Beyond Containment – Confronting Racial Hierarchies in International Law: Norm Entrepreneurship at the UN – Addressing Racial Equality Across Borders and the South–North Divide

[Yang Han, PhD, is a Research Associate at China Centre, University of Oxford]

Racism has been integral to international relations: e.g., scientific racism, social Darwinism, and the “yellow peril” discourses, just to name a few. Racist beliefs were often used to justify colonialism and imperialism, and invoked to instigate violence, hatred, and discrimination. Likewise, the principle of sovereign equality helps states evade external interference or sanctions against policies that instrumentalize domestic racism. Why, then, is there no clear international norm governing racial equality between states?

To this question, some may  point to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), an instrument aimed at prohibiting discrimination. Anti-discrimination, however, is not equivalent to racial equality. Anti-discrimination norms are prohibitive, seeking to prevent harm; racial equality, by contrast, carries a broader and more affirmative meaning. In the absence of a global racial equality norm (GREN), international society relies on indirect principles such as sovereign equality and human rights protection to achieve the outcome. But these are insufficient: sovereign equality does not address racial hierarchies between states while human rights frameworks focus on state–individual relations rather than interstate dynamics. As a result, transnational and interstate racism remain largely unregulated and under-discussed.

In fact, decades after the decolonisation era began, relevant research in International Law (IL) and International Relations (IR) is scarce. Relatedly, the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance (Durban Conferences) has received disproportionately less academic attention. This is especially so when compared to the extensive coverage afforded to other major international conferences, such as the Paris Peace Conference.

Answer to a Puzzle: Power, not Moral Standards

This absence is not accidental: it reflects a structural reluctance to confront racism as a transnational problem, a disposition deeply institutionalized within the international order. I argue in my chapter in Emancipating International Law: Confronting the Violence of Racialised Boundaries that the absence results not from a lack of advocacy, but in the politics of norm entrepreneurship itself: efforts to establish a global racial equality norm have been driven primarily by actors in the Global South, while resistance has been led by Global North states. 

This division is mirrored in international relations scholarship. Traditional models of norm diffusion—such as the “norm life cycle” or the “boomerang model”—typically assume that norms originate in the Global North and spread to the Global South. In this framework, Western actors are cast as norm entrepreneurs, while non-Western states are treated as norm recipients. This theorization problematically obscures the agency of Global South actors and reinforces a hierarchical understanding of the international order in which the West is imagined as the source of universal values. Moreover, these models tend to portray norm diffusion as a largely moral or social process, driven by persuasion and shared values. In doing so, they downplay the role of power. Yet, it must be emphasized that norm entrepreneurship is not simply about ideas—it is also about interests and power struggles.

This “norm entrepreneurship vs. norm opposition dynamic” therefore not only challenges dominant IR understandings of primary agents in norm diffusion, it also highlights the fundamental role of power in shaping the outcomes of norm entrepreneurship, i.e., which (and whose) norms emerge, and which are suppressed. Insights from international law help to correct this imbalance. Legal scholarship has long recognized that states use law-making strategically to advance their positions within global hierarchies. Norms, like laws, are not neutral; they are shaped by power relations and often reflect the interests of dominant actors.

Global South Leadership Towards Global Racial Equality Norm

The push for a global racial equality norm has largely come from the Global South. This is most evident in the United Nations system, a venue where developing states consistently seek to expand the scope of anti-racism beyond domestic contexts, out of the recognition of its legitimacy. The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA), adopted at the 2001 World Conference against Racism, represents a milestone. It recognized the enduring legacies of slavery and colonialism and called for concrete measures to address them. Subsequent initiatives, including the International Decade for People of African Descent, have built on this foundation. 

Twenty years later, the 2020 killing of George Floyd catalyzed renewed global attention to systemic racism. In response, the Africa Group—supported by UN experts and transnational civil society—called for an urgent debate at the UN Human Rights Council. The resulting resolution marked a significant shift: systemic racism in a Global North state was placed at the center of international scrutiny. Despite these efforts, the development of a global racial equality norm has been consistently resisted by the Global North, which operates on both institutional and conceptual basis. 

