Reparative Measures Research Articles

Litigating Reproductive Health Rights in the Inter-American System: What Does a Winning Case Look Like?

Remedies and reparation measures emerging from the Inter-American System of Human Rights in reproductive health cases have consistently highlighted the need to develop, and subsequently implement, non-repetition remedies that protect, promote, and fulfill women's reproductive health rights. Litigation outcomes that determine there have been violations of reproductive rights are regarded as a "win" for health rights litigation, but when implementation fails, is a "win" still a win? There has been considerable success in litigating reproductive health rights cases, yet the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights are not adequately equipped to follow up on cases after they have been won. Successful and sustainable implementation of reproductive health rights law requires incorporation of non-repetition remedies in the form of legislation, education, and training that seeks to remodel existing social and cultural practices that hinder women's enjoyment of their reproductive rights. In order for a reproductive health rights case to ultimately be a "winner," case recommendations and decisions emerging from the Commission and Court must incorporate perspectives from members of civil society, with the ultimate goal being to develop measurable remedies that address underlying obstacles to domestic implementation.

From a Duty to Remember to an Obligation to Memory? Memory as Reparation in the Jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

Commemorations and reparations are central elements of the transitional justice agenda. The inclusion of memory-related measures among the steps that states are expected to take along the transitional process has been progressively translated from the transitional justice domain to the language of international law. Judicial and quasi-judicial human rights instances have required states to make and undertake memorials, commemorations and public acts of remembrance, both as an instrument of reparation for the individual victim and as a mechanism to warn against the repetition of the same abuses in the future. As a result of this trend, memory-related measures have progressively become part of the state obligation to provide reparations to victims. The inclusion of memory-related measures in the scope of the international obligation to repair, however, raises some thorny issues. This review of the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in relation to memory-related orders and analysis of the case of the memorial El Ojo que Llora in Peru critically assesses the emerging trend of using memory-related initiatives as measures of reparation determined by judicial organs.

Fortalecimiento del rol de la CIDH en el proceso de supervisión de cumplimiento de sentencias y planteamiento de reparaciones ante la Corte IDH

The use of integral reparation measures within the enforcement of the Inter American Court of Human Rights decisions embodies the effectiveness of the Inter American system of human rights. Therefore the author suggests that a strategic reform of such measures in the Inter American Commission on Human Rights deserves reflection. The article analyses the Inter American Commission on Human Rights’ supervision role of the Court’s decisions in order to propose a reform based on its function as guarantor of the public order within the inter-American system. Moreover, it proposes the strengthening of such role in reparation claims before the Court.

Social Policy or Reparative Justice? Challenges for Reparations in Contexts of Massive Displacement and Related Serious Human Rights Violations

This article proposes a criterion for the distinction between reparative justice, under the modality of compensatory measures in particular, and social policy. Drawing on the nature of the state’s obligations related to economic and social rights under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the article suggests that a policy measure could be considered a mechanism of reparative justice if it responds to progressive obligations. In contrast, strategies that respond to immediate obligations are considered social assistance or general social policies. The article discusses some specific reparation measures that fulfil this justice criterion in terms of education. It concludes by analysing the challenges faced by the application of the proposed measures with regard to the victims of displacement and related serious human rights violations in Colombia, and critically examines the possibility of implementing these types of reparative measures while the armed conflict continues.

Experience with an online helpdesk for equipment fault reporting in a radiation oncology department

The safe and accurate delivery of radiotherapy requires that the various items of equipment used in the treatment process are in proper working order. Unusual equipment behavior, interlocks, and faults need to be communicated promptly to the appropriate personnel, the issue investigated, and information regarding the nature of faults and any subsequent reparative measures recorded in a readily accessible location. At the Illawarra Cancer Care Centre, an online help desk was introduced for the purposes of reporting and tracking equipment faults. In the three years since its introduction, there have been in excess of 1,300 entries made, and it has proven to be a suitable alternative to the use of a physical logbook. Key benefits identified were improved accessibility, automated fault notification, and the ability to search, review and update entries for particular equipment faults. It has been a useful tool for assessing the long‐term performance of each piece of equipment, identifying specific servicing needs, and for substantiating the effectiveness of the service performed. The online help desk has not replaced the need for direct methods of verbal communication between the various professional groups involved with monitoring equipment performance. However, it is a very useful tool for supporting that communication.PACS number: 87.55.‐x, 87.56.bd

