Under Construction @ Keele 2017 Under Construction @ Keele Vol. III (3) | Page 17

Flint, like other politicised, racialised sites, has an undeniable capacity for resistance.
Section III: Erosion of Human Rights and Race
The international law critique called Third World Approaches to International Law
(TWAIL) is one of the few methodological approaches that both acknowledges the
distinct unequal character of international law, and articulates how its hierarchical
construction and operation works to the detriment, reliably, of Third World countries
and communities. However, even more significantly, it was also one of the
first theories to acknowledge the emancipatory capacity of International Law. Rather
than turning its back on International Law and deriding it for its oppressive and
neocolonialist character, TWAIL scholars determined that the infrastructure of public
international law — along with its antecedent principles about human dignity and
rights — offered space and light for legal activism to provide redress for over a
century of domination.
But one of the most significant hurdles to overcome is a pervasive ideological
position which reinforces the Global North/South binary in a deceptively simple
fashion: human rights are not for the Global North. The assumption underlying this
position is that, in industrialised countries, human rights have already been achieved.
Makau Mutua argues:
[I]n American popular culture, several assumptions are implicit in this
thinking: “human rights problems” do not apply to “people like us,” but
rather to “backward” peoples or those who are “exotic;” these
“problems” arise where the political and legal systems do not work or
cannot correct themselves; and “we are lucky” and should “help those
less fortunate” overcome their history of despotism. 19
This type of thinking is not reserved just for the “exotic” nation-states in the world.
Indeed, the lead poisoning in Flint led to widespread publicity campaigns and
outcries, with language mimicking the human rights discourse that is traditionally
Makau wu Mutua, “The Ideology of Human Rights,” Virginia Journal of International Law 36 (1996):
607.
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