Open Society Institute Research Articles

A Homeopathic Success Story in Serbia

A fifteen-year summary of a Homeopathic Education and Professional Development Project in Serbia funded by the Soros Foundation.

The overuse of pre-trial detention: causes and consequences

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsMartin SchönteichMartin Schönteich is Senior Legal Officer, National Criminal Justice Reform, at the Open Society Justice Initiative, New York

Global Initiative on Psychiatry

Global Initiative on Psychiatry

Report: The American University in Cairo’s Conference on Egypt and International Models of Regulation and Accountability

From unrealized legislation in Tunisia to the example of the US Federal Communications Commission, a spectrum of international examples of media regulation was presented at a conference titled “Egypt and International Models of Broadcast Regulation and Accountability.” Guest speakers from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, the United States, Tunisia, Libya, and Morocco spoke about how media regulation works in their home countries and provided lessons for Egypt as it embarks on reform of its broadcast laws. The conference was organized by AUC’s Kamal Adham Center for Television and Digital Journalism with the support of a grant from the Open Society Foundation. Although more questions were raised than answered at the February 17th conference, held at the Cairo Marriott in Zamalek, everyone agreed that any efforts toward building a viable and fair regulatory system must be overseen by a pluralistic and independent regulatory body.

Assessing Legal Advocacy to Advance Roma Health in Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia

Across Europe, Roma suffer extreme marginalisation, negatively impacting their health. Many cannot access healthcare at all. For others, the health system is a hostile place. At the same time, good legal frameworks are in place to protect health rights, and there is increasing recognition of systemic violations experienced by Roma. Essential to building on this momentum and closing the gap between standards and implementation is Roma ability to conduct legal advocacy Since 2010, the Open Society Foundations has supported Roma engagement in Macedonia, Romania and Serbia in the following advocacy strategies: i) legal empowerment, ii) documentation and advocacy, iii) media advocacy, and iv) strategic litigation. This article presents a framework developed to evaluate the effectiveness of these efforts and a baseline against which outcomes can be measured in a few years. The evaluation framework provides a qualitative assessment of Roma capacity, accountability for violations, changes in law and practice, and impact on communities. Findings reveal that that presently Roma lack knowledge of their rights and rarely challenge violations. Accountability in healthcare is practically non-existent. However, where legal advocacy has been used, violations decrease, and power dynamics shift. As healthcare becomes more responsive to communities, it also better serves non-Roma citizens.

Cooler Bandits

Cooler Bandits Reginald Dwayne Betts (bio) They mourn together, drown with the rest of their brothers in cuffs. Say they were lost: chaos with a bullet; say there was no rest from being hard. & that they, all four restless, ran into the night with guns, not prayers. Say they thought they couldn’t afford rest, not in that Akron. Who, cuffed to the hood rests? Say they felt power: The burners made folks take them serious, burned flashing steel into nightmares, ruined rest. Troubled their belief in God. Shattered air. They didn’t kill though. Just waved it in the air & their voices thundered, & rooms became still. The city didn’t rest when it started. Say violence was in the air— & they were all so damn young. Call them heirs of cell doors clanking closed; call them lost inside prison with violence, again, in the air. 50 witnesses. The lady said, “I was praying.” Poochie knows. The lady says, “I was praying for the boys.” Their eulogies were there, in the air. They should’ve [End Page 113] said guilty in song, made a hymnal of it—a plea, started praying in court. Say the gavel burned them, pounding gavel more threat than any burner. They learn time in prison, learn the calendar & confined air. They wake young & bound by count time & chow call, burning in a purgatory where there is no rest. & their lives: music, that same melody—, where prison is the imitation of life. No burner saves a man from time. & locked up is to be lost. Decades, love, the smell of Akron. What isn’t lost? Frankie says he was far-gone. Say that made the burner the natural choice? Say prison teaches you to pray, to fall down on knees & start whispering as if prayer is the one thing missing. Maybe it is. Say prayer is prison’s gift. A way to hunger. A way to burn a shout on your brain. A way to live in the world without being prey. A fifty-year sentence buckles a man’s knees into prayer. Charlie say, “only thing matter is where you at.” This air, he means, will suffocate most, change those not preyed upon, ruin those broken by [End Page 114] loving the world in prayer. If they couldn’t rest on the block, they couldn’t rest in prison, not when every day they scuffled to wrest hope from concrete & carceral. Say there is only prayer, as if speaking to the unseen is a way to not feel lost. Imagine ten consecutive twelve-year bids, imagine being lost in that. They walked rec yards with muscles flaring, lost to what awaited—. Imagine, time is god & prayers to her are answered by victims’ cries. What lost would save them: not safety, not sanity, not time lost— so what they were born where factories closed & the burners they held made them legends. Say you can be lost in what gives you a name. Ask them, they know Akron is lost inside all that prison has given & snatched. The air of the city didn’t drift to rec yards, there they breathed air at the crossroads where some men have to go back, lost, looking for they self. Ask Charlie, Donovon, Frankie, about rest, ask Poochie. Ask every man in every prison. There is rest in the grave. Pressed against tomorrow, prison is what the rest of us have nightmares about. [End Page 115] They want forgiveness. They’re lost in the aftermath of what made them infamous. Maybe praying is the only real option. Maybe only God can forgive what burns a man’s history, forgive that smoke wafting in the air. [End Page 116] Reginald Dwayne Betts Reginald Dwayne Betts is a husband and father of two sons. The author of the memoir A Question of Freedom (Avery/Penguin 2009) and the collection of poetry titled Shahid Reads His Own Palm (Alice James Books, 2010), Betts has been awarded fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, the Open Society Institute, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Warren Wilson College. As a poet, essayist, and national spokesperson for the Campaign for Youth Justice, Betts writes and...

