National Constituent Research Articles

The Labour Situation in Colombia and Human Rights

The Labour Situation in Colombia and Human Rights Omar Romero Díaz (bio) Colombia, a country where for more than two hundred years it has been added to absolute poverty, since independence, a historical process that ended the colonial stage by the Spanish Empire, since the appearance of unions in Colombia that the Colombian State broad sectors of the political, economic and business class have been unable to recognise the role of the trade union movement in the defence of labour rights and union freedoms and its leading role in the different scenarios of a democratic state. This is what explains the wave of systematic violence since its appearance at the beginning of the last century, referenced in the “Masacre de las Bananeras” (English: “Massacre of the Banana Workers”) in 1928, with the murder in the central park of Ciénaga, of more than 3000 workers of the American United Fruit Company by the machine guns of the national army, for demanding better wages and job guarantees. Similar behaviour has occurred at various times of confrontation with trade unionism as some cases worth mentioning: on 23 February 1963, 11 workers and an 11-year-old girl died in the Municipality of Santa Bárbara, Antioquia, when there was a strike by the workers of Cementos el Cairo, the military attacked the camp of the strikers; in 1969, in the National Patriotic Strike against the administrative reform of Lleras Restrepo; the same in 1977 in the realisation of the National Civic Strike recorded as one of the largest mobilisations in national history; the strikes of the USO Workers’ Union in defence of Ecopetrol; of the Telecom Workers, led by SITELECOM, to prevent its sale; the innumerable teacher strikes under the direction of FECODE in defence of public education and the rights of teachers; the public sector strike in 1998; and many more battles of Colombian workers, many of them recorded in national history; such as the recent National Strikes of 21 November 2019, and 28 April 2021, which led to a social rebellion, which others call a social explosion. This violence against the trade union and social movements, of expressions of protest and popular uprisings is consigned, indisputably, in the first place, by the struggle in defence of life, land, workers’ rights, food sovereignty, peace with social justice, health, and defence of the environment and natural resources and, secondly, for the submission of the country’s rulers to the United States and its strategies of confrontation in the cold war with the former Soviet Union. Violence and anti-communism In the Treaty of Versailles, the triumphant imperialist powers to counteract the triumph of the Russian revolution and its influence in the labour sectors founded the ILO in 1919 and recognised workers’ rights through fundamental agreements, several of them ratified in 1933 in Colombia. In the vision of combating communism, we will mention that the violence of the late 1940s was engineered and directed by the United States against democratic movements. It is worth remembering that, in December 1952, through Legislative Act 01 of 9 December, the Congress of the Republic convened a National Constituent Assembly of fascist orientation and by legislative act 06 of 14 September 1954, decreed: “The activity politics of international communism. The law will regulate the way to make this prohibition effective”. Likewise, the partisan violence that worsened around 1948, with the assassination of Jorge Eliecer Gaitán, a dissident political leader of the Liberal Party who sponsored the debate on the Banana Massacre, is based on Truman’s crusade since March 1947 against international communism and all forms of popular mobilisation to maintain US domination and contain the Soviet Union, which intensifies with the triumph of the Cuban revolution. The struggles from the workers were stigmatised in this anti-communist strategy by the Washington doctrine. In the context of the peace processes of Belisario Betancur, successful with some insurgent forces and unsuccessful with the FARC, there is the appearance of the Patriotic Union and the exacerbation of the most conservative sectors of the national scene with the creation of paramilitary armies, which sharpens the violence against the democratic and leftist sectors from the mid-1980s onwards. This...

Land Property Regime According to the Vidovdan Constitution and the Agrarian Question in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

Тhe paper discusses the attitudes of political parties on land property regimes in the context of the agrarian issue, and dynamics of the debate on this matter in the Constitutional Committee and in the Constituent National Assembly of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The very notion of “agrarian question” concerns specifically small peasant landholdings in the process of development of capitalism. This question was raised in the context of the debate on socio-economic problems that were invited by, and eventually, introduced into the Constitution of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Vidovdan Constitution, 1921) under the pressure of progressive opposition parties and parts of the ruling political organizations.

