taciano zimmermann

The purpose of this article is to stimulate a critical reflection on central concepts of international law by throwing some light on colonizing historical continuities that remain subjacent to its construction. Relying on critical theory, it proposes a questioning of non-declared premises that sustain the international legal system, which is here understood through the point of view of the political movement of the “Third World”. The critical theory generally sees international law as an expression of the contradictions of international politics and, in its prognostics, founds itself on a material subversion of the system: a movement that comes from the very contradictions of the political reality. This research delineates some of the contributions of this system of thought to the construction of international law, especially with regard to the inclusion of historically excluded subjects as participants in international decision processes, with a view to produce in the international community a new framework of relations and interactions among all the subjects that are part of it.

KEYWORDS International law. Critical legal theory. Reform of the international legal order. Neocolonialism. International politics

This article aims to investigate and to bring to light the changes of meaning that occurred in the concept of nationalism that orbited the Convention n. 107 of the International Labour Organization (ILO). When one looks to the history of the Convention, one can verify, both in the debates that led to its approval and in the movements that subsequently resisted to it, the utilization of a vocabulary permeated by "nationalisms". Since the same words appear in defense of opposing ideas, the question arises: which were the re-significations that the European-originated concept of nationalism has undergone from the moment when indigenous peoples took appropriation of it, intending to resist the national integration proposed by the Convention n. 107 peoples took appropriation of it, intending to resist the national integration proposed introduction of the European-originated nationalism, this article makes a brief analysis of the central elements of the Convention n. 107 and, finally, it addresses the concept of “indigenous nationalism”, based on a selection of texts that were produced by indigenous movements themselves and normative frameworks related to the “indigenous problem” (primary sources) and specialized bibliography (secondary sources), always aiming to investigate the semantic and legal transformations that took place in this process of (re)utilization of concepts. The research has shown that, although the words may sometimes have been the same, the nationalism that was proposed by indigenous peoples was completely different from the European one and, aside from containing other assumptions, it has also produced different legal consequences.

KEYWORDS: Indigenous Nationalism. International Law. Indigenous Peoples.