This book chronicles the complex relationship between international law and the Third World, during the twentieth century. It does so by suggesting that it is impossible to obtain a full understanding of this complex relationship unless one factors in two phenomena: first, a focus on development discourse as the governing logic of the political, economic, and social life in the Third World; and second, an appreciation of the role of social movements in shaping the relationship between Third World resistance and international law. The suggestion in this book is that dominant approaches to international law are deficient because they neither take development discourse to be important for the very formation of international law and institutions, nor do they adopt a subaltern perspective that enables a real appreciation of the role of social movements in the evolution of international law. The central concern then is: how does one write resistance into international law and make it recognize subaltern voices? In particular, international law has been crucially shaped during the twentieth century by the nature and the forms of Third World resistance to development. This has happened at at least two levels: first, substantial parts of the architecture of international law – international institutions – have evolved, in ambivalent relationship with this resistance; second, human-rights discourse has been fundamentally shaped – and limited – by the forms of Third World resistance to development.