CANCELLED – Centring Care in International Law – Thursday 12 February 2026

This event has now been cancelled.

Centring Care in International Law, with Prof Catherine O’Rourke, Dublin City University.

Co-organised by CRITIQUE and the Global Justice Academy.

Abstract

Care – the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance, and protection of someone or something – is having a moment. The Covid-19 pandemic enabled broader realization of the importance of care to a functioning economy, polity, health and education system, raising the exciting possibility that society could be reorganised in ways that centre and value care. The paper considers the implications of a care focus for international law. The paper’s claims are threefold: first, that feminist care ethics offers substantial resources with potential to productively reorient feminist work in international law away from the dominant focus on harm; second, that care has unarticulated but meaningful legal salience in international law and proposes strategies for surfacing that legal salience; and finally, that dialogue and adaptation to international law can productively develop care theory.