Article Zero envisions a world where the intellectual traditions, lived experiences, and legal perspectives of the Global South are not peripheral footnotes in international discourse — but central pillars of it.
We believe that the most urgent questions of our time — about sovereignty, development, justice, and self-determination — cannot be answered by the Global North alone. The frameworks that have dominated international law and political thought for decades were shaped by specific historical conditions and power structures. They do not reflect the full complexity of human experience, nor do they adequately serve the communities most affected by their application.
Our vision is rooted in the Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) movement — a tradition that challenges the neutrality of international legal frameworks and insists that law must be understood in the context of colonialism, inequality, and resistance. TWAIL is not merely a critique; it is an invitation to reimagine what international law could look like if it truly served all peoples equally.
Article Zero was born from this conviction. Founded by one person in a small room in Ottawa, Canada, it began as a daydream — a vision of a platform that could bridge the gap between rigorous scholarship and accessible, honest writing. A space where complex ideas about power, law, and development could be explored without the barriers of academic jargon or institutional gatekeeping.
We envision Article Zero growing into more than a publication. We see it as a discussion and solution-making space — a place where scholars, practitioners, writers, and curious minds come together to ask difficult questions and imagine better answers. A platform that takes a noticeable part in the continuity of TWAIL by digging into matters that touch quality of life, self-determination, and justice in the Global South.
And we envision doing all of this with integrity. In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, we have made a promise: every word published on Article Zero will be human-written. Because we believe that writing is more than information delivery — it is an act of thought, a reflection of personality, and a form of art. Just like our name suggests: Article Zero means zero AI.