Squo solves---the global south has worked and will continue to work to solve inequality.

However, those frustrated with the world’s response to COVID-19 or climate change may find hope in the international legal tradition explored here. The times of Third World activism have long passed, but as we have seen, the international tradition that conceives of global problems as problems of inequality, and has amassed a set of legal and diplomatic tools to achieve interstate redistribution, persists. COVID-19 is a difficult case to test the tools. The job has been done at UNGA, calling for international solidarity in the fight against the pandemic. When viral sovereignty is not an option, as the pandemic has spread globally, what can be done to force equitable solutions?

We have seen developing countries linking their demands across regimes. Could they press for equitable solutions in global public health, demanding redistribution for their uncompensated contributions to global public goods in other areas? How could the humanitarian, environmental, cultural or security contributions of the global South be invoked across international regimes to demand equitable solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic?

Although the spotlight has shifted away from combative solidarity; it is for international lawyers today to find the answers to these questions in the legal tradition explored in this article. They start from a tradition that regards a fair allocation of goods, benefits and burdens between states as the central rationale or purpose behind the international order. For the South, the international order is both a site where material inequalities dividing rich and poor nations have been produced and reproduced, and a site where they can be contested. The international order, for the South, is a primary site for distributive justice.