Muhsina Farhat Chowdhury

I am currently a doctoral candidate in the School of Law at the University of Warwick. I hold an LLB degree from BRAC University and an LLM from the University of Cambridge. I was born and raised in Dhaka. 

My current research builds on the TWAIL (Third World Approaches to International Law) tradition to examine the ‘unwilling or unable’ state (UoU) doctrine. The UoU doctrine has been repeatedly deployed by hegemonic states over the past two decades to justify forcible armed interventions in the name of (in)security. Examining the recent history of the UoU doctrine, I argue that it has been central to the legitimation of armed intervention in international law (which is ostensibly organized around the principle of equal state sovereignty). The project demonstrates how this doctrine of the unwilling or unable state has refashioned the terms of customary international law and has remade the scope of self-defence. I also argue that the legal rhetoric of (in)security—which has underpinned the recent violation of the sovereignty of peripheral states—reenacts a new hierarchy in terms of the state capacity to offer security. In addition to offering a new reading of the unwilling or unable state doctrine, my project also contributes to international law by bringing the TWAIL perspective to bear on the question of state sovereignty in the age of the “War on Terror.”

My broader research interests include postcolonial and feminist approaches to international law, international criminal law, and self-determination as a legal problem.

Journal Article

• Chowdhury M F, ‘In Search of Joint Criminal Enterprise in the International Crimes (Tribunals) Act, 1973’ (2015) 3 (2) Legal Issues Journal.