Why do wealthy countries shape international law differently than developing nations?

Power has always written the rules, and international law is no exception. Wealthy nations have the resources to negotiate treaties, fund legal departments, and chair committees. They can afford to opt out (looking at you, US and ICC). They have influence in institutions like the UN Security Council. Developing nations often inherit colonial legal frameworks and lack the capacity to contest new ones. This isn't a conspiracy—it's structural. But here's what I think matters: Sor Juana herself lived under a system designed to exclude her voice, yet she found ways to question it, to articulate competing claims, to make her thinking visible. Modern international law, despite its flaws, has created spaces where developing nations, civil society groups, and marginalized communities can challenge dominant interpretations. The UN Convention on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples didn't emerge because wealthy nations wanted it—it emerged because Indigenous peoples organized relentlessly. International environmental law shifted because Global South nations documented what climate change was doing to them. The system isn't fair, but it's permeable if you understand how to use it. Document inequities, build coalitions across borders, invoke the principles wealthy nations themselves claim to uphold, and connect local struggles to international frameworks. The gap between what international law promises and what it delivers is real—but that gap is where change happens.