Pushing Back the Limitations of Territorial Boundaries

Abstract

This article offers some critiques of the dominant approaches in international law to dealing with territorial boundaries. It demonstrates that these approaches are largely trapped within the framework of nineteenth-century colonial concepts. As a consequence, the international legal system - which is still largely constructed on ideas of a certain type of territorial sovereignty - recreates and affirms the dispositions by colonial powers, it privileges certain voices and silences others and it restricts the identities of individuals to the limit of state territorial boundaries. One effect of this is to reinforce the state-based framework of the international legal system, particularly in areas such as human rights and resource distribution. This article argues that there are alternative approaches to territorial boundaries that focus on relationships and not on imaginary constructs. These alternatives have institutional, structural and conceptual consequences for the international legal system.

Keywords: international law, territorial boundaries, colonialism, human rights

JEL Classification: K1, K33