The Current State of the Teaching the Russian Language in the Multicultural Russian School

Although it is commonly known that the dominant trend in the development of modern post-industrial society is globalization, today we can already talk about glocalization as a bidirectional process of integration and localization, complementary to the dialectical development of mankind. This process implies the unification of all spheres of social life in a single global space and the isolation of individual regions and ethnic groups as a protective reaction to preserve their uniqueness and identity. The described social trends are now becoming decisive for the development of the education system as the main social institution. Migration processes and related problems of integrating migrants into a new society, preserving the national language and culture, searching for identity - all these phenomena necessitate innovative methodological solutions that should be implemented in the context of learning the Russian language at a multicultural Russian school. The article considers topical problems related to the implementation of the program of teaching the Russian language in a multicultural environment. The authors propose a conceptual definition of a multicultural school. They analyze the pedagogical experience of individual educational institutions developing their own training methods for use in a multicultural environment. This analysis makes it possible to identify socio-adaptive, cultural, psychological and linguistic aspects of teaching Russian in a multicultural school. Along the way, an increase in the psychoemotional burden of teachers working in multi-ethnic classes is noted. Additionally, the effective experience of implementing preschool language training of non-native speakers in the Moscow region is analyzed. In line with the above, the authors review the current situation with regard to teaching the Russian language in the multiethnic regions of Russia through the example of the Republics of Sakha (Yakutia) and Tatarstan. In particular, it is noted that for the regions of the Russian Federation it is methodologically incorrect to use the term multicultural school, since in the national constituent entities of the Russian Federation there is a special type of national school, and a program for studying Russian as a non-native language is also being implemented.

What's in a Name? The Length of Westminster Constituency Titles, 1950–2024

AbstractParliamentary constituencies in the UK are named after the areas they cover. Over the last seventy years, the titles given to these constituencies have been getting longer and more cumbersome. They are now less likely to consist of single words and are more likely to be compounds of multiple places. The article demonstrates these changes, including the differences across the constituent nations of the UK, and discusses the possible reasons for the changes. The boundary changes proposed for the next election would result in the longest and most cumbersome constituency names since Britain first began with single‐member, one person, one vote constituencies in 1950.

To support safe provision of mechanical thrombectomy services for patients with acute ischaemic stroke: 2021 consensus guidance from BASP, BSNR, ICSWP, NACCS, and UKNG

This document supersedes the existing professional multisociety consensus guidance published in 2015.1 It has been produced in order to respond to the considerable volume of relevant new high-quality trial evidence that has become available since September 2015. It should be emphasised that this document remains applicable to all constituent nations of the UK, and thus, deliberately avoids the use of acronyms or reference to structures that do not pertain to all four nations wherever possible. The guidance was developed (and is now updated) to aid thrombectomy delivery by describing the key requirements for an endovascular stroke therapy service, including the service support requirements and basic performance standards that should be met.

“The Band of Brothers”: The Mobilization of English Welsh Dual Identities in Second World War Britain

AbstractIn the run-up to the Second World War, the War Office agreed to organize territorial units that recruited specifically on the grounds of English Welsh dual identities. These formations, which comprised the 99th London Welsh Heavy Anti-Aircraft regiment and the 46th Liverpool Welsh Royal Tank Regiment, began recruiting in 1939 from English cities with significant Welsh populations. This article explores the mobilization and performance of English Welsh identities during the Second World War and reflects upon why, at a time of global conflict, some English men opted to enlist on the basis of Welsh antecedents. Relatively little attention has been paid to the plurality of British identity in wartime or to how the existence of what historian Thomas Hajkowski has called “hybrid ‘dual identities’” within the constituent countries of the United Kingdom informed the functioning of Britishness during the Second World War. Making use of previously unpublished and original life-writing sources, this article illuminates the significance of dual identifications across two nations at once—in this case, Wales and England—within the multinational state of Britain at war. Overall, by examining the intersectionality between subjective wartime constructions of kin, home, and nation(s), it points to how a sense of dual identifications could feed into recruitment patterns and potentially bolster combat motivation and morale. By highlighting the interconnectedness between constituent nations of Britain, and the complexities of identity formation within Britishness, this article adds to the literature that complicates the notion of fixed singular national identities and underscores the importance of dual identifications within and across the borders of the constituent nations in advancing our understanding of twentieth-century Britain.

EFFECTS OF TOURISM DEVELOPMENT ON THE ECONOMY OF BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) used to be an attractive tourist destination, which existed within the former Yugoslavia, and experienced a real collapse of tourism development after the war in the 1990s. The recovery process required, above all, the establishment of general stability and harmonization of interests of three constituent nations. That is the reason why the focus on general economic and social progress has been present for years, and tourism as an economic branch has been placed on the margins of development plans. The subject of this research is tourism as a facilitator of the development of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The main aim is to present the direct and indirect contributions of tourism to the development of the national economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It required the collection of data using classical scientific research methods, and then processing using statistical techniques. The purpose is to provide the insight into the strength and direction of correlation between individual categories in the balance of payments through correlation regression analysis. In addition, the analysis of the impact of tourism on investment, employment and gross domestic product was performed. This paper answers the question whether tourism in Bosnia and Herzegovina stimulates economic development and whether economic development enables the development of tourism.