Ley de víctimas y desaparición forzada en Colombia

This article aims to analyze the inclusion in the Victim Restitution Act Land (Act 1448 of 2011), measures of reparation for victims of enforced disappearance under the Colombian armed conflict. It also discusses the mechanisms for the prevention and elimination of the crime of forced disappearance in Colombia within the framework of this Law This policy describes the progress and national and international jurisprudence on the subject, stressing the repair. The paper discusses the importance of research, search and delivery of the remains of the disappeared, as a preventive measure in the Forced Disappearance.

Providing Reparation in Situations of Mass Victimization - Key Challenges Involved

An abundance of scholarly literature exists on reparation theories and legal procedures or administrative programmes set up to provide reparation to victims of mass atrocities or international crimes, oft en also referred to as gross violations of human rights and humanitarian law. This article aims to provide an analysis of what we consider to be the main challenges to carefully consider when devising and implementing reparative justice measures, whereby the focus is on victims of international crimes leading to mass victimization. In all regions and countries violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms occur and victims should be entitled to redress and reparation. The focus is on situations involving gross and massive violations of human rights, often amounting to crimes under international law as defined in the Statute of the ICC. A first challenge is how to conceptualize victimhood in post-conflict situations. As noted by ani “conflict or repression is often so widespread and traumatising that the entire society is victimised, and there is a need to redefine victims as the entire society’’ (Mani 2005, 68). The conception on who should be considered victims in societies in transition poses several complexities that will be further reflected upon. The second challenge is how to adapt the existing judicial right to an effective individual remedy to the context of mass victimization where it is often claimed that collective reparations might be better suited to provide reparative justice (Roht-Arriaza 2003-2004; Van Boven 1995). Implementing a collective perspective may also result in including general goals of development aid in reparative measures. The third challenge will reflect upon this, by some contested, inclusion of development strategies in reparation programmes (De Greiff & Duthie 2009; Saris & Loft s 2009). In order to present arguments on how to balance this individual versus collective perspective and the inclusion of development goals, we will draw from victimological studies into the needs of victims and notions presented by the human security concept. We realize that providing reparative justice to victims of international crimes requires tailor-made solutions in which the specific (historical, cultural and economic) context of the country should be taken into account. That being said, we do believe that the challenges discussed in article apply in general to situations of mass victimization.

State Responsibility to act with Due Diligence in the Elimination of Violence against Women

The mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women has for nearly two decades observed and paid attention to the responsibility of the State in general and to the principle of due diligence in particular. The due diligence standard serves as a tool for rights holders to hold States accountable, by providing an assessment framework for ascertaining what constitutes effective fulfilment of a State’s obligations, and for analysing its actions or omissions. While laws, policies and resources are crucial to address violence against women and girls, efforts must include actions to combat the structural and systemic challenges which are a cause and consequence of such violence. This requires recognising that State responsibility to act with due diligence is both a systemic-level responsibility, i.e. the responsibility of States to create good and effective systems and structures that address the root causes and consequences of violence against women; and also an individual-level responsibility, i.e., the responsibility of States to provide each victim with effective measures of prevention, protection, punishment and reparation.

French restitution, German compensation: Algerian Jews and Vichy's financial legacy

Post-World War II German reparative measures had originally been created for the benefit of European Jews. The April 2004 official German compensation programme for Jews who were interned in World War II included reparations to Algerians Jews of North Africa who were involved in a history of German indemnification superimposed upon a prior history of French restitution. Post-war German reparations since 1952 continue to be rooted in ongoing vibrant debates about coming to terms with Germany's Nazi past. In contrast, France's attitudes and policies towards the Vichy past in France and Algeria foreclosed its financial responsibility to Algerian Jews (or for that matter Algerian Muslims) for what Frantz Fanon would call a ‘just reparation’ for the crimes of colonialism. Consequently, the case of Algerian Jewry and what happened to the community from the beginning of World War II through Algeria's 1962 independence, and into the era of their settlement en masse in France (where they received reparations as Pieds-Noirs, or ‘repatriated’ European colonial settlers), draws on Holocaust studies, post-colonial studies, Algerian Jewish diasporic history and the dynamic unfolding of French–Algerian decolonisation.

