Rights In Countries Research Articles

Certification Schemes and the Governance of Land: Enforcing Standards or Enabling Scrutiny?

Given the challenges of upholding human rights in countries where land grabbing has been most acute, attention has turned to alternative regulatory mechanisms by which better land governance might be brought about. This essay considers one such approach: certification schemes. These encourage agricultural producers to adopt sustainability standards which are then monitored by third-party auditors. Used by the European Union to help govern its biofuel market, they now also have an important mandatory dimension. However, through a study of Bonsucro and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels, we find both flaws in their standards and shortcomings in their ability to discipline the companies they are financially dependent upon. In sum, we suggest that the real value of these roundtable certification schemes might lie less in their ability to enforce standards than their (partially realised) role in enabling scrutiny, providing new possibilities for corporate accountability in transnational commodity chains. Dados los retos para defender los derechos humanos en países a donde el acaparamiento de tierras ha sido más grave, se ha prestado atención a mecanismos reguladores alternativos que hubieran podido aportar mejor gobernanza de las tierras. Este artículo considera uno de estos enfoques: esquemas de certificación. Estos fomentan a los productores agrícolas a adoptar estándares de sostenibilidad, que luego son monitoreados por auditores externos. Ahora ellos tienen también una importante dimensión obligatoria, usada por la Unión Europea para ayudar a gobernar su mercado de biocombustible. Sin embargo, a través de un estudio de Bonsucro y la Mesa redonda sobre biocombustibles sostenibles, hemos encontrado tanto defectos en sus estándares, como fallos en su habilidad para disciplinar a las compañías de las que dependen económicamente. En suma, sugerimos que el valor real de estos esquemas de certificación de la mesa redonda pueda radicar menos en su habilidad para imponer estándares que su rol (parcialmente realizado) en permitir un análisis minucioso, brindando nuevas posibilidades para la rendición de cuentas corporativas en las cadenas de artículos de consumo trasnacionales. 面对维护土地掠夺已经严重加剧的国家人权的挑战，关注已经转向可选择性的调控机制，通过这些机制，可以实现较好的土地管理。本文探讨这样一种方法：认证方案。这鼓励农业生产者采取被第三方审核者监督的可持续性标准。这被欧盟用来管理生物燃料市场，现在也具有重要的强制性方面。尽管如此，通过对Bonsucro和可持续燃料圆桌会议的研究，我们看到了标准中的缺点和在监管其财政上依靠的公司方面的能力不足。总之，我们提出这些圆桌会议认证方案的真正价值可能比它们（部分实现的）审查监督功能更少地存在于其执行标准的能力中，同时为跨国商品链中的公司责任提供了新的可能性。 بالنظر إلى تحديات توطيد حقوق الإنسان في البلدان التي تتسم فيها عمليات الاستيلاء على الأراضي بالحدِّة، فقد تحول الاهتمام إلى آليات تنظيمية بديلة يمكن من خلالها تحقيق حوكمة أفضل للأرض. وتنظر المقالة الحالية في المقاربة التالية: خطط التصديقات. وهي تشجع المنتجين الزراعيين على اعتماد معايير مستدامة يرعاها طرف ثالث مراجع. وقد سبق أن استخدمها الاتحاد الأوروبي للتحكم في سوق الوقود الحيوي، واكتسبت الآن بعدًا إلزامياً مهماً. غير أنه من خلال دراسة بونسوكرو Bonsucro والمائدة المستديرة بشأن الوقود الحيوي المستدام، نجد نقائص تشوب معاييرها، وإخفاقات في قدرتها على فرض الانضباط على الشركات المعتمدة مالياً عليها. ثم نقترح بإيجاز أن القيمة الحقيقية لخطط التصديقات قد تكمن في قدرتها على "فرض المعايير" أكثر من دورها (المفهوم جزئياً) في "التمكين من التدقيق"، مما يوفر إمكانيات جديدة لمساءلة الشركات في السلاسل السلعية العابرة للقوميات. 토지 매입이 가장 심한 나라들에서 인권 옹호라는 과제가 주어지면서 더 나은 토지 거너번스가 가져올 대안적인 규제 기제에 관심이 주어졌다. 이 글은 한 가지 이러한 접근으로 자격증 형식을 다룬다. 이것은 농업 생산자들이 제3의 회계사들에 의해서 감시되는 지속가능성 기준을 채택하는 것을 독려한다. 현재 바이오 연료 시장을 관리하기 위해 유럽 연합이 사용하고 있는 그 방법은 또한 중요한 강제적인 차원을 지니고 있다. 그렇지만, 본스쿠로와 지속가능한 바이오 연료 라운드테이블의 연구를 통해서 그것이 기준에서 문제를 지니고 있고, 재정적으로 의존하고 있는 기업을 규율하는 능력에서의 실패를 발견하였다. 결론적으로 우리는 이러한 라운드 테이블 자격증 조치의 실질적인 가치는 초국적 상품 쇄에서 기업의 책무성에서 새로운 가능성을 제공하여, ‘특별한 권한을 부여하는 조사(enabling scrutiny)’에서의 역할보다는 ‘기준 강제(enforce standards)’의 능력에서 덜 하다는 점을 제안한다. Учитывая проблемы соблюдения прав человека в странах, где захват земель был наиболее острым, наше внимание обратилось к альтернативным регулирующим механизмам, с помощью которых может быть улучшено земельное управление. Наше эссе рассматривает один из таких подходов - системы сертификации. Они поощряют сельхозпроизводителей принять стабильные стандарты, которые затем контролируются сторонними аудиторами. Теперь у них тоже есть обязательные измеряемые показатели, используемые Европейским Союзом в управлении своим рынком биотоплива. Вместе с тем, исследовав Bonsucro и Круглый стол по устойчивому биотопливу, мы находим недостатки в их стандартах и недостатки в их способности дисциплинировать компании, от которых они финансово зависят. В целом, мы полагаем, что реальная ценность этих круглых столов и схем сертификации в меньшей степени состоит в способности обеспечивать соблюдение стандартов, нежели (частично понятая) в роли обеспечения контроля, новых возможностей для корпоративной ответственности в транснациональных товарных цепях.

