Against Humanity: Race, Empire, and the Liberal International Order
My current book project, at and advanced stage of writing, is title Against Humanity: Race, Empire, and the Liberal International Order. The manuscript offers a reading of the foundations of the Liberal International Order that is based on critique. It shows how the aftermath of World War II provided a set of institutional and normative frameworks that deployed liberal internationalism through the denial of humanity and a layered racial hierarchy upon which liberal peace and international law were premised. Drawing from Historical International Relations and using a variety of archival materials, the arguments focus on the drafting and adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights amidst the French campaign of “pacification” in Madagascar; the UN Trusteeship Council as a site of legislation and contestation of nuclear imperialism in the Pacific; and the prosecution of crimes against peace at the Tokyo Tribunal. The project uses a contrapuntal analysis framework, to read critically and from different perspectives, how texts, events, and places interacted in the postwar era. It brings to the fore not only the silences and erasures of crimes against and negation of humanity in the construction of the Liberal International Order, but also how the Global South deployed humanity as responses and alternatives to Western hegemony.
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States of Justice
My book States of Justice: The Politics of the International Criminal Court (Cambridge University Press, 2020) theorizes the ways in which states that are presumed to be weaker in the international system use the International Criminal Court (ICC) to advance their security and political interests. Ultimately, the book contends that African states have managed to instrumentally and strategically use the international justice system to their advantage, a theoretical framework that challenges the “justice cascade” argument. The empirical work of this study focuses on four major themes around the intersection of power, states’ interests, and the global governance of atrocity crimes: first, the strategic use of self-referrals to the ICC; second, complementarity between the national and the international justice systems; third, the limits of state cooperation with international courts; and fourth, the use of international courts in domestic political conflicts.
The draft manuscript on which this book was based was the 2019 International Studies Association (ISA) Northeast Scholars’ Circle honoree.
States of Justice was reviewed in Opinio Juris as a symposium convened and introduced by Owiso Owiso. Read the reviews by Nabil Orina, Emma Charlene Lubaale, Sithembile Mbete, Melissa L. Simms, Ezéchiel Amani Cirimwami, K. K. Sithebe, Nestor Nkrurunziza, Kelly-Jo Bluen, and my response. The book was also reviewed in The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, the Cambridge Review of International Affairs, African Studies Review, African Studies Quarterly, and Cross-Cultural Human Rights Review.
I have answered a few questions about the book and beyond on the Cambridge University Press blog and the Morehouse Faculty blog.
Here are my discussions with Madina Thiam on the New Books African Studies podcast and with Kim Yi Dionne on the Ufahamu Africa podcast.
Blurbs
States of Justice by Oumar Ba offers us a fresh and compelling analysis of the ICC through questions that call on us to think about how state actors that are variously positioned deploy mechanisms and strategies to leverage their interests. By considering the ways in which Kenya and Libya engaged with the ICC following its intervention, and how other African states engaged in political maneuvers, the book sheds critical light on the play of power and politics in an uneven world. It does not just focus on the ICC and its relationship with African states, but also explores alternate spaces of engagement that are key to understanding not only law, but the place of politics in an unequal world. States of Justice is a tremendous contribution to the field, a must read! Kamari Clarke, Professor of Anthropology, The University of California, Los Angeles, author of Fictions of Justice: The ICC and the Challenges of Legal Pluralism (CUP, 2009) and Affective Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Pan-Africanist Pushback (Duke, 2019).
In this book, Oumar Ba persuasively addresses the legitimacy gap that the ICC faces today, which is threatening to undermine international justice. He does so by exploring the moral paradox and institutional difficulties of delivering justice ‘by pursuing individual criminal accountability in a world made of states.’ This paradox and attendant problems have long been overlooked by both defenders and critics of the ICC, particularly around ‘Africa’. Oumar Ba’s masterfully moves the debate with abundant facts and persuasive arguments. The book should be a requirement for novices and the initiates alike who wish to advance ‘international justice.’ I strongly recommend it too for courses on humanitarian law. Siba N'Zatioula Grovogui, Cornell University
The International Criminal Court cannot escape the unruly effects of power politics. In fact, it depends on state cooperation and must find ways of navigating the forces of state competition and power maximization. But if we are to confront this reality, we also need to rigorously engage the strategies of its states parties bent on using the court to gain pollical advantage. Oumar Ba’s important new book argues powerfully for such engagement in the context of African politics. Its systematic analysis of African state parties’ strategies toward the ICC is a rich and insightful study of the shifting political dynamics of these states’ cooperation with the ICC. With its theoretical and empirical rigor, it shows just how important it is to probe the complex politics of the less powerful, authoritarian African states. Steven C. Roach, author of Decency and Difference: Humanity and the Global Challenge of Identity Politics.