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1201. Globalization Crises, Trade, and Development in Vietnam

Author:
Philip Abbott and Finn Tarp
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
United Nations University
Abstract:
Vietnam has been among the most successful East Asian economies, especially in weathering the external shocks of recent globalization crises—the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and the 2008-09 great recession, financial crisis and collapse of global trade. Its success contradicts its characterization as an example of export-led growth and highlights the role of the state, particularly in maintaining and influencing investment. Examination of economic performance and policy responses shows rising dependence on foreign finance around each crisis, and actions by the government to counteract that dependence and bolster the domestic economy while continuing to restructure the economy toward greater emphasis on the private sector. Growth, employment and poverty alleviation have been maintained at the expense of renewed inflation, larger budget deficits, and currency depreciation. The 'stop-go' nature of present …
Topic:
Development, Economics, Globalization, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Asia

1202. Climate change negotiations and their implications for international development cooperation

Author:
Lars Engberg-Pedersen
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This report discusses possible implications of the international attempts to address climate change for the organisation of development cooperation. The paper concentrates This report discusses possible implications of the international attempts to address climate change for the organisation of development cooperation. The paper concentrates on questions related to institutions and resources and pays less attention to potential consequences for the objectives and contents of development cooperation. The institutional question is limited to the norms, practices and organisations that emerge primarily at the international level in response to climate change. The resource question deals with the capital that needs to be mobilised to mitigate climate change and to finance the costs of adaptation to climate change in developing countries.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Energy Policy, and International Cooperation

1203. Making Growth Inclusive - Some lessons from countries and the literature

Author:
Elizabeth Stuart
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Economic growth in developing countries is desirable and necessary, but it is the distribution of that growth that matters for poverty reduction, rather than the pursuit of growth for its own sake.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Poverty
Political Geography:
Latin America and Southeast Asia

1204. Who will feed the World? The production challenge

Author:
Lucia Wegner and Gine Zwart
Publication Date:
04-2011
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Against a background of increasing food insecurity, agriculture in developing countries must undergo a significant transformation in order to increase production and respond to climate change. It is estimated that feeding 8.2 billion people – an additional 1.4 billion – in 2030 would require raising overall food production by some 50 per cent between 2005/07 and 2030. Feeding a larger urban population in a context of increasing scarcity of land and water, while also adopting more sustainable production methods, is a daunting challenge. In Africa, where it is predicted that population levels will double during the same period, the challenge will be even more acute.
Topic:
Agriculture, Development, Poverty, Science and Technology, Food, and Famine
Political Geography:
Africa

1205. Genocide and Restitution: Ensuring Each Group's Contribution to Humanity

Author:
Ana Filipa Vrdoljak
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The protection of minorities in modern international law is intimately connected with and fuelled the recognition of the crimes of persecution and genocide. Minority protection represented the proactive component of the international efforts to ensure the contribution of certain groups to the cultural heritage of humankind. Prohibition and prosecution of persecution and genocide represented the reactive element of these same efforts. The restitution of cultural property to persecuted groups by the international community was recognition that their ownership and control of these physical manifestations was necessary for the realization of this purpose. In this article, I consider the emergence, contraction, and revival of the interconnection between minority protection, the prevention and punishment of genocide, and the protection and restitution of cultural heritage over the last century-long development of international law. It is argued that the central aim driving and interweaving these initiatives is the effort to ensure the continuing contribution of each group to the cultural heritage of all humanity.
Topic:
Development and International Law

1206. Re-envisaging the International Law of Internal Armed Conflict: A Reply to Sandesh Sivakumaran

Author:
Gabriella Blum
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The prevailing view of the form which the effort to regulate non-international armed conflicts should take has been summarized by the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Tadić interlocutory appeal on jurisdiction: '[w]hat is inhumane, and consequently proscribed, in international wars, cannot but be inhumane and inadmissible in civil strife'.This mirroring approach of emulating the laws applicable in international armed conflicts in the non-international context was subsequently adopted by the drafters of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998; the drafters chose to include a list of war crimes applicable in cases of non-international armed conflicts which resembled (though was still narrower than) the list of crimes applicable in international conflicts. The recent Kampala ICC review conference expanded the non-international crimes list, further narrowing the gap between the 'international' and the 'non-international' lists of crimes.Taking a similar position, the 2005 study on customary international humanitarian law (IHL) published by the International Committee of the Red Cross concluded that all but a handful of the rules identified as customary applied in international and non-international armed conflicts equally.Given the traditional resistance by states to assuming the same degree and range of constraints which apply in international armed conflicts in internal ones, humanitarian advocates have sought to advance the regulation of internal armed conflicts by supplementing IHL with norms borrowed from international criminal law (ICL) and international human rights laws (IHRL). The resulting international law of internal armed conflicts has thus been a patchwork of norms which ostensibly apply to all non-international armed conflicts, drawn from the IHL of international conflicts, ICL, and IHRL, often proving to be incoherent, unworkable, and ineffective. Sandesh Sivakumaran's contribution to this volumetakes a critical view of the path …
Topic:
Development, Government, and International Law

