Distinct Persons; Distinct Territories: Rethinking the Spaces of International Organizations

Abstract

There are implicit spatial assumptions that inform the law of international organisations, including the very concept of an international organization. In this paper, I argue that the reproduction of a physicalized and stato-centric notion of territory informs the idea that international organizations are functional entities without territories because ‘territory’ – as it has been long been conceptualised – has already been apportioned among states. While other disciplines of social science and humanities underwent major epistemic change in their conceptualization of space, international law retained reified assumptions of its spaces, especially in the case of territory. As a result, international lawyers have long assumed only states can be territorial actors. Yet through a reconceptualisation of territory, inspired by thinkers such as Lefebvre, we might instead think of the spaces of international organisations as their territories, constituted through their social practices exercising control. Moreover, this territory is constituted as distinct from the territories of its member states and is not simply the aggregate of member states’ territories.

Keywords: international organizations, territories, legal geography, legal personality, social constructivism