Protocol for expansion of an existing national monthly survey of smoking behaviour and alcohol use in England to Scotland and Wales: The Smoking and Alcohol Toolkit Study

Background The Smoking and Alcohol Toolkit Study (STS/ATS) in England has delivered timely insights to inform and evaluate strategies aimed at reducing tobacco smoking- and alcohol-related harm. From the end of 2020 until at least 2024 the STS/ATS is expanding to Scotland and Wales to include all constituent nations in Great Britain. Expanding data collection to Scotland and Wales will permit the evaluation of how smoking and alcohol related behaviours respond to divergent policy scenarios across the devolved nations. Methods The STS/ATS consists of monthly cross-sectional household interviews (computer or telephone assisted) of representative samples of adults in Great Britain aged 16+ years. Commencing in October 2020 each month a new sample of approximately 1700 adults in England, 450 adults in Scotland and 300 adults in Wales complete the survey (~n = 29,400 per year). The expansion of the survey to Scotland and Wales has been funded for the collection of at least 48 waves of data across four years. The data collected cover a broad range of smoking and alcohol-related parameters (including but not limited to smoking status, cigarette/nicotine dependence, route to quit smoking, prevalence and frequency of hazardous drinking, attempts and motivation to reduce alcohol consumption, help sought and motives for attempts to reduce alcohol intake) and socio-demographic characteristics (including but not limited to age, gender, region, socio-economic position) and will be reviewed monthly and refined in response to evolving policy needs and public interests. All data analyses will be pre-specified and available on a free online platform. A dedicated website will publish descriptive data on important trends each month. Discussion The Smoking and Alcohol Toolkit Study will provide timely monitoring of smoking and alcohol related behaviours to inform and evaluate national policies across Great Britain.

ПРАКСА УСТАВНОГ СУДА РЕПУБЛИКЕ ХРВАТСКЕ У ОБЛАСТИ ПРАВА НАЦИОНАЛНИХ МАЊИНА, СА ПОСЕБНИМ ОСВРТОМ НА ЈЕЗИЧКА ПРАВА СРПСКЕ ЗАЈЕДНИЦЕ У ХРВАТСКОЈ

In the period from 2000 to the present day, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Croatia has often faced the challenge of deciding on politically sensitive topics, especially when it comes to the need to protect the rights of both traditional and so-called “new” minority communities (which emerged from the constituent nations of the former Yugoslavia by the formation of new independent nation-states). The cases that occur in court practice are diverse, but mainly refer to cultural autonomy, representation of persons belonging to national minorities in local or regional representative bodies and equal representation in the public sector, as well as (official) use of language and script. The submitters of constitutional complaints, and the initiators of the procedures for assessing the constitutionality and legality of general legal acts, were guided by various motives; and the question is whether these motives influenced the work of the constitutional court, or in other words, whether the court remained faithful to its original role of protecting the basic, timeless values of the constitutional order of Croatia or was guided by current party policy programs. In addition to the general presentation of the legal regulation of minority rights, and the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court in Croatia, the paper analyzes cases related to the language rights of “new” minority communities, focusing on the arguments of both “parties” in the procedure and the constitutional court, as well. The goal of this paper is to present the practice of the Constitutional Court of Croatia in the field of language rights of national minorities through specific constitutional court cases, with special reference to the consistency of the court’s argumentation.

Protocol for expansion of an existing national monthly survey of smoking behaviour and alcohol use in England to Scotland and Wales: The Smoking and Alcohol Toolkit Study.

Background The Smoking and Alcohol Toolkit Study (STS/ATS) in England has delivered timely insights to inform and evaluate strategies aimed at reducing tobacco smoking- and alcohol-related harm. From the end of 2020 until at least 2024 the STS/ATS is expanding to Scotland and Wales to include all constituent nations in Great Britain. Expanding data collection to Scotland and Wales will permit the evaluation of how smoking and alcohol related behaviours respond to divergent policy scenarios across the devolved nations. Methods The STS/ATS consists of monthly cross-sectional household interviews (computer or telephone assisted) of representative samples of adults in Great Britain aged 16+ years. Commencing in October 2020 each month a new sample of approximately 1700 adults in England, 450 adults in Scotland and 300 adults in Wales complete the survey (~n = 29,400 per year). The expansion of the survey to Scotland and Wales has been funded for the collection of at least 48 waves of data across four years. The data collected cover a broad range of smoking and alcohol-related parameters (including but not limited to smoking status, cigarette/nicotine dependence, route to quit smoking, prevalence and frequency of hazardous drinking, attempts and motivation to reduce alcohol consumption, help sought and motives for attempts to reduce alcohol intake) and socio-demographic characteristics (including but not limited to age, gender, region, socio-economic position) and will be reviewed monthly and refined in response to evolving policy needs and public interests. All data analyses will be pre-specified and available on a free online platform. A dedicated website will publish descriptive data on important trends each month. Discussion The Smoking and Alcohol Toolkit Study will provide timely monitoring of smoking and alcohol related behaviours to inform and evaluate national policies across Great Britain.

