Blog: We Need International Law

‘I don’t need international law”, says Donald Trump, President of the United States of America. 

*Cross-posted from the personal platforms of World YWCA CEO/General-Secretary, Casey Harden*

We are entering 2026 after an incredibly volatile year. 2025 did not simply test the development, humanitarian, and human rights sector – it actively harmed it. The damage done to international law and the norms that underpin it may take years to repair, if they are allowed to be repaired at all. 

I consider myself well-informed. I read widely, listen closely, and make a point of consuming and engaging with perspectives that may challenge my own. I have always done so, regardless of the political temperature. The practice I learned from my Dad serves me well, because leading a global movement of women and girls across more than 100 countries requires constant reckoning with the political, economic, and social forces that shape their lives. 

 I entered the year’s end hoping to step away, for a moment, from the demands of leading a global movement of women and girls. I paused the day-to-day work, but I chose not to pause my attention to the world. I did not pause from the tiresome, seemingly relentless growth of, and burgeoning petulance accompanying the disregard for international law. This has gone from isolated hums to a collective chorus. A cacophony has emerged, including shrill notes in recent months that are a terror for women and girls. 

It has become disturbingly normal to hear international law dismissed as irrelevant, naïve, or obsolete, often by the very elected officials and heads of state charged with upholding it. Those with borders, armies, money or power rarely need the protection they are so quick to dismiss, because they are sheltered from the consequences of its absence. 

Polling data shows a growing erosion of trust in international institutions and the mechanisms that implement international law.  And yet, those same datasets consistently show that people around the world still believe in the principles of international law. They understand, perhaps more clearly than those in power, why it exists.

Local, national, regional, and global civil society organisations are part of the international law ecosystem. World YWCA is part of that habitat. We do not operate outside the system; we operate to make it work, especially for those the system routinely fails to support, such as women, young women, and girls. 

I do not defend international law because it is just. It is often not. I do not defend it because it is enforced. It is often not. I defend it because in a world governed by force, it remains one of the few mechanisms to place a limit on power. I have been openly and consistently critical of the international system for years. I am under no illusions about its flaws, inconsistencies, or enforcement failures. But critique is not the same as sabotage or ill will. What we are witnessing now is not good-faith reform; it is wilful ignorance, misinformation, and deliberate erosion.  

We are only in the first few weeks of 2026, and already, major newsworthy events are unfolding in all corners of the world, where countries’ sovereignty and human rights are being threatened. A colleague remarked, “I am amazed by the cavalier ways in which events are unfolding”. So well said. 

You should not tolerate cavalier normalization. We cannot. 

For women and girls around the world, international law, although flawed, imperfect, and unevenly applied, remains a form of protection. It is often the only language available to name injustice, resist abuse, and demand accountability. When power structures collapse or turn hostile, international law becomes a source of hope and resistance against injustice, oppression, violence, and the absence of individual or community peace. 

A woman in Venezuela, Greenland, Colombia, Sudan, Iran, Haiti, Ukraine, or Taiwan (or many other nations), has to live her daily life with no control over decisions being made by a small number of people. Her life exists in a state of fragile safety due to the whims of oligarchs, business interests, and corporate criminals, and she needs international law, even at its weakest. 

A girl in Palestine might be taught to believe that institutions and humanitarian organisations will be there when power structures fail her, only to see those very organisations restricted or disallowed from operating. When international norms erode, to whom does she turn?

A young woman in the United States watches her bodily autonomy steadily narrowed, her reproductive decisions openly targeted as a political goal, in direct contradiction to a recognised human right of bodily autonomy. What is her recourse when nation-states are effectively given a green light to disregard the rule of law? 

International law is what provides an outer boundary of safety, a hard edge that says this far, and no further. 

For that woman, girl, and young woman, we must not accept the narrative that international law is moot. 

We must not accept that it is a joke, broken beyond repair, or impossible to maintain and uphold. 

And we certainly must not accept the argument that, because international law is imperfect, it should be dismantled altogether. 

Banks break laws. Banks fail. Financial systems collapse. Yet no serious actor argues that banking should cease to exist. Instead, we try to regulate, reform, and strengthen them, and hold them to account. International law deserves the same seriousness and consideration. 

What we are seeing today is deliberate. International law is being undermined by actors with different motivations but a shared outcome: the systemic unwinding of human rights, particularly the rights of women, young women, and girls.

Power without accountability is not strength. It is negligence. 

Power has never restrained itself. It never will. What restrains it is the law and people. Not perfectly. Not always. But enough so that it demands accountability at the very least. When that demand can’t even be brought up, or when it is dismissed, nothing replaces it. What remains, however, is force. And force does not fall evenly. It falls where protection is weakest. On women. On girls. On people. 

Until another mechanism exists that will orchestrate the nations of the world to achieve optimal harmony, in pursuit of a baseline of shared norms, accountability, and collective safety, we must loudly proclaim that dismantling international law is devastating to humanity.

Join the World YWCA in preserving international law for the benefit of the 4 billion girls and women worldwide. We need to be doing something, each of us, and together.