Alternative Trajectories: A comment on Miguel Vale de Almeida in this issue (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

This is a comment on the narrative by Miguel Vale de Almeida in this issue. It points at difficulties of escaping from the dominant Anglo‐Saxon narrative on gay and lesbian experiences faced by those who undertake the issue of gay rights in countries outside the Anglo‐vernacular world. It also indicates the entanglement of the ‘gay rights’ discourse in spatial representations underpinned by the tendency to exercise the ‘othering’ and based on the secularist approach.

How Managers’ Compensation, Strategy, and Institutional Environment Motivate Entrepreneurial Financing Choices:Some Evidence from Venture Capital Firms

Using a database combining survey responses and archival data on 32 venture capital (VC) firms, the authors test whether professional compensation, strategy, and institutional environment affect entrepreneurial financing practices, such as contractual term choice and deal source choice. The results suggest that contract design fundamentally depends on the VC manager’s compensation system (particularly, carried interest compensation), the investor’s leadership in investment syndications, and the institutional environment. VC firms significantly tend to require control rights and liquidation rights in country’s with poor investor protection. The results also show that selection of deal sources depends on co-investment options, investment stage preference, leadership in investment syndications, and industry expertise. <b>TOPICS:</b>Private equity, portfolio construction, manager selection, statistical methods

A Critique of the Foreigners Act, 1946: A Legislation de Jure or de Facto?

India, a country that has given shelter to a lot many refugees and has always welcomed one and all. Such a country is home to one of the largest refugee populations in the world. Mass human rights abuses, civil wars, internal strife, communal violence, forced relocation and natural disasters lead to the creation of refugees. It is the risk of human rights violations in their home country which compels the refugees to cross international borders and seek protection abroad. Consequently, safeguarding human rights in countries of origin is of critical importance not only to the prevention of refugee problems but also for their solutions.Since today’s refugee problem is global in nature and concerns not only individuals in their relations with states but also states in their relations with one another. Hence, we need a law which is not only a law relating to the legal status and protection of refugees but also encompasses the refugee problem as a whole, a law which is solution oriented. Human rights perspective of the refugee problem will be helpful in restructuring the present mechanisms of refugee law on these lines. Therefore, India needs to consolidate, modernize and harmonise into legislation, its long tradition and experience in accommodating the inflow of refugees and its commitment to uphold the principles of international human rights. The Foreigners Act, though it penalises the illegal entry and exit of the foreigners has not achieved the purpose which it should have achieved. A nation must protect the rights of its residents and of the refugees (Atithi Devo Bhava). There has become a lacuna, concerning legal status of refugees in India and the Constitution lacks provisions for refugees and they are considered as illegal immigrants according to the laws. Due to this, the refugees continue to be subject to arbitrary arrest and harassment. This phenomenon also unnecessarily tarnishes India’s image at the international level.Though, the Act is haphazard, it would unnecessarily tiresome on part of the Parliament to enact a new domestic refugee law. Therefore, there can be through amendment process, incorporated several provisions which would thereby protect the rights of the refugees all over.