Toward universal health coverage in the post-COVID-19 era.

All countries worldwide have signed up to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and have committed to the objective of achieving 'universal health coverage, including financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all'. During the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, advancement toward universal health coverage (UHC) will become more difficult for many countries, demonstrating that locally led priority setting is urgently needed to provide health services with appropriate financial protection to all. Because resources are limited and no national constituency can provide an unlimited number of services to their whole population in a sustainable manner, rationing and setting priorities for the selection of interventions to be included in a defined package of services is critical. In this Perspective, we discuss how packages of essential health services can be developed in resource-constrained settings, and detail how experts and the public can decide on principles and criteria, use a comprehensive array of analytical methods and choose which services to be provided free of charge. We illustrate these main steps while drawing on a recently conducted exercise of revising the national essential health services package in Ethiopia, which we compare with examples from other countries that have defined their essential benefits packages. This Perspective also provides recommendations for other low- and middle-income countries on their pathway to UHC.

On unit free assessment of the extent of multilateral distributional variation

SummaryMultilateral comparison of outcomes drawn from multiple groups pervade the social sciences and measurement of their variability, usually involving functions of respective group location and scale parameters, is of intrinsic interest. However, such approaches frequently mask more fundamental differences that more comprehensive examination of relative group distributional structures reveal. Indeed, in categorical data contexts, location- and scale-based techniques are no longer feasible without artificial and questionable cardinalisation of categories. Here, Gini’s transvariation measure is extended and employed in providing quantitative and visual multilateral comparison tools in discrete, continuous, categorical, univariate, or multivariate settings which are particularly useful in paradigms where cardinal measure is absent. Two applications, one analysing Eurozone cohesion in terms of the convergence or divergence of constituent nations income distributions, the other, drawn from a study of ageing, health, and income inequality in China, exemplify their use in a continuous and categorical data environment.

Health and Mental Health Disparities Between National Identity Groups in Wales

Despite close links with ethnic identity and other health-relevant identities, there is surprisingly little work on national identity in the context of population health. National identity is particularly important in multi-national states, where national identity is contested and where different nationalities often reflect both distinct ethnic groups and competing civic visions of national boundaries. The present study examines health disparities between national identity groups in Wales, a constituent nation of the UK. Using data from the National Survey for Wales (n = 23,303), latent class analysis was used to identify national identity groups in Wales. Generalised linear mixed-effects models were then fitted to the data to identity disparities between groups in terms of self-reported general and mental health, both unconditionally and conditionally on several socio-demographic and geographic variables. Analyses identified five groups: Anglophone Welsh, British, Cymry Cymraeg (Welsh-speaking Welsh), English and Ethnically Diverse. Striking health disparities were found, with the Cymry Cymraeg and Ethnically Diverse groups reporting better health than the other groups, especially the Anglophone Welsh and the English. These disparities could not be accounted for by differences in demographic, socio-economic or geographic factors.

Estimation in the primary mathematics curricula of the United Kingdom: Ambivalent expectations of an essential competence

ABSTRACT In this paper, we examine the national curricula for primary mathematics for each of the four constituent nations of the United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) for the estimation-related opportunities they offer children. Framed against four conceptually and procedurally different forms of estimation (computational, measurement, quantity and number line), the analyses indicate that computational estimation and measurement estimation were addressed in all four curricula, albeit from a skills-acquisition perspective, with only the Scottish offering any meaningful justification for their inclusion. The process of rounding, absent in the Northern Ireland curriculum, was presented as an explicit learning objective in the English, Scottish and Welsh curricula, although it was only the Scottish that made explicit the connections between rounding and computational estimation. In all curricula, both quantity estimation and number line estimation were effectively absent, as was any explicit acknowledgement that learning to estimate, irrespective of its form, has a developmental role in the learning of other mathematical topics.

