Food Law and Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL): Ingredients in a Movement, Techniques for Analysis, Recipes for Reform, and a Future Menu

Abstract

International food law runs the risk of myopia, by prioritizing uniformity and by claiming its rules are universal. In the real world, cooks and food growers operate in myriad socio-economic contexts. All humans need food, but law does not protect access to food or the right to produce or sell it in similar ways. This chapter describes how the Third World Approaches to International Law movement (TWAIL) informs how law applies to the food system in the Global South, for farmers, consumers, merchants, shoppers, and households. The chapter expands on: “ingredients” as a primer on TWAIL perspectives; “techniques” for their methods applied to institutions, trade, and intellectual property and to private law disenfranchising consumers and producers; “recipes” as reform proposals like food sovereignty; and topics of future inquiry as a “menu plan.”

This is a chapter to be included in Michael Roberts (ed.), RESEARCH HANDBOOK ON INTERNATIONAL FOOD LAW (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023).

Keywords: Global South; TWAIL; Agriculture; Intellectual Property; Right to Food