Treaties, Constitutions, Courts, and Human Rights

The effects of treaties on human rights performance may depend in part on how domestic legal systems articulate with international law. The idea motivating this study is that constitutional law can make a difference not necessarily by including rights but by acknowledging and connecting to treaty law. This study is a first attempt to explore the interrelated effects of treaties, constitutions, and courts on human rights performance. The key proposition is that human rights treaties may have a greater influence on rights in countries whose constitutions incorporate treaty law and whose courts are independent of the political branches of government. The analysis tests that proposition using data from about 150 countries across 20 or more years. The results offer evidence that treaties, constitutions, and courts do combine, at times, to improve human rights performance, with judicial independence playing the key role.

Rights for the Landless: Comparing Approaches to Historical Injustice in Brazil and South Africa

This essay seeks to compare two approaches to property reform as solutions to historical injustice. Brazil and South Africa prove to be prime examples of how incorporating and entrenching socio-economic rights into their constitutions is an effectual method of remedying historical injustice. Using a social obligation theory of property rights as a guide, this essy will seek to show that property reform is essential to remedying historical injustice. In particular, this essay will focus on the constitutional provisions created to protect property and socioeconomic rights in both countries. Providing for the stability and security of these rights is a powerful method of social transformation wich moves away from historical injustice. In Part I, this essay will present the social obligation theory of property and mention the benefits of entrenching rights to property and socio-economic rights in a country’s constitution. In Part II, this essay will introduce the Brazilian scheme for land reform by first summarizing its development, the constitutional provisions, and then the current state of the “landless” problem. In Part III, this essay will give a brief description of the historical background of injustices in South Africa, present the relevant South African constitutional provisions, and then discuss the country’s current landless problem. In Part IV, the essay will compare the two schemes and evaluate their relative successes in achieving their land reform goals.

The Politics of Home: Dual Citizenship and the African Diaspora

In recent decades, more countries have started to recognize dual citizenship. Although overlooked in the literature, Africa is part of this trend with more than half of its governments now permitting their nationals to naturalize elsewhere while retaining home country rights. Why have some African countries embraced dual citizenship for emigrants, while others have not? We examine demographic, political, and economic data broadly across the continent and identify few clear patterns. We then explore the cases of Senegal, Ghana, and Kenya, finding that dual citizenship policies are driven as much by politics as they are by economic or security concerns.

Treaties, Constitutions, Courts, and Human Rights

The effects of treaties on human rights performance may depend in part on how domestic legal systems articulate with international law. The idea motivating this study is that constitutional law can make a difference not necessarily by including rights but by acknowledging and connecting to treaty law. This study is a first attempt to explore the interrelated effects of treaties, constitutions, and courts on human rights performance. The key proposition is that human rights treaties may have a greater influence on rights in countries whose constitutions incorporate treaty law and whose courts are independent of the political branches of government. The analysis tests that proposition using data from about 150 countries across 20 or more years. The results offer evidence that treaties, constitutions, and courts do combine, at times, to improve human rights performance, with judicial independence playing the key role.

Extraterritorial Application of Competition Law: Different Angles – Same Conclusion

Different interests of countries, economic implications, consolidation between international trade and competition and the sovereign rights of countries brought a complex issue. Therefore, an odd situation for competition law have arisen – how can different competition laws of different countries protect their local markets from anticompetitive harm which is caused by the conduct of foreign companies, while the conduct of their large businesses (national champions) abroad can bring substantial welfare and development for their local economies. The examples of extraterritorial application of competition law, measures taken and propositions on how to address this dilemma will be considered in this article.