Free Access to Law is it Here to Stay? Good Practices Handbook

This current good practices guide is part of the 'Free Access to Law – Is it Here to Stay?' research project launched in 2009. The project was originally led by LexUM (University of Montreal), SAFLII (The South African Legal Information Institute) and the Centre for Internet and Society (India), with funding from the International Development Research Centre and the Open Society Institute. The outputs of the project are: A research methodology guide; An environmental scan report; A collection of case studies; This present Good Practices Handbook; The Free Access to Law online library providing access to a number of papers on the topic.

Report of TNI/IDPC Expert Seminar on the Future of the UN Drug Conventions

As the debate on drug policy and law reform gathers momentum on the international stage, the failings of the three UN drug control conventions (1961, 1971 and 1988) have come into stark relief. Criticisms of the global drug control regime established by the drug treaties have now entered the mainstream public discourse and political debate. The discussions around treaty reform that would allow or facilitate a wider spectrum of approaches to drugs are assuming a degree of urgency. The technicalities of convention reform form an important part of the discussion but arguably subservient to the wider political discourse. Until sufficient political will exists, substantive reform of the UN drug conventions will not be possible, despite growing recognition that the current drug control regime is not working. For this to occur the political calculus will need to shift so that the cost-benefit analysis for individual States moves decisively in favour of proactive engagement. This expert seminar is the fifth in a series of expert discussions on drug policy funded by the European Commission Drug Prevention and Information Programme and the Open Society Institute. The report of this seminar has been divided up under key headings that reflect the structure of the days’ discussions, with a summary of key points and conclusions at the end. Exploring the technical and bureaucratic dimension of convention reform The political calculus: Dealing with sub-optimality How to constructively frame the debate on convention reform Potential drivers of change / avenues for progress Lessons from Latin America Lessons from Bolivia The role of Europe Discussion and Conclusions

Managing a New ‘Partnership’

Defence allegations about the malpractice of intermediaries in the Lubanga Case have revealed the ICC’s dependence upon intermediaries. Yet, surprisingly, the role of intermediaries has received relatively little attention in the academic literature. Since 2009, the Registry has been developing a court-wide set of guidelines to manage the Court’s relationship with intermediaries, which, if adopted, will substitute a large measure of standardisation over the disparate policies and practices currently in place across the various ICC organs and units. The Victims Rights Working Group and the Open Society Justice Initiative in conjunction with the International Refugee Rights Initiative are prominent amongst civil society actors that are playing a key role in advocating for the protection of, and support for, intermediaries through guidelines. This article examines the emerging position of intermediaries in international criminal law. It argues that adopting guidelines will inculcate a semi-institutionalised status for intermediaries, which both reflects, and contributes to, ‘professionalization’ in international criminal law. However, ‘professionalization’ is problematic to the extent to which it creates obstacles for the involvement of counter-hegemonic voices in international criminal law. Moreover, whatever gains guidelines may bestow on the Court and intermediaries, it is unclear how they can or will mesh with the emerging judicial response to intermediaries at the ICC. Ultimately, the increased regulation of intermediaries is likely to have a profound impact on relations between the different ICC organs; and it is set to be a touchstone for civil society–ICC relations more generally.

