interest for law firms to send their potential future employees to moot court competitions.

The situation with international law in Central Asia might be similar to other countries that belong to the Global South, and even in some parts of the Global North, where international law is a marginalized discipline at universities and national institutions. Law students wishing to specialize in international law are supported neither by their governments nor by their universities. This is not surprising given what role international law plays in those countries. One might argue—and I agree with that to a certain extent—that Asia seems to be more of a ‘rule-taker’ that ‘rule-maker’, which espouses my assumptions and experiences that international law is not very well promoted among law students.Footnote ³⁰ These states—and in particular in Central Asia—should revise their perceptions of international law and learn how to rely on this discipline more. This would not only encourage more law students to choose to focus on international law but also help these states to get closer to the utopic equality of all states and maintain peace and security using the tools offered by international law. The paradigm must shift in the understanding and interpreting the phenomenology of international law on the governmental levels because there are law students willing to advance international law in their home countries, but the lack of resources and support ties their hands.

My argument is not that the Central Asian law schools must replicate the Western system of legal education. This would actually contradict the thesis of the internationalization of international law. The assumption is that law schools in the Global South need to do a better job by rearranging their scholarly isolation and keeping legal textbooks and other materials up to date which will likely espouse the efforts of teaching critical thinking to their students. I was not trained to think critically of what is written in a textbook by my professor—I was trained to learn it by heart to perform well during the exam, although the same might be experienced by law students in Europe as well. This is a completely obsolete approach that causes stagnation and demotivation to re-think international law. Students should be taught not only how to read law but also how to question it. If this is accomplished, a student is free to rely on every source she or he perceives to be the right one,Footnote ³¹ and then it would not matter whether a book or journal article has been written by a white male coming from the Western hemisphere.

D. Publish and Not Perish or How to Deal with Language Barriers while Producing Legal Scholarship

Publish or perish—a phrase very well known in Western international law circles. Why only Western? Authors from the Global South are not getting published to the extent their Western colleagues are and thus, we are nonexistent, at least in terms of the Western international legal publications world. One of the main reasons why this ‘elite club of those being published’ is almost unreachable for peripheral scholars is that Western scholarship and its academic system are almost independent of external influences and as a result, international law is predominantly interpreted and even designed by Western philosophical and epistemic traditions. Many issues relevant to the Global South and partly to the Global North like colonialism, poverty, development, racial injustice, and so forth, remain marginal and if these topics are getting published, the arguments and analyses are largely presented and discussed by Western scholars from their Western perspectives. But what is the exact problem of scholars from the Global South in getting published? The answer has been partly offered in the previous sections of this essay—we were barely educated on how to produce publishable manuscripts and that it is an important part of an international law scholar’s career.

Publishers may say that they would happily publish non-Western scholars but there is simply a shortage of diversity in submissions. While this might well be the truth, it still cannot be a justification for the poor regional representation in high-quality international law scholarship. Returning to the study on Oxford University Press (OUP) and Cambridge University Press (CUP): the statistics of the CUP’s Cambridge Studies in International and Comparative Law series show that out of 141 manuscripts, only ten were from authors with nationalities of Asian countries and six of Latin American countries while the rest of the Global South was not represented at all.Footnote ³² Among sixty-five titles in OUP's Oxford Monographs in International Law, four authors have African nationality, four Asian, two Eastern European, and one Caribbean—no authors with Latin American nationalities.Footnote ³³ Obviously, the language problems and the ability to question international legal rules and doctrines are systemic problems inherent to national policies of teaching foreign languages and law in general. However, the barriers established by editors are a problem that could be at least discussed and even tackled by us.

Professor Alonso Gurmendi and Paula Baldini Miranda da Cruz wrote an excellent two-part blog post on the cultural barriers in international law writing. Cultural peculiarities in writing are very often perceived negatively by those who are used to the Western style of legal writing.Footnote ³⁴ Gurmendi and da Cruz brought an interesting example of dissenting opinions of Judge Trindade of the International Court of Justice and in particular, their extraordinary length and reference to relatively old sources.Footnote ³⁵ It is important to mention that the length is by no means an indicator of the quality of an argument. Very often it is quite the opposite. However, distinct cultural backgrounds still influence our analytical methods both in thinking and writing. The environment in which we grew up undoubtedly influenced our approaches to delivering arguments. As a native Russian speaker, I can assure the readers of this article that my papers are returned to me full of red ink and comments to shorten my sentences on multiple occasions. Writing short and straight-to-the-point sentences is not the writing culture I was taught and therefore, re-learning how to write, especially swapping between European and American styles where I either should be concise and non-repetitive or spread my arguments and repeat them throughout twenty thousand words, is still a major challenge for me as a young academic. It takes a lot of energy, time, and effort.

Anthea Roberts argues that:

While it is extremely important to have a common language to communicate with each other, international lawyers from the Global South who are not aware of these cultural differences or do not aim at adapting their communication are at risk of being not accepted by the ‘elite’ publishers and their scientific work will not reach a wider audience. Not only the writing style serves as a barrier for Global South scholars but also their choice of topics. Gurmendi and da Cruz call it a “topical blindness” of Western editors and it unavoidably influences international law leaving out “regional and peripheral realities.”Footnote ³⁷ The paradox is that even the institutions from the Global South prefer candidates with publications in Western journals and book publishers and they set this requirement for academic promotions. This publishing race seems to be a vicious circle.

E. Practicing Reflexivity to Change the Field

Most of the problems related to international law academia and practice in peripheral regions—yet, I assume to a bunch of other disciplines as well—are structural and deeply rooted in the political and power developments of these regions. The legacies of different national and regional differences in international law together with Western approaches that happened to dominate the field will remain present for a long time. The majority of the above-mentioned difficulties should be addressed by various actors, in particular on a structural level of academic institutions, international organizations, and ultimately—and probably most importantly—the state. It is not in our hands as individuals to change the past and the historical narratives that have been taught throughout dozens—if not hundreds—of years or to force our national governments to reorganize their foreign policies which would be international law-oriented. But we, as a global community of academics and practitioners, can help each other in tackling these problems and create a space for an exchange of ideas, approaches, and reflections on international law.

Practicing reflexivity, or in other words, self-understanding, self-critique, or the reflection on one’s biases, is one of the most important tools we can use in the fight for a more equal and diverse international legal field. Such self-reflection should not happen only verbally, or even in our creative legal minds. I believe that self-reflexivity can be a very useful and rewarding genre of legal writing that has the potential to fill some gaps of traditional legal writing approaches that are usually “characterized by a pseudo-scientific neutral voice.”Footnote ³⁸ As Patricia Williams said in her book The Alchemy of Race and Rights, the self-narration and sharing of one’s personal experiences in wiring reveal “the intersubjectivity of legal constructions, that forces the reader both to participate in the construction of meaning and to be conscious of that process.”Footnote ³⁹ Personal anecdotes and reflections could be used as additional tools to explain and help to understand the complexity of various socio-legal phenomena. Personal narratives have a strong potential to depict one’s experiences, fears, hopes, beliefs, and views on how they see the field of international law should develop in the right direction. Moreover, narrative grants the so needed voice to the marginalized and by that creates a platform for exchange and cooperation.

My path of self-reflections has just started: What I know now is that I am not alone and there are people willing to talk about it and even use their more senior positions to challenge the inequalities. They do this either by raising their voice at their institutions or in writing. The latter is again a confirmation that the language of laws and principles cannot always accommodate concerns that international lawyers experience in their career paths. As mentioned throughout this article, the final goal of international lawyers should be the international law’ space that accommodates lawyers from all over the world. As Susan Marks and Andrew Lang said: