The fourth Plenary Panel shifted the focus to the changing architecture of global governance and the increasingly important role of regional organizations within it.
As geopolitical power becomes more dispersed, regional organizations are not only responding to global challenges but are also helping to shape the rules and structures through which international cooperation takes place. The panel considered how organizations such as the African Union, African subregional organizations, ASEAN and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization are developing distinct approaches to security, economic integration and regional cooperation.
The discussion also explored how regional organizations interact with universal institutions, the emergence of innovative and hybrid forms of governance, and what the growing influence of regionalism means for the international legal order.
The panel was convened by Kirsten Schmalenbach, Professor of Public International Law and European Union Law at Paris Lodron University Salzburg and Vice President of the Austrian Branch of the International Law Association, and featured Fernando Lusa Bordin, Professor of Institutional Law at Leiden University and College Associate Professor and Fellow in Law at the University of Cambridge; Jed Odermatt, Reader at The City Law School, City St George’s, University of London; and Chantal Ononaiwu, Judge of the Caribbean Court of Justice and Chair of the CCJ Academy for Law.
