Chapter 2 begins by addressing some vital preliminary legal issues, including the status of armed groups as international legal persons and the binding force of international law on such actors. The chapter argues that the concept of international legal personhood is best understood as a descriptive term rather than a prerequisite for entities to incur international legal obligations. It further explains that IHL, international human rights law (IHRL) and international criminal law (ICL) contain relevant obligations governing the conduct of trials and passing of penal sentences during NIAC. It demonstrates that whereas the direct application of IHL to armed groups as distinct collective entities is today widely accepted, the direct application of IHRL – despite strong normative arguments in favour – remains disputed and underdeveloped. Finally, this chapter aims to define entities referred to as ‘armed groups’, and clarifies who exactly is bound by the obligations applicable to them.

This chapter argues that the Afrobarometer survey findings indicating South Africans’ preference for housing over land are easily misunderstood. Supported by modern science, it emphasises human interconnectedness as evidenced and grounded in land-based relationships. The chapter therefore critiques the limited world-sense within which ‘property’ is conceived in Ramuhovhi and Malan and, instead, amalgamates vernacular, ‘(un)customary’, and ‘(un)common’ law to illustrate how relationships, ‘seen’ particularly through the spatiotemporal lens of Ubu-Ntu, might deepen our constitutional understanding of ‘property’. It thus shows how the concept of ‘house’ (beyond physical structure) – perceived in ‘vernacular time’, rather than Euromodernity’s ‘colonial time’ – equitably shapes ‘property’ rights, linking them to multigenerational ‘survivance’ and thereby integrating Ntu principles into contemporary legal interpretations. Hence, the chapter concludes the book by demonstrating how embracing the vernacular law conceptions of ‘human(e) existence’, ‘rights’ and ‘house’ would transform the sociolegal reality for South Africans by decolonising it and achieving sustainable socioeconomic change. Returning to encounters in Mbuzini, the chapter ends by highlighting young people’s understandings of Ubu-Ntu and ‘housing’ amidst colonial law’s afterlives and vernacular law’s continued erasure. It contends that true transformation demands respecting the country’s constitutional commitments by genuinely representing all South Africans’ diverse normative ideals.

This chapter presents case studies of Indigenous peace agreements in the Andes region. It begins with an introduction that highlights the significance of understanding legal geography and its relevance to Indigenous peoples. It then explores the legal frameworks that protect Indigenous rights, focusing on international instruments such as declarations and conventions. It then examines specific agreements in the Andes that enact these legal frameworks, with a spotlight on the National Agreement for Development and Peace in La Araucanía, 2018, in Chile, and the Agreement Between the Bolivian Government and the Confederation of Indigenous peoples from the East, Chaco, and Amazonia in 2010. These case studies showcase the intersection of legal, social, and political dynamics in promoting Indigenous rights and fostering peace. By analysing the legal geographies of these agreements, the chapter contributes to a deeper understanding of the complex challenges and opportunities Indigenous communities face in achieving sustainable development and peace in the Andes region.

This chapter builds on the call for ‘Alter-Native Constitutionalism’ due to the inadequacies of South Africa’s transformative constitutionalism in achieving economic and social justice by examining how South Africa’s legal system can realise the necessary shift towards a truly common law. It therefore outlines the technical steps required to amalgamate ‘common’, ‘customary’ and ‘vernacular’ law, proposing a framework where vernacular law – reflecting the lived experiences and cultural norms of the majority population – underpins the whole legal system rather than being confined to isolated ‘cultural’ domains. Drawing on centuries-long debates among scholars of indigenous law, yet recognising that there are foundational similarities between vernacular and state law that can be leveraged, it stresses the care necessary in blending Western and Indigenous knowledges. It highlights that, for this integration to succeed, courts need to adopt a flexible, context-sensitive approach that respects vernacular law’s process-centred-based nature. The chapter thus advocates for preserving vernacular legal processes (because their consultation-based, adaptive structure is key to the law’s legitimacy), as well as vernacular law’s core content (especially around needs-based claims, multigenerational provision and protecting relational structures), as the primary means by which South Africa can achieve a genuinely transformative and common legal order.

A framing case study examines North Korea’s nuclear tests. Then the chapter examines how states make international law. The chapter specifically discusses: (1) treaties, including entry into treaties, reservations, interpretation, and exit; (2) customary international law, including state practice, acceptance as law (opinio juris), and conceptual challenges; and (3) other important factors, including general principles, unilateral declarations, and peremptory norms (jus cogens).

Rights, in the Early Modern era, were conceived in terms of divine and natural law. They were understood to be powers, or faculties, belonging to an individual, or to communities, that had existed from the beginnings of time. The intellectual underpinnings of rights theory were derived from the moral theology of the scholastics, and lay in the idea that rights were a God-given power of the soul, and an expression of active virtue. This was true in the Medieval era, and it remained so in the Early Modern, when the origins of ideas about natural rights lay in the poverty controversies of the mendicant orders in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The appeal to the concept of a natural right was first and foremost a moral endeavour.

In 2007, the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples recognized their particular historical losses and protected their future as collective entities, including their distinctive claims to land. In a multi-sited genealogy, Miranda Johnson explores how long-term historical identities were reforged – in stages after World War II, and against the prevalence of assimilative ideologies – through the elaboration of common Indigenous claim-making of far-flung groups, coming to regard a parallel historic dispossession and current disempowerment.