Searching for patents on essential medicines in developing countries: a methodology

Although the 2001 Doha Declaration on the TRIPS Agreement and Public Health confirmed the right of countries to use measures to ensure access to affordable medicines, only few countries in the developing world have done so. One factor for this scant use of the so-called TRIPS flexibilities has been the lack of accurate information on the patent status of the relevant medicines in developing countries. Clearly, there is a need for a systematic and pragmatic approach to speedily obtain data on the patent status of essential medicines, so that governments and procurement agencies can make informed decisions on available options for production and procurement of generic medicines. A simple and practical method is described in this paper, which enables searches for relevant patent data from publicly available (and free) sources of information. Using a combination of data from patent offices and medicine regulatory authorities that are available on the internet, this methodology provides an inexpensive and pragmatic option to perform a quick search and access patent information on essential medicines.

Balancing domestic regulation and trade liberalisation under the GATS: universal access issues in South Africa's telecoms sector

The service sector increasingly has become the cornerstone of a great number of economies in both the developed and developing world. The main barrier to trade in services is the imposition of domestic regulations which are aimed at ensuring the affordability, availability and efficiency of services. Such domestic regulations are important for services and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) consequently recognises the right of countries to regulate in order to achieve these goals. The GATS, however, also seeks to discipline such regulations to ensure that they do not hinder trade in services. This article seeks to assess these seemingly competing interests in the context of South Africa's history and its burgeoning telecommunications sector.

The Legacy of Oil Spills

The Legacy of Oil Spills

Electoral Rules and Incentives to Protect Human Rights

In order to function as an effective constraint on human rights violations, democratic competition must put politicians in a situation where it is electorally beneficial for them to monitor abuses and to expose public officials who fail to protect human rights. In the absence of proper electoral incentives, both incumbent politicians and opposition leaders may strategically choose to ignore poor human rights practices. Building on this logic, we assess the proposition that, among democracies, certain electoral rules are associated with better protection of physical integrity rights. We find that, other things equal, there is higher average respect for physical integrity rights in countries where all members of parliament are elected through low magnitude proportional representation districts, and where voters can cast a vote for individual candidates. Our theoretical approach focusing on incentives for politicians to protect human rights offers a unifying framework for studying institutional and noninstit...

Opportunities and challenges that face those interested projects that link natural product chemistry, plant uses and conservation

Changes in land use, habitat loss, pollution and climate change are all factors that are contributing to a decrease in biodiversity. Stopping this decline is an important challenge. We are not only losing plant species that have potential to be developed as foods but also those that have medicinal and pesticidal properties. The development of DNA-based phylogenies has furthered our understanding of plant relationships and has provided robust frameworks onto which, geographical distribution, uses of plants as well as their chemistry can be superimposed. This enables us to identify families and species that justify further research. However, obtaining plants for this research can be a major challenge. The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio Summit) resulted in a series of international plants to support conserving plants for sustainable use, including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The CBD was the first international convention to state that a county has „sovereign rights“ over its genetic resources and that if these resources are used by others then any benefits that arise from this use should be shared. This has resulted in countries developing „Access and Benefit Sharing“ legislation that covers what a scientist needs to do before working on genetic resources but also what should happen if products are developed from the genetic resource. In some countries the use of traditional knowledge is also covered in this legislation. Many researchers are unsure as to which permits they need. In an age when we need to increase efforts to conserve plants and the traditional knowledge about their uses it is importance to not only protect the sovereign rights of countries but also facilitate mechanism that enable communities maximise the uses of their plant-resources. Including the identification of alternative species they might need if their flora changes through the influences of climate change.

Better or Worse? The Effect of Economic Sanctions on Human Rights

Does economic coercion increase or decrease government respect for human rights in countries targeted with economic sanctions? If economic sanctions weaken the target regime's coercive capacity, human rights violations by the government should be less likely. If, on the contrary, sanctions fail to attenuate the coercive capacity of the target elites and create more economic difficulties and political violence among ordinary citizens, the government will likely commit more human rights violations. Focusing on competing views of why sanctions might improve or deteriorate human rights conditions, this article offers an empirical examination of the effect sanctions have on the physical integrity rights of citizens in target countries. Utilizing time-series, cross-national data for the period 1981—2000, the findings suggest that economic sanctions worsen government respect for physical integrity rights, including freedom from disappearances, extra-judicial killings, torture, and political imprisonment. The results also show that extensive sanctions are more detrimental to human rights than partial/selective sanctions. Economic coercion remains a counterproductive policy tool, even when sanctions are specifically imposed with the goal of improving human rights. Finally, multilateral sanctions have a greater overall negative impact on human rights than unilateral sanctions.

