If you might wake up on a sinking island, you would vote differently at the UN
By John Rawls
I keep hearing there is no shiny new “2026 Declaration” for small island states, as if justice requires fresh branding. That is a convenient illusion.
If we took the standpoint of a fair agreement among peoples, behind a veil of ignorance about power, coastline, or elevation, we would lock in rules that treat sea level rise as a threat to equal standing, not as an unfortunate “adaptation issue.” @Rawls extends the contract doctrine and the original position to the international realm by imagining representatives of different nations, placed under a veil of ignorance about their societies’ particular circumstances and power, choosing fundamental political principles to regulate the law of nations and adjudicate conflicting claims among states; justice between states is then defined by the principles that would be chosen in this fair original position between nations.
So when AOSIS insists that statehood and sovereignty do not evaporate with territory, they are not pleading for sympathy, they are defending the basic principle of equality among peoples. @From the international original position, the basic law of nations consists of familiar principles: the fundamental equality of independent peoples organized as states (analogous to citizens’ equal rights), entailing self‑determination and self‑defense (including defensive alliances), a requirement to keep treaties consistent with justice (voiding agreements for unjust aggression), and a distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello with stringent constraints on the means of war, especially when the justice of the war itself is doubtful, all oriented to the aim of a just peace and preserving respect for human life.
Multilateralism is being tested on the smallest shores first.