Initiatives to enhance African Environmental Science

START has made a significant contribution to capacity development all around the world but particularly so in Africa. They developed a model which lead to the holistic development of the person as well as maintaining an excellent quality of scientifc outputs. This model has been adopted and developed further by three other programmes which are discussed in this paper. The three programmes are 1) Building the Next Generation of African Scholars, funded by the Carnegie Foundation, 2) The Climate Leadership Programme funded by the BMZ Ministry in Germany through GIZ and 3) The Post-graduate Curriculum Initiative for Global Change funded by the Open Society Foundation.

Expert Seminar on Proportionality of Sentencing for Drug Offences

The Expert Seminar on Proportionality of Sentencing for Drug Offences was an initiative of the Transnational Institute working together with the International Drug Policy Consortium (‘IDPC’) and co-hosted by the Sentencing Council of England and Wales. The seminar was funded by the European Commission and the Open Society Institute and took place in London, England in May 2011.This seminar is the third in a series of expert discussions on drug policy designed to feed into moments of opportunity for policy and law reform at national and international level with detailed technical analysis and through examples of best-practice from across different jurisdictions. The moment of opportunity in this case was the Sentencing Council’s consultation on sentencing for drug offences which is due to produce definitive sentencing guidelines for England and Wales in the next year.A total of 31 people attended and comprised a mixture of domestic and international policy officials, the judiciary, and practitioners as well as representatives from non-governmental organisations and academic institutions.Four themes were covered over the course of the day: Proportionality; the International Human Rights Perspective; The UK Experience and Consultation on Sentencing for Drug Offences; The Concept of Proportionality with a Focus on Different Levels of Involvement in Drug Offences; Drug ‘mules.’

What was Contemporary Art?

Abstract This article contributes to a recent debate around the question “What Is Contemporary Art?” It brings into discussion certain key aspects of the activities of the Soros Centers for Contemporary Art (SCCA)—a network of contemporary art centers established by the Open Society Institute in Eastern Europe during the 1990s. The author draws upon distinctions between this new type of art institution and the Union of Artists (the organizations which represented the interests of artists under socialism), highlighting distinct artistic, aesthetic and economic characteristics of each institutional model.

TNI/IDPC Expert Seminar on Herbal Stimulants and Legal Highs

A grey area has emerged between what is legal and what is not as states struggle with how to respond to the many new synthetic compounds emerging onto the market. Of the various types of 'Legal highs' the seminar focused on stimulants because of the parallels with the other main drug-policy issue of the moment; i.e. the status of traditional herbal stimulants. These older discussions have been reinvigorated by: Bolivia's efforts to de-schedule coca-lead at UN level; the debates on the status of khat between EU States, and of krater across Asia; and the increasing stride of legitimate cannabis use on the domestic front, as in for example Spain. It was hoped that it would be constructive to look at each of these phenomena through the prism of the other. This approach was also considered appropriate because there are shared characteristics between the synthetic and herbal stimulants markets (i.e. they tend to be more recreational) as compared with psychedelics.The seminar aimed to consider the legal responses of various jurisdictions to these issues and the lessons that can be drawn. Specific attention was to be directed at whether traditional criminal justice models suit legal highs or whether medicines law or other types of legal framework would be more appropriate. Broadening out to a policy-perspective, the seminar sought discussion of strategies to diminish the dominance of the concentrated and more harmful stimulant substances and steer the market towards milder forms. Whether or not, to this end, milder substances should be made licit and available, was an issue put directly on the table. The Expert Seminar on Herbal Stimulants and Legal highs was an initiative of the Transnational Institute ('TNI') working together with the International Drug Policy Consortium ('IDPC') and funded by the European Commission and the Open Society Institute. The Seminar took place in Amsterdam on 30-31st October 2011. The seminar is the fourth in a series of expert discussions on drug policy designed to feed into moments of opportunity for policy and law reform at national and international level with detailed technical analysis. This seminar was timed to maximises the opportunities presented by Bolivia's efforts to de-schedule coca leaf at UN level and the European Commission's intent to create legislative framework of control for herbal stimulants and Legal highs. Four subjects were covered over the course of the day: - Market Dynamics - Herbal Stimulants - Legal Control Mechanisms - EU Strategies on New Substances

“Soft Law” Entrepreneurship and the Right of the Child to a Nationality in an Era of Migration