INTERNATIONAL REGIME OF FRESH FUEL SUPPLY AND SPENT FUEL DISPOSAL

Recent events in Iran and elsewhere demand a reevaluation of the need for increasing nuclear fuel supplies and assuring reliable flow of fuel to nuclear power user states vis-à-vis the need for strengthened security for all countries against the use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The right of countries to a guaranteed supply of nuclear energy for peaceful uses must be balanced with the global community's desire to limit flows of nuclear material and sensitive nuclear facilities that could create opportunities for nuclear proliferation. This article proposes elements of an international regime of fresh fuel supply and spent fuel disposal that will guarantee fresh fuel supplies to countries honoring their obligations under the Treaty for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), while reducing concerns about diversion of spent fuel for weapons purposes. A specific application to countries with small pre-commercial uranium enrichment plants is also proposed.

Global Health Governance: Conflicts on Global Social Rights

This paper analyses the impact of new institutional structures in global health governance on the realization of social rights in countries. Meanwhile, health is broadly seen as an import precondition for social and economic development. This leads to an integration of the of the poor (basically infectious diseases) into strategies of fighting poverty. Considering the example of global HIV/AIDS politics, the paper argues that new governance modes increase the participation of civil society groups and affected communities, but that they are also frequently instrumentalised by powerful actors to pursue their particular interests. In fact, increasing resources are mobilized for the fight against poverty related diseases. The paper concludes that global health governance is characterized by a combination of moral values and material interests which does not guarantee a comprehensive realization of social rights, but which allows some progress in the fight against poverty - related diseases - a precondition of the possible further realization of social rights.

Citizenship Rights and Repatriation of Refugees

This article examines the relationship between access to or lack of access to citizenship rights in countries of asylum and the propensity of refugees to return. It hypothesizes that in situations where refugees enjoy civil, social and economic citizenship rights in the context of favorable structural factors — relatively secure employment, self-employment, social services such as housing, schools, health care and social security – the importance of repatriation may diminish as a viable option. In North America, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand, where refugees are able to enjoy rights of citizenship with definite prospects for becoming citizens (through naturalization) or denizens through acquisition of permanent status, and where favorable structural factors provide for the enjoyment of a decent standard of living, they tend to remain regardless of whether the conditions that prompted displacement are eliminated. The policy environments and the structural factors for refugees sheltering in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) are the antithesis of those refugees in Developed Countries (DCs). As a result, millions of refugees in the South have been ‘voting with their feet’ homewards to recoup citizenship rights which they lost in connection with displacement and which they have been unable to achieve in exile.

The causes of human rights abuses in the countries in transition summary

Author analyzes causes that lead to violation of human rights in countries in transition and in undeveloped countries. He points to the following factors: 'vacuum' in creating of values of the system, some problems in the process of democratization, high grade of homogenization in society (ethnical, religious, ideological, political), economic stagnation and poverty, social climate - the 'production' of enemies, anti-intellectualism etc.

Human Rights in the Arab World: A Regional Perspective

This regional review and assessment of the rights movement in the Arab world concerns with identifying and promoting ways of diminishing and eventfully breaking human rights dependency. This dependency is the widely prevalent perception that the governments of developing countries are more responsive to international pressure for the protection of rights in their countries than to the activities of local nongovernmental organizations and other actors within their own societies. Overall a remarkable growth in the development of the protection of rights in the Arab world since mid-1980 is indicated. On the other hand the 1990s has been marked by serious decline in the level of democratization and protection of rights in countries that had earlier shown positive results in this regard. In view of the above it is emphasized that local and global civil society has a crucial role to play in diminishing dependency by enhancing indigenous protection of rights. Accordingly international cooperation must be based on a principled commitment to parity and mutual respect despite clear differentials in power relations and realities of Western hegemony.