Talk: Making Problems, Policies and National Constitutions: Decolonising United Nations Constitutional Assistance (UNCA)

Speaker: Dr. Amelia Odida (SOAS)

Using theories of coloniality and decoloniality and Carol Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to be? Approach (WPR Approach), this paper offers a decolonial analysis of the UN’s policy of constitution-making for societies described as post-conflict. In this paper, I argue that challenges experienced by targets of  UN constitution making policies can only be understood when placed in the colonial discourses they emerged in. Indeed, it is only when we shed light on what happened then that we can see how colonial practices have shaped the present day policy landscape in discernible ways.

Amelia Odida is a Lecturer in International Relations  at SOAS. She completed her doctoral thesis in September 2021 from UCL. Her thesis is best described as a decolonial analysis of the UN policy of post-conflict constitution assistance, which is centred around ways to link ‘where we are now to where we have been’. Aside from conventional approaches to academic work, she is also a keen artist and is especially interested in finding creative ways to communicate academic ideas. This includes a critical ‘counter-constitutions’ project  based off her thesis and a series of sculptures which explore how ancient greek myth can be used as an allegory for themes arising in the literature on sexual violence in armed conflict.

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