Nationality and statelessness continue to be contested areas of international human rights law. While the right to acquire a nationality is firmly established several international instruments, it is still not clear precisely how this right operates. Which state has an obligation to grant its nationality? To whom? And when? This lack of specificity is a consequence of the fact that the right to determine who is national and who is not has been at the core of state sovereignty for centuries. In fact, it is only the last half century or so that states have begun to acknowledge that nationality determination is subject to certain limitations. (1) At the same time, the need to establish clearer norms is greater than ever. Today, 3.1 percent of the world's population are migrants. While the percentage of migrants has remained fairly stable over the last decade, the total number has increased from 150 million 2000 to 214 million 2010, according to the International Organization for Migration. (2) Most migrants have a nationality somewhere, although a relatively small number does not: they are However, for all migrants access to nationality--whether their state of origin or the country of residence--is important to ensure access to a host of other rights and services including identity documentation, diplomatic protection, consular services, health care, social security, education, and work. In the particular fields of nationality and statelessness, the problem is not so much the lack of an international regime, but rather that the existing regime is very weak. Basic norms exist, and to the extent that these norms deal with reduction, prevention, and avoidance of statelessness, UNHCR has a clear international mandate. The weakness stems from the lack of specificity as to the operation of existing norms, as alluded to above. Because of this, activists and policymakers have turned to subsidiary sources of international as well as soft law order to strengthen the legal framework and achieve and policy reform. In this short essay the role of strategic litigation, resolutions by the UN Human Rights Council, and international expert consultations will be highlighted. Treaty law, and to a lesser extent customary international law, provides some fundamental norms this field. With respect to the particular right of the to a nationality, the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) stipulates Article 7 that every has a right to acquire a nationality, and that this right should be implemented in particular where the would otherwise be stateless. This provision mirrors the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (Article 24), as well as several regional instruments which often provide more detail as to how the right should be implemented. At regional levels Africa, Europe, and the Americas, different treaties provide that the has a right to acquire the nationality of the country of birth if the would otherwise be (3) We also find this norm the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. Indeed, this would be the most logical interpretation of CRC Article 7 too, especially light of the best interest of the child principle contained Article 3. However, the Committee the Rights of the Child has yet to provide guidance on interpretation of Articles 7 and 8. Enforcing the right of the to acquire the nationality the country of birth if the would otherwise be stateless is an effective way to reduce and prevent statelessness among migrant children. This was recently attempted the case of Nubian Children v. Kenya. (4) Nubian children Kenya have suffered from discrimination access to nationality, and some cases statelessness, for many decades. The case was brought before the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) by the Open Society Justice Initiative and the Institute for Human Rights and Development Africa, on behalf of Nubian children. …

Fuzzy Citizenship in Global Society*

Journal of Political PhilosophyVolume 20, Issue 4 p. 456-480 Original Article Fuzzy Citizenship in Global Society* Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, Mathias Koenig-Archibugi Government & International Relations, London School of Economics and Political ScienceSearch for more papers by this author Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, Mathias Koenig-Archibugi Government & International Relations, London School of Economics and Political ScienceSearch for more papers by this author First published: 25 July 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9760.2011.00405.xCitations: 20 † I owe a special debt of gratitude to Robert Goodin for many helpful suggestions. I am also grateful to Hans Agné, Daniele Archibugi, Leonardo Baccini, Jared Barnes, Luis Cabrera, Nicola Dunbar, Eva Erman, James Fishkin, David Held, Thomas Hale, Mary Kaldor, Eszter Kollar, Cristina Lafont, Patti Lenard, Leif Lewin, Kate Macdonald, Terry Macdonald, Raffaele Marchetti, Antonio Masala, Paul Muldoon, Eva-Maria Nag, Sofia Näsström, Adam Quinn, Miriam Ronzoni, Michael Saward, Hannah Söderbaum, Tom Sorell, Theresa Squatrito, Jonas Tallberg, and Laura Valentini for valuable questions and comments. While completing this article, I benefitted from an Open Society Institute research grant. I remain responsible for the article's shortcomings. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Citing Literature Volume20, Issue4December 2012Pages 456-480 RelatedInformation