At the institutional level, Global North states have repeatedly boycotted or withdrawn from the Durban process. They have also opposed proposals that would impose stronger obligations, including calls for reparations for slavery and colonialism. At the conceptual level, Global North states have insisted on treating racism as a domestic issue, stifling discussions on transnational racial injustice and interstate racism. This has a profound negative effect on norm diffusion. By limiting the understanding of antiracism and racial equality within sovereign states’ borders, this position constrains the development of progressive global norms and shields powerful states from accountability. The 2020 Human Rights Council debate illustrates these dynamics. While the UN Human Rights Council Resolution 43/1 mandated a report on systemic racism, it stopped short of establishing an independent investigative mechanism into racism in US law enforcement —an outcome shaped by political pressure from powerful states.

This pattern reveals a broader contradiction, if not hypocrisy. While the Global North has actively endorsed responsibility to protect (R2P) since 2001, a norm that cuts across state boundaries and, in a way, erodes the sovereignty principle, it has resisted loosening its own sovereign boundaries when it comes to racial equality. Yet, when it comes to racial equality and related enforcement inside borders, external scrutiny is resisted. This exposes the Western European and Others Group (WEOG)’s selective commitment to global justice — intervention is permitted when it aligns with geopolitical interests but withheld when structural racism implicates members of the bloc. This double standard reveals the deeply racialized character of the universality claimed in association with the Global North-initiated norm entrepreneurship, underscoring the role of power in shaping normative commitments.

More recently, spearheaded by Ghana and strongly supported by the African Union, the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution A/80/L.48 (25 March 2026). This resolution recognizes the transatlantic slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity”. Its call for reparations extends beyond financial compensation, emphasizing recognition of slavery’s scale and brutality, truth-based reconciliation and accountability, and structural change to address enduring global inequalities rooted in its legacy. This resolution marks a historic shift at the international level with the enduring legacies of slavery. Despite its adoption by an overwhelming majority (123 votes in favour), it is noteworthy that many of the Global North opposed or abstained, underscoring a continued split on the issue. These actions have limited the effectiveness of global anti-racism initiatives and prevented the consolidation of a binding norm.

Norm (and Values) as Sites of Struggle

This chapter challenges conventional theories of norm entrepreneurship. Rather than being passive recipients of norms, Global South actors are actively shaping and promoting them, while Global North states are increasingly the objects of critique. It shows that norm diffusion is not a ‘cascading’ process that flows from the Global North to the Global South. Rather, it is a contested and political process shaped by competing interests, hierarchical understandings of the world, and power asymmetries. It also underscores the limits of norm entrepreneurship in the face of entrenched power structures. Efforts to promote global racial equality have made important gains, but they continue to encounter significant resistance from Western states. 

As this case demonstrates, norms are not merely learnt or ‘socialized into’; they are fought over. One needs to examine practices and ideas relating to norm diffusion through the light of power struggle. Meanwhile, it is also important to recognize the agency of Global South actors both in legal practices and in scholarship: they are deploying solidarity and strength to help shape the global normative agenda — for example, in this case, China has been a consistent support to the African Group’s norm entrepreneurship towards the global racial equality norm, both at the Durban Conferences and beyond. A contemporary illustration of these dynamics can be seen in Global South–led efforts at the United Nations to frame Israel’s conduct through an emerging global racial equality lens. In 2024, a broad coalition of Global South states, led by Palestine and supported by the Group of 77, successfully advanced a General Assembly resolution urging states to halt arms transfers, restrict trade linked to settlements, and ensure non-complicity in violations of international law. While formally grounded in occupation law and the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinions, these initiatives also reflect a broader normative move: to reconceptualize racialized domination and systemic discrimination as matters of interstate responsibility rather than purely of domestic concern.

At the same time, resistance from key Global North states—through opposition, abstention, and continued reliance on Security Council paralysis—has limited the translation of these proposals into binding measures. This episode underscores both the growing agency of Global South actors in shaping the contours of global racial equality norms and the enduring role of power in constraining their institutionalization. In the chapter that informs this post, I coined ‘reversed agency dichotomy’ to represent this power dynamic.

The Global South is not homogeneous. Countries can have varied interpretations (as well as degrees of reception) of global racial equality, and may act differently based on a delicate balance between self-benefiting calculations and normative reasoning. Among the recent groups boycotting Durban IV are Global South countries that are members of the Group of 77, such as the Dominican Republic and Honduras, which may suggest a wide spectrum of international pressures and domestic power dynamics, in shaping the coalition of norm contestation. The evolving struggle over the GREN underscores a deeper contest over global moral authority — one in which the Global South is no longer merely a subject of norms but an active force in their creation and contestation. 

All in all, global racial equality will not emerge through consensus, but through contestation, and, essentially, through the redistribution of power — both material and ideational ones alike — that it demands.