Bedjaoui was the strongest critic of this order of equal right. The Algerian lawyer disparaged the ‘froth and veneer of decolonisation’, and highlighted the persistence of ‘universal exploitation, and the dichotomy between poverty and affluence’ in the wake of formal independence. The very neutrality and formalism of international law had permitted colonisation, exploitation and racial discrimination, Bedjaoui argued, and facilitated the enrichment of the wealthy countries at the expense of impoverished ones. Just as Marxist critics of human rights have argued that abstract equality and freedom mask substantive inequality and domination, Bedjaoui rejected the ‘phantom sovereignty’ that masked relations of domination under the cover of formal equality. Instead, he invoked a new international law that would facilitate ‘corrective or compensatory inequality’ to promote the development of the Third World.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 418