European Accreditation of Public Health Education

The European Agency for Accreditation in Public Health Education (APHEA) was launched in 2011. This followed nearly two decades of efforts in a variety of programmes supported by international donor agencies, and others that provided experience and field testing of peer review systems for schools of public health in Europe. The Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region (ASPHER) Public Health Education European Review (PEER) project, devised with the aid of WHO EURO in the early 1990s and later by the Open Society Institute (OSI) within the framework of a joint ASPHER-OSI Program from 2000–2005, helped to develop a cadre of expertise on the process of international peer review and standards that are compatible with a full accreditation process.The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of the background, criteria and current pilot phase of European accreditation for the Master of Public Health degree and equivalent study programmes. Undergoing the accreditation process will help longstanding and new schools review their programmes to meet new European accreditation system standards and provide students, graduates and potential employers with confidence in the future acceptability of their credentials. The new accreditation agency was established by a consortium of European public health organisations and represents a new phase for development of standards and quality of education systems in Europe to face the challenges of workforce development for a “New Public Health” era in the 21st century.

The Roles of Non-Governmental Organizations in Development of Schools of Public Health:An Example from Eastern Europe and Central Asia

The international non-governmental community has played a major role in developing schools of public health and continues to do so. Nearly a century ago, seminal investments of the Rockefeller Foundation played a pivotal role in developing schools of public health in North America and several abroad. Today, involvement of non-governmental organizations in continuing development of schools of public health is needed, as many countries throughout the world continue to battle the burden of disease with insufficient numbers and quality of trained public health workers. In this paper we discuss in particular the roles of the Open Society Institute working together with the Association of Schools of Public Health in the European Region to foster the development of schools of public health in formerly socialist countries. We describe the development process in three example countries (Ukraine, Lithuania, and Macedonia), along with the difficulties they have faced. Government support and accreditation processes are needed to sustain the efforts to launch new schools of public health and to ensure their quality. The lessons learned in these initiatives are relevant to future development of public health education to provide the workforce required to address needs of professional public health in the 21st century.

Aspirations and wellbeing in Romanian and US undergraduates

Updating cross-cultural research of the past decade on the relationship between life aspirations and wellbeing, we compared Romanian (N=69) and US (N=64) undergraduates on the contribution of the importance and likelihood of attaining intrinsic and extrinsic aspirations to psychological maladjustment and life satisfaction, and on the qualitative meaning they assign to financial success. Similarly to prior studies, we found that extrinsic and intrinsic aspirations tended to be either negatively or positively correlated with life satisfaction, respectively; however, wealth predicted life satisfaction for Romanian students. Unlike previous research, we found generally negative relationships between intrinsic aspirations and psychological maladjustment. Although there were no differences between Romanian and US undergraduates on extrinsic and intrinsic orientation, on the overall importance of attaining aspirations, or on specific extrinsic and intrinsic aspirations, Romanian students expressed weaker expectations of fulfilling intrinsic aspirations than did US students. Finally, the groups produced similar rankings of aspirations and assigned similar meaning to financial success. The results favored a social cognitive rather than a self-determination model of psychological wellbeing in that expectations for attaining aspirations were more often predictive of life satisfaction than were their content. We interpret these findings and their convergence and departure from earlier research in terms of political economic, demographic, and cultural factors. We encourage future cross-cultural investigations of the social construction of aspirations, subsidiation of seemingly contradictory aspirations to each other, and cognitive and ecological mediation of the complex relationship of aspirations to psychological functioning.

New paradigms, old hierarchies? Problems and possibilities of US supremacy in a networked world

As Obama took office at the beginning of 2009, several new figures attained important advisory positions in his administration. Anne-Marie Slaughter, former Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and now Director of Policy Planning in the State Department, is a prime example of the ‘change’ that has come to Washington. In recent years she has been part of a growing academic circle that views networks at the centre of international relations. At the same time, she has promoted the idea that the United States can be ‘the most connected country’ in such a world. By taking a closer look into the discourse of US supremacy and the current state-of-the-art in the theory of transnational networks, this article reveals the divergence between wishful thinking and reality in Slaughter’s position. By analysing her position and introducing three case studies, we conclude that the complexity of power relations in a world of networks makes any assumption of US supremacy highly problematic. Some might ‘mirror’ the beliefs and values of America (Open Society Institute); some might only be a ‘prism’ of various different voices (Al-Jazeera); and some might fall totally outside state control to form ‘shadow networks’ (Khan Network). Ultimately, it is the belief in US exceptionalism that perpetuates the claim that the United States has ‘an edge’ in such a world, with potentially problematic consequences.

NGO 'Lawfare' Exploitation of Courts in the Arab-Israeli Conflict

NGO 'Lawfare' Exploitation of Courts in the Arab-Israeli Conflict