ABSTRACT
Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) has been in existence for over 20 years, holding periodic conferences since 1995 and spearheading a self-conscious effort by international jurists from Asia, Africa, and Latin America to rethink international law from the perspective of the Global South. The Cairo gathering has added significance as the first TWAIL conference to be held in a Third World academic environment. Contrary to the widespread impression that colonialism ends when national flags fly from governmental buildings, it is a premise of TWAIL that after political independence, the most difficult of challenges arise, all decolonising the mind of both colonisers and colonized. In this sense, international legal studies and praxis is a crucial site of struggle as, by the persistence of Western-oriented international legal regimes, much of the Global South has remained trapped within structures evolved during the colonial era.
