THE AGENCY PROBLEM FOR DE-COLONIAL INTERNATIONAL LAW STUDIES

Classical approaches to international law accept States as the basic law agent both as a lawmaker and obligation holder. Limited and functional legal agency of international organizations and relatively passive legal personality of individuals are also gradually mentioned in this context. However, it is clear that neither of these render “human” the active legal agent. The present study elaborates to analyse this very problematic issue using the basic parameters of the de-colonial international studies that seeks to bring a fresh look at social sciences. The primary goal is to handle the problem of how to replace the prevailing understanding based on “individual” with one based on “human”. In this context, it is examined and suggested that epistemologically decolonised social sciences and individuals/humans may well have the potential to bring a different look at, inter alia, international law.