Fractured Unions: Brexit and the Territorial Constitution

During the Brexit negotiations, the UK’s main preoccupation was not trade and market access but sovereignty, which it saw as threatened by membership of the EU. This was based upon one particular conception of sovereignty, and on the view that the UK is a unitary state, rather than a plurinational union in which the question of sovereignty has never been settled. These profound differences in understandings of sovereignty underlie differing orientations towards Europe. The UK system of devolution in place since the millennium was deeply embedded in assumptions derived from UK membership of the EU, so that Brexit destabilised the settlement. Brexit has unleashed both centrifugal forces, in the shape of secessionist pressures, and centripetal tendencies, in the form of UK Government attempts at recentralisation. While Northern Ireland received a special dispensation in the form of the Northern Ireland Protocol, demands for a differentiated Brexit for Scotland have been rebuffed. Neither the fragmentation of the UK into its constituent nations nor the restoration of the unitary state provides a straightforward solution. These would merely shift borders when the real problem is the existence and nature of borders in a world marked by shared and divided sovereignty, interdependence and asymmetry.

A Community Participatory Approach to Identify Common Evaluation Indicators for Community Health Worker Practice.

Substantial evidence supports community health workers' (CHWs) contributions to improving health and reducing inequities. Common evaluation indicators can strengthen the evidence base and support the profession. We describe the development of a 6-year community-academic partnership to identify common CHW process and outcome indicators. Methods include interviews, focus groups and a survey conducted in Michigan, a Summit in Oregon, consultations at national conferences, and regular conference calls. Using popular education as a primary strategy, we have honed our original goal, identified a set of 20 recommended constructs, developed a national constituency with international connections, and obtained dedicated funding. Participatory identification, development, and uptake of a set of common indicators (CI) for CHW practice will allow data to be aggregated at multiple levels, potentially leading to more sustainable financing of CHW programs. Given that measurement drives practice, a set of common CHW indicators can help to preserve the flexibility and integrity of the CHW role.

Lobbying for Labor Rights in Brazil’s National Constituent Assembly

Lobbying for Labor Rights in Brazil’s National Constituent Assembly

Sistema de Controle Interno do Poder Executivo Federal: Mudanças e Agentes Políticos na Assembleia Nacional Constituinte de 1987

A Assembleia Nacional Constituinte de 1987 marcou o começo da redemocratização no Brasil. As disputas por um projeto de país tomaram diferentes formas e temas. E o mesmo não foi diferente com o sistema de controle interno. A trajetória deste fenômeno data o início do século XX e adentra o século XXI. Muito popular na literatura da Administração Pública, muitos estudos foram publicados sobre o controle interno, mas majoritariamente com uma perspectiva da gestão pública ou da contabilidade. Este artigo analisa quais foram as mudanças institucionais no sistema de controle interno do Poder Executivo Federal Brasileiro entre a Constituição de 1967 e 1988. À luz da teoria de mudanças institucionais este artigo pretende contribuir com a literatura das Ciências Sociais e da Ciência Política sobre os tipos de mudanças ocorridas, os tipos de agentes políticos envolvidos em tais mudanças, bem como interpretar a influência do contexto político na época sobre os resultados promulgados com a Constituição Federal Brasileira de 1988.

‘The Nation will always prevail’, Representation, participation and contestation in the Belgian Constitution of 1831

Summary The exact nature of the concept of sovereignty enshrined by the Belgian Constitution of 1831 has recently become the object of academic debate. This article takes a stand in this debate by analyzing the representative system instated by the constituent National Congress. It is argued that the congressmen attributed primacy to the legislative Chamber because it concentrated in its midst all the individual wills of the people in order to express the general will or the wish of the Nation. Importantly, though, parliament was not the only representative of the national will, neither was it considered completely self-contained. Parliament’s expression of the national will was subject to constant evaluation by public opinion. When the assembly failed to respond to popular grievances, other representatives were qualified to address the issue: the king could disband the Chamber or pronounce his veto when the national interest required it. The jury, assessing press or political related crimes, could correct oppressive governmental action. And if all of this failed – and only then – the nation could ultimately resist and take directly matters in its own hands. Thus, it is argued that the character of sovereignty in the Belgian state system was ultimately popular.

BREXIT, democracy and the rule of law

AbstractThis article employs the image of the antisyzygy, the yoking of opposites, as an analytical tool to understand the dynamic and unresolved tensions built into the very idea of the European Union. It describes the EU as a forming a supranational constitutional space which does not supersede nation states, but instead seeks to preserve their specific identities while promoting and protecting the fundamental values they are called upon to embody as liberal constitutional democracies. The article then critically examines constitutional developments in the UK subsequent to its decision to leave the European Union and suggests that, paradoxically, it may have been the European Union which held the post‐War post‐imperial United Kingdom together and, without it and outside it, we may anticipate the UK's imminent dissolution into its original constituent nations – Brexit leads inexorably to BreUK‐up.