Southern Criminology and the history of Qatar v. Bahrain in the International Court of Justice

• In Event: Legacies of the Past, Lessons for the Present

Abstract

This presentation will explore the hierarchical production of socio-historical knowledge in territorial boundary disputes brought to the International Court of Justice. Through the lens of Southern Criminology, a critical reading of the Judgments and Orders in Qatar v. Bahrain (2001) focuses on the strength and nature of the social and political evidence brought to bear. This research shows how hegemonic binaries of land belonging to one or the other country limits the legal imagination while resolving a decades-long dispute. Traditional patterns of seasonal migration and shifting tribal loyalties in the Arabian Gulf mostly failed to account for the legitimacy claims made in the context of post-colonial international law. Into the gap between Western logic and an understanding of pre-colonial societies entered forged documents and failed negotiations. This presentation argues that the past colonial disruption haunts the contemporary, producing a judgment that carries its own doubt, and spurring questions of who has the right to narrate and what constitutes historical knowledge in the pursuit of international justice.

Author

• Staci Strobl, Shenandoah University