Rights claims articulated with transregional advocacy in imperial settings as well, becoming a generalizable feature of the twentieth-century imperial world order. Politics of difference and systems of variegated rights, long crucial for building empire, were generative of rights claims-making in non-sovereign territories. Rights talk had political repercussions in European-ruled territories, making rights activism a defining characteristic of modern colonialism.

This part focuses on the foundational aspects of international human rights law, exploring its theoretical, historical, and philosophical underpinnings. It examines the evolution of human rights ideas, the influence of various philosophical traditions, and the ongoing debates about the nature and universality of human rights. The sections address the epistemological ruptures between philosophy and law, and between law and justice, highlighting the challenges in reconciling these perspectives within a coherent human rights framework. The part also delves into normative pluralism, discussing the coexistence and interaction of multiple legal systems and norms within the global human rights framework. It covers treaty-based structures, customary international law, general principles of law, and the role of judicial decisions and soft law instruments. By critically analyzing these foundational elements, this part aims to provide a deeper understanding of the principles and values that underpin international human rights law and to highlight the complexities and nuances involved in defining and protecting human rights in diverse cultural and legal contexts.

The distinct prohibitions of torture and other forms of ill-treatment have crystallized as customary international law as the chapter discusses. In the specific case of torture, its prohibition is also a peremptory (jus cogens) norm of international law – a rule that is applicable in all circumstances and in any place. The chapter also discusses the geographical, material, personal, and temporal jurisdiction of the prohibitions of torture and other ill-treatment under international law more generally.

Territorial jurisdiction will require tribes to further develop their legal systems. People often assume tribal law is exotic, based upon ancient customs. While tribal law often includes customs, many legal systems do. Moreover, tribal law is often indistinguishable from state law. This is not assimilation; rather, this is to be expected. Many laws are universal because people generally want the same basic things. For example, theft and murder are prohibited everywhere. Likewise, tribes banned these offenses long before Europeans arrived on the continent. Though tribal law can deviate from standard Anglo-American law, different does not necessarily mean bad. Additionally, tribal courts usually resemble state and federal courts. Despite negative stereotypes, studies show tribal courts treat non-Indians fairly. Nevertheless, lack of funding – largely due to state taxation – inhibits tribes’ ability to develop bureaucracy. Lack of funding also prevents some tribes from publishing their laws. A possible solution to tribal institutional capacity is the creation of intertribal business courts. The intertribal nature of the tribunal will provide more resources to increase administrative capacity and help eliminate perceptions of bias.

Genocide is sometimes called the ’crime of crimes’. The word was coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944, then declared an international crime by the United Nations General Assembly. In 1948, the Genocide Convention was adopted. As the first human rights treaty of modern times, it constituted a significant intrusion into what had previously been a matter exclusively of domestic concern. This explains the narrow definition of the crime of genocide. It requires proof of an intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Only a half century after its adoption did the Genocide Convention take on real significance with inter-State cases being filed at the International Court of Justice and many prosecutions at the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The Convention requires that States Parties punish genocide but they are also required to prevent it, even when it takes place outside their own territory. More than 150 States have ratified the Genocide Convention. Genocide is also prohibited under customary international law. It is generally agreed that the duty to punish genocide is a peremptory norm of international law (jus cogens).

This chapter analyses the major negotiation points and deadlock that were overcome, inter alia, regarding the legal status of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) at the Third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea. The battle between the territorialist and preferentialist was settled in the middle ground of a sui generis maritime zone. The successful outcome of the negotiations is reflected in the package deal set out in Part V and related provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The jurisdictional framework of the EEZ is sustained by two legal doctrines that formulate the body of flexible prescriptions to guide the attribution and exercise of rights and duties by different States. The integrity and stability of the EEZ are further protected by the compulsory third-party dispute settlement mechanism in Part XV that acknowledges the special characteristics of the sui generis legal regime, and through the progressive development of customary law status of the EEZ concept on the basis of State practice.

This chapter discusses Western education in the landscape of colonial and even postcolonial Nigeria. Building upon ideas established in previous chapters, this chapter focuses on the uneven and complex adaptation of Western education and the emergence of a new middle class of low-level government and mercantile administrators. It will also touch upon traditional forms of education, explaining how colonial officials stunted or even undermined them. Of particular importance, this chapter explores the use of education as a tool of the political elite to construct systems of power and guide the development of societies. For colonial Nigeria, Britain sought to construct a system easily exploited for its natural resources, extracted by a vast underclass of cheap labor. This system would be managed by the small middle class of native elites under the authority of white British officials. This chapter will contextualize the aforementioned educational processes to explain the strategies colonial officials used to achieve their central objectives.

This chapter focuses on two passages from a historical novel in Malayalam, titled Sulttānvīṭu by P. A. Muhammad Koya (d. 1990), set in a Muslim matrilineal household in Calicut on the Malabar coast of southwest India. The first passage deals with a dispute between two groups on the appointment of a judge (qāḍī) and the right to carry out the Friday congregational prayer (in the early 20th century), while the second one involves two public debates in the wake of Wahhābism’s arrival in the region. Broadly speaking, the novel explores the gradual disintegration of the matrilineal tradition among Malabar Muslims in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at the peak of colonialism, reformism and modernism.