Get Rid of Banks and Build Up a Modern Financial World

The financial crisis has revealed fatal institutional and structural deficits at the finance market. Politics has reacted to the financial crisis with a sea of legal bills and regulations. But all regulating efforts are merely system-imminent reparation measures and do not solve the core problems. For this, a fundamental financial reform is needed. This article analyzes the finance system’s shortcomings, documents the reform approaches from the past three years, and designs a base structure for modern finance architecture without banks.

Fugitive reconciliation: The agonistics of respect, resentment and responsibility in post-conflict society

Traditionally, transitional justice has referred to that field of theoretical scholarship that proffers recuperative strategies for political societies divided by a history of violence. Through the establishment of truth commissions, public confessionals and reparative measures, transitional justice regimes have sought to establish restorative conditions that might help reconcile historical antagonists both to each other and to the trauma of their shared past. Because of some of the theoretical lapses in this scholarship some have turned recently to the field of radical democratic and ‘new pluralist’ thought – and especially to agonistic literature – to foreground a theory of post-conflict reconciliation based not on the principles of the sublimation of difference, but rather the perpetual deferral of accord. This essay works both to underscore that effort, as well as to (productively) problematize it. Through unorthodox readings of Giorgio Agamben, Jean Amery and Sheldon Wolin, the essay argues that an emphasis on messianicity as the temporal mode of political repair is ultimately less productive for what I call an agonistics of reconciliation than a more nuanced approach to what Wolin calls ‘fugitive democracy’. Where the former is allied with a problematic politics of mutual respect, the latter affirms a more germane politics of abiding resentment. In the end, a startling conclusion is drawn from reading agonistic reconciliation through Wolin: democracy may be a political experience reserved for scenes of transitional justice alone.

In situ damage testing of rock mass in large underground cavern

To understand the spatial damage and deterioration mechanism of rock materials during excavation, an in situ test is carried out in an underground cavern 28·5 m in width, 21 m in height and 325 m in length. In this experimental cavern, the spatial distribution and intensity of rock damage are exposed by non‐destructive ultrasonic testing after excavation. The distribution function of spatial damage has been calculated based on the measured data. To protect wall rock, reparative measures of damaged rocks are discussed based on the measured results and the conception of damage reparation, which gives inspiration to the underground engineering design.

Affirmation, acknowledgment of in-group responsibility, group-based guilt, and support for reparative measures.

Three studies, 2 conducted in Israel and 1 conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina, demonstrated that affirming a positive aspect of the self can increase one's willingness to acknowledge in-group responsibility for wrongdoing against others, express feelings of group-based guilt, and consequently provide greater support for reparation policies. By contrast, affirming one's group, although similarly boosting feelings of pride, failed to increase willingness to acknowledge and redress in-group wrongdoing. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated the mediating role of group-based guilt. That is, increased acknowledgment of in-group responsibility for out-group victimization produced increased feelings of guilt, which in turn increased support for reparation policies to the victimized group. Theoretical and applied implications are discussed.

Transitional Justice and Victims' Rights before the End of a Conflict: The Unusual Case of Colombia

AbstractIn a context of continuing armed conflict, a comprehensive scheme of transitional justice has been developed in Colombia since 2005 through the Law of Justice and Peace, with the aim of achieving peace with one of the armed actors in the conflict, the paramilitary groups. The clear link between the demobilisation of illegal armed groups and the rights of the victims is the main feature of the Colombian process. This article provides a systematic review of the implementation of the law, focusing on the institutions, mechanisms and procedures put in place to fulfil its goals. Emphasis is given to the legal category of ‘victim’, victims' rights and victim reparation measures. By exploring how the scheme works in principle and in practice, we are able to assess the prospects for victims' rights in Colombia today.

Glenohumeral Microfracture.

The treatment of symptomatic cartilage lesions in the glenohumeral joint presents a significant challenge due to poor healing characteristics. Diagnosis of glenohumeral chondral defects is not always clear, and while current imaging modalities are good, many lesions require arthroscopy to fully appreciate. Arthroplasty remains an effective treatment in low-demand patients; however, younger, higher demand individuals may be treated with less invasive reparative measures. This paper discusses the diagnosis of glenohumeral chondral pathology and presents the technique, rehabilitation, and available outcomes following microfracture in the shoulder.

