Last Wednesday April 18th, INFRAGLOB and the Centre for International Relations Research hosted a lecture by Professor Rita Abrahamsen on African Visions of World Order.
In her talk, Rita Abrahamsen showed that as we fret about challenges to the current world order, we need to recognize the contributions of Africa and Pan-Africanism to the emergence of the liberal world order. That is; world order is/was also made by Southern/African actors, not just the hegemons. She will then argue that, somewhat counter-intuitively, Africa’s opposition to the International Criminal Court (ICC) can be seen as a continuation of the struggle for a more just, equitable world order rather than resistance to liberal multilateralism. At the same time, this opposition reveals longstanding tensions within Pan-Africanism, and its sovereignist and nativist expressions are in the current political climate potentially detrimental to the struggle for a more equal and democratic world order.
Speaker: Rita Abrahamsen, Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs and Director of the Centre for International Policy Studies (CIPS), University of Ottawa.