1207. Danny Nicol. The Constitutional Protection of Capitalism

Author:
Fernando Losada Fraga
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
When the current economic crisis began, political leaders all around the world spread the idea that capitalism needed somehow to be reformed. 1 A couple of years later one might think that not much has been achieved in that direction and blame politicians for their lack of will. However, it is not so clear that reforms – even if the political will existed – would be easy to realize. As Danny Nicol argues, the neoliberal conception of capitalism is constitutionally shielded as a result of the content and the development of different but coexisting legal regimes such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) or the European Union (EU), and of the activism of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR). Describing the resulting 'constitutional protection of capitalism' is precisely what this book is about: Nicol tries to determine to what extent national politics are predetermined by the ongoing economic integration. Or, putting it differently, his research aims at explaining how much room for manoeuvre states, and in particular the United Kingdom, maintain now that the international and European economic integration treaties they ratified years ago have evolved in an unexpected way. The author thus identifies two trends 'that have pervaded the evolution of transnational regimes' (at 156), namely their widened scope and their enhanced binding character, and claims that such developments have a special impact on the freedom of Parliament to decide, 2 a freedom which, as we must bear in mind, is at the core of British constitutionalism. Both the title and the cover of this book, in which the symbol of the British Parliament, Big Ben, blurs among the buildings of the City, are very explicit about the national perspective from which this book approaches transnational regimes. The book is structured in five chapters. The first describes the …
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government

1208. Andrea Carcano. L'occupazione dell'Iraq nel diritto internazionale

Author:
Mirko Sossai
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
The renewed interest in the law of belligerent occupation probably reached its peak in 2009, when various monographs were published by distinguished authors as well as by younger scholars. The book under review originated from a doctoral thesis defended by Andrea Carcano at the University of Milan. His investigation focuses on the 2003 occupation of Iraq as the ideal test-case to verify whether the existing legal regime is adequate to address the challenges posed by present-day scenarios, including Afghanistan, Congo, and the Arab–Israeli conflict. The book is divided into three parts. The first one comprises two chapters, which present respectively the legal framework of belligerent occupation and the other applicable norms of international law. Chapter I takes a historical perspective on the legal concept of occupation, which the author considers functional to the subsequent analysis for two main reasons: to investigate the underlying values guiding the development of the law of belligerent occupation; and to compare current theories regarding the role of the law in such a situation with similar arguments upheld in the past (at 13). Carcano identifies three epochs, which modelled different concepts of occupation. The first one is valid until the Modern Age and is influenced by the Roman law tradition: occupation is considered as 'conquest and exploitation of the territory'. The modern notion of occupation, defined as 'administration and effective control', emerged during the 18th century, at the time of the consolidation of sovereign states in Europe. Whereas Vattel had already in theory identified the differentiation between sovereignty and private ownership, it was August Heffter, a century later, who first recognized the legal implications of the distinction between occupatio bellica and debellatio (at 24). Finally, the last model is that of the occupation as 'transformation': Carcano identifies it as 'a military action aimed at the radical …
Topic:
Development and International Law
Political Geography:
Afghanistan, Europe, Israel, Paris, and Arabia

1209. Filippo Fontanelli, Giuseppe Martinico Paolo Carrozza (eds). Shaping Rule of Law Through Dialogue. International and Supranational Experiences

Author:
Luis Castellvi Laukamp
Publication Date:
02-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Dialogue, this noble art, which, like many other things, was invented by the Greeks, is always a sort of collaboration, a way of trying to attain the truth. Perhaps this is why Plato used it as a literary vehicle when he wrote his Socratic dialogues, a corpus of pieces in which he laid the foundations of Western philosophy. Deeply impressed by the death of his mentor Socrates, Plato wrote some of the most brilliant and insightful works of all time, perhaps in order to keep on debating with his master after his death. In all likelihood, no-one since has ever had the same great ability to create such architectures of thought. His enjoyable and entertaining dialogues deal with essential topics such as the nature of time, politics, love, and death. Not only is his style concise and meticulous, with a proverbial ability to pose the right questions, but also didactic and kind. His dialogues enable all participants to engage in an inquiry which, despite not always being successful in reaching the desired goal, has at least proved to be a fundamental tool in the development of all expressions of human thought. The book under review is inspired, mutatis mutandis, by this very same philosophy regarding dialogue. As its editors (Filippo Fontanelli, Giuseppe Martinico, and Paolo Carrozza) point out in their introduction, '[t]he process of fragmentation of the international legal order and the absence of constitutional devices governing the connections between the various legal regimes can be reduced to a rational picture only through the activity of the judges' (at 23). This is why judges play a key role in creating and developing links between the different legal systems which constitute our multi-level judicial environment. The increasingly complex nature of the interaction between national and international judges has often been
Topic:
Development, Government, Politics, and Law
Political Geography:
Greece

1210. From Colonialism to Partnership in Africa-Europe Relations?

Author:
Gerrit Olivier
Publication Date:
03-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The International Spectator
Institution:
Istituto Affari Internazionali
Abstract:
The European Union has been trying to achieve its long-term goals through partnerships and cooperation with other like-minded global actors. Africa (through its regional institutional body, the African Union) has been the first and only multilateral entity with which the EU has forged a long-term partnership. Despite its rhetorical language, the Africa-EU Strategic Partnership is unlikely to upgrade the political and economic interaction between the two partners. In the past few years, serious rifts have grown between the EU and its African counterparts concerning trade agreements and development policies. Moreover, new actors have made significant inroads in Africa, providing an alternative to its long-standing dependence on Europe.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
Africa and Europe