Improving Support of Residents After a Patient Suicide: A Residency Case Study

The suicide of a patient is arguably the most traumatic event that can occur during a psychiatrist’s professional life. A substantial portion of psychiatrists in general practice (15%–68%) will experience at least one patient suicide during their careers (1, 2), and approximately onethird of psychiatric residents experience a patient suicide during residency (3). A patient’s suicide frequently leads the treating psychiatrist to experience considerable stress, guilt, shame, anxiety, and even PTSD-like symptoms of intrusion, hypervigilance, depersonalization, and avoidance (4). Residents, at the early stage of their careers, are uniquely vulnerable to stress from this event (5). A patient suicide may cause the resident to doubt his or her clinical skills, the decision to enter psychiatry, and previous treatment decisions (5). Residents may also feel anger toward their supervisors for providing inadequate guidance, and co-residents may feel relief that they were not the treating resident (6). However, in their positions as trainees, residents have a unique opportunity for personal and professional growth at the time of such an event (7, 8). Nonetheless, in one study of Canadian medical students and residents (9), of whom nearly two-thirds had encountered at least one suicide, only one-third had received any formal education regarding the impact of suicide on residents. It is ironic that we as psychiatrists, particularly attuned to the needs of others, often avoid discussing these issues with colleagues, especially given the potential distress such events may cause. We each experienced the suicide of one patient during our residencies at Columbia and discovered several deficiencies in our methods for dealing with them. The composite patient described in Appendix 1 illustrates some of these problems. First, we found a lack of basic knowledge by residents in several areas, including the expected emotional responses, the frequency of patient suicides during residency, and helpful institutional procedures that a resident could access. Second, we noted isolation and lack of emotional support and appropriate mentorship for the affected resident. Finally, there was a lack of institutional support and constructive, noncritical reviews of suicide. To address these problems at our institution and the call by Academic Psychiatry for developing supportive and educational interventions for residents experiencing patient suicide (10), we describe here the interventions we developed at Columbia University, including curricular changes, development of a crisis support team, and a formal review of the event, and other constructive and reparative measures we have taken.

Truth, Reconciliation, and the Restoration of the State: Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians

I never wished it for barbarians that they should have history of Empire laid upon them. --J. M. Coetzee (Waiting for Barbarians 151) In Writing History, Writing Trauma, Dominick LaCapra observes that South African and Commission (TRC) was in its own way a trauma recovery center (43) providing a social mechanism for South Africa to work through trauma caused apartheid. LaCapra's observation suggests that TRC offers a method through which rupture caused centuries of domination under a system rooted in racial and cultural inequality might be healed reconciling oppressed with oppressors. motto on TRC's home page, Truth. Road to Reconciliation, summarizes commission's ideology. singular truth here implies that an empirically verifiable truth can be found, and juxtaposition of The Road to Reconciliation with Truth suggests that publication or voicing of truth will lead directly to reconciliation in South Africa, perhaps even that for TRC, Truth and The Road to Reconciliation have become equivalent terms. TRC's goals, however, are implicitly more ambitious than either LaCapra or its internet home page indicate. TRC is a part of South Africa's Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, so one of its aims from outset has been to achieve justice in South Africa. Exposing truth, it implies, brings not only reconciliation but also a sort of justice. Although it predated establishment of TRC 15 years, J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for Barbarians anticipates and challenges TRC's conflation of quest for truth with quest for justice. Like TRC, much of criticism of Coetzee's novel sees exposing experiences of oppressed a sort of justice, but I see in novel a pointed critique: state's remembering of often fragmentary evidence of oppression amounts not to justice in reparative sense but rather to an expedient, a way to secure political legitimacy. Waiting for Barbarians articulates problem of justice in South Africa and challenges basic premises of TRC exploring, first, difficulty of establishing truth about experience of oppressed and, second, manipulation of their voices to protect interests of state. Something called restorative justice [T]he perpetrator ... should be given opportunity to be reintegrated into community he has injured his offense. --Desmond Mpilo Tutu (55) justice that TRC seeks for South Africa does not attempt to heal victim at expense of perpetrator. Rather, TRC's goal is to heal perpetrator alongside victim, to perpetrator a viable part of a new South African society that values both victim and perpetrator equally. According to Promotion of National Unity and Act of 1995, legislation that established TRC, its stated purpose is fourfold. (1) First, TRC is charged with creating as complete a picture possible of atrocities of apartheid recording both the perspectives of victims and motives and perspectives of persons responsible for those atrocities. Second, TRC serves to facilitate of amnesty to those who make full disclosure of their involvement in violations. Third, TRC is to restore human and civil dignity of victims of atrocities by granting them an opportunity to relate their own accounts and by recommending reparation measures. Finally, TRC is to construct a narrative of apartheid based on its findings that provides as comprehensive an account possible and recommends measures to prevent future violations of rights (2.3.1). Although part of its task is to recommendations about reparations, TRC's primary concern is to foster social healing that reconciles divisions in South African society and allows it to carry on a unified state. …

Vascular injury and complication in neurosurgical spine surgery

Vascular injury is an uncommon, but not rare complication of spine surgery. The consequence of vascular injury may be quite devastating, but its incidence can be reduced by understanding the mechanisms of injury. Properly managing vascular injury can reduce mortality and morbidity of patients. A review of the literature was conducted to provide an update on the etiology and management of vascular injury and complication in neurosurgical spine surgery. The vascular injuries were categorized according to each surgical procedure responsible for the injury, i.e., anterior screw fixation of the odontoid fracture, anterior cervical spine surgery, posterior C1-2 arthrodesis, posterior cervical spine surgery, anterolateral approach for thoracolumbar spine fracture, posterior thoracic spine surgery, scoliosis surgery, anterior lumbar interbody fusion (ALIF), lumbar disc arthroplasty, lumbar discectomy, and posterior lumbar spine surgery. The incidence, mechanisms of injury, and reparative measures were discussed for each surgical procedure. Detailed coverage was especially given to vascular injury associated with ALIF, which may have been underestimated. The accumulation of anatomical knowledge and advanced imaging studies has made complex spine surgery safer and more reliable. It is not clear, however, whether the incidence of vascular injury has been reduced significantly in all procedures of spine surgery. Emerging new techniques, such as microendoscopic discectomy and lumbar disc arthroplasty, seem to be promising, but we need to keep in mind their safety issues, including vascular injury and complication.

Reparation in the German Criminal Justice System: What is, and what Remains to be Done

Part one of this article shows how the idea that offenders should make reparation to their victims figures within the German criminal justice system. In analysing the present state of the law, the author differentiates between the procedural and material aspects of reparation. Under the rubric of ‘procedural aspects of reparation’, the structure, function, and practical role of the German ‘Nebenklage’ are described, a feature that allows the victim to participate at trial yet — unlike the ‘victim-impact-statement’ approach taken in some common-law countries — shies away from giving the victim a voice in sentence-finding. In its second part, this article deplores the lack of an overall conceptual foundation for a more fundamental and systematic integration of the concept of reparation into the criminal justice system. With regard to material reparation, the author proposes a revised system of criminal sanctions which would feature measures of reparation next to measures of reprobation (‘punishment’) as a major and regular avenue, or ‘track’, of the state's response to crime.

Microglial response to brain injury: a brief synopsis.

In addition to astrocytes and oligodendrocytes, microglia represent the third major population of glial cells within the central nervous system (CNS). Microglia are distributed ubiquitously throughout the brain and spinal cord, and one of their main functions is to monitor and sustain neuronal health. Microglial cells are quite sensitive to even minor disturbances in CNS homeostasis, and they become readily activated during most neuropathologic conditions, including peripheral nerve injury, trauma and stroke, inflammatory disease, and neurotoxicant-induced neuronal injury. During activation, microglia display conspicuous functional plasticity, which involves changes in cell morphology, cell number, cell surface receptor expression, and production of growth factors and cytokines. The many changes occurring in activated cells reflect the altered functional states of microglia that are induced by signals arising from injured neurons. Thus, neuronal-microglial signaling plays a fundamental role in understanding how the CNS responds to injury. Reactive microgliosis should be viewed as a cellular effort to initiate ameliorative and reparative measures in the injured brain.