Sri Lanka and the responsibility to protect : politics, ethnicity and genocide

This book provides a study of the war by Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) to create a separate state in Sri Lanka. It examines the ways in which this war should, in principle, have invoked ‘Responsibility to Protect’ principles, as well as the political, legal and practical problems involved and, ultimately, why the international community failed to act.

Over the years there have been several events, including those in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Timor-Leste, Darfur, and Kosovo, that have led the international community to accept a responsibility to protect. However, despite its overwhelming preliminary endorsement, the principles of this concept are still not universally sanctioned and there are some strong international opponents, including some countries that were initial signatories of the convention.

By considering the example of Sri Lanka, the text focuses on what conditions could satisfy or demand the application of responsibility to protect. It further presents a case as to why this conflict was, and may still be, the normative responsibility of the international community.

Sri Lanka and the Responsibility to Protect will be of great interest to students of South-East Asian politics, human rights, international law, ethnic conflict, security studies and IR in general.

Beyond reaction: the responsibility to protect and the United Nations

This thesis examines how the principle of The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has influenced international responses to large scale human suffering. Examining atrocities in Darfur and Libya, this examination finds that rather than occupy ends of a spectrum of choice between prevention and reaction, responses elicited by R2P were fluid.

Bridging the gap: early warning, gender and the responsibility to protect

Women, Peace and Security (WPS) scholars and practitioners have expressed reservations about the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle because of its popular use as a synonym for armed humanitarian intervention. On the other hand, R2P’s early failure to engage with and advance WPS efforts such as United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution 1325 (2000) has seen the perpetuation of limited roles ascribed to women in implementing the R2P principle. As a result, there has been a knowledge and practice gap between the R2P and WPS agendas, despite the fact that their advocates share common goals in relation to the prevention of atrocities and protection of populations. In this article we propose to examine just one of the potential avenues for aligning the WPS agenda and R2P principle in a way that is beneficial to both and strengthens the pursuit of a shared goal – prevention. We argue that the development and inclusion of gender-specific indicators – particularly economic, social and political discriminatory practices against women – has the potential to improve the capacity of early warning frameworks to forecast future mass atrocities.

Contextualizing the business responsibility to respect: How much is lost in translation?

As the work of the UN Special Representative (UNSR) for business and human rights moves towards its conclusion in mid-2011, the core principles of the UNSR’s ‘responsibility to respect’ framework have received widespread endorsement from businesses, NGOs and governments. The translation of these general principles into specific obligations governing business activity will need to differ according to context. The reasons why overarching regulatory principles can get ‘lost in translation’ when applied in practice have important implications for understanding how the UNSR’s responsibility to respect framework can be meaningfully implemented across widely varying regulatory contexts. The central goal of this chapter is to understand why and under what conditions this loss is likely to arise, and how regulatory standards for business and human rights might be designed to enable the responsibility to respect principle to be applied in context-sensitive ways, without losing regulatory force.

Legislation to protect whistle-blowers in Victoria

Protection afforded to whistleblowers under Victoria's Whistleblower Protection Act - benefits and costs of providing protection - types of disclosures that are protected and people who can claim protection under the Act - determining if a matter involves a public interest disclosure - investigation of disclosures by the Ombudsman, and other public bodies - action upon completion of an investigation - protection afforded to the Ombudsman.

Exploring family and community involvement to protect Thai youths from alcohol and illegal drug abuse

Youth substance abuse is widely recognized as a major public health issue in Thailand. This study explores family and community risk and protective factors relevant to alcohol and illegal drug misuse in 1,778 Thai teenagers. Strong family attachment and a family history of antisocial behaviors were strongly associated with nearly all forms of substance abuse, with adjusted odds ratios ranging from 5.05 to 8.45. Community disorganization was strongly associated with self-reported substance use, although involvement in prosocial activities acted as a protective factor. The findings suggest that interventions that promote family cohesion and encourage community involvement may have considerable benefits in reducing substance abuse in Thai adolescents.

Building collaborative partnerships: a key to increasing Indigenous Victorian peoples' access to country

This article reports on a qualitative research study undertaken with Indigenous government employees to explore ways in which Indigenous communities can access programs involving caring for Country' (knowledge, responsibility and inherent right to protect the traditional natural landscape) on their traditional land and, in so doing. improve their health. Factors that optimise such nature-based projects are the capacity of their intention to build relationships, consultation. transparency, consistency, education and training between Indigenous communities. government and the general public. Government agencies need to develop strategies where partnership and collaboration are effective with Indigenous communities and within the agencies themselves, in order to resolve controversial issues surrounding access to Country.

Corporate social responsibility : corporate reputation, business performance and public liability

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) may be viewed as a business strategy rather than a philanthropic concept. The increasing use of CSR as a corporate core strategy, in reaction to consumers‘ growing sentiments, can influence aggregate consumption and consumers‘ quality of life. As such, CSR would be of interest to the policy makers and may become subject to corporate governance and control mechanism. CSR is largely unregulated. Reliance on corporations‘ self-restraint and voluntary initiatives is inadequate to protect the society and avