Unmasking the Intractable: Exploring Anti-Racism and the Law
The joint symposium between Verfassungsblog and the africanlegalstudies.blog critically addresses the enduring challenges of racial inequality within international and national legal frameworks. It examines the effectiveness of anti-racism laws, questioning whether their shortcomings arise from unrealistic expectations or inherent design flaws.
Teaching international law as an antiracist endeavour is essential for addressing the historical and systemic biases that continue to shape the field. The text argues that by diversifying the curriculum, employing critical pedagogy techniques, and promoting active learning and engagement, educators can help students develop a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of international law and its impact on diverse populations.
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After Rhodesia's 1965 unilateral declaration of independence, which upheld white minority rule, sanctions were imposed to challenge the regime. However, support from allies like South Africa helped circumvent these restrictions, revealing the limitations and mixed effectiveness of sanctions.
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With the Rwanda scheme, the UK government unleashes a regime of offshore asylum processing which is being considered by countries around the world. Such schemes though may be considered racist for their obvious neocolonial implications of removing and returning asylum seekers and refugees from the global north to the global south. More importantly though, such schemes undermine the commitment to abide by international human rights law and the obligations which attach to states in a particular rather than vicarious sense.
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The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination’s design makes it a very promising legal instrument to combat racial discrimination in particular regarding its structural manifestations. Expecting this legal framework to be of use in combatting racism is not unrealistic, but is hindered by the lack of visibility of the Convention, a lack of resources for the Convention system, and, above all, the lack of political will of States to effectively implement their obligations under the Convention.
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The contribution promotes the concept of intersectionality as a means of addressing the gap between what anti-racism law promises and what it delivers. Then, nationality serves as an example to illustrate if and how intersectionality can affect anti-racism law.
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Drawing on conversations with a queer interlocutor who moved to Austria to escape persecution in their country of origin, I reflect on the limits of legal protection in the host country when and if it is not accompanied by social change. I focus on the tension introduced by anti-black racism that comes in the way of queer solidarity.
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Germany, as a major greenhouse gas emitter, has a critical obligation to support developing countries affected by climate change; however, its adherence to the constitutional “debt brake” undermines this responsibility and exacerbates global inequalities.
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By drawing upon insights of sociolegal thought, feminism and the US social context, this contribution argues that anti-racism law’s apparent ineffectiveness stems from its reliance on the inherently vague concept of “race”.
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Police operations such as stops are prone for patterns of racial profiling. The contribution looks into the role of the new federal police commissioner (Polizeibeauftragte des Bundes) and his tools to address this.
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The first contribution of the online symposium explores the ineffectiveness of anti-racism laws. It raises the leading question whether their underperformance is a result of unrealistic expectations regarding the potential of law in general, or whether inherent flaws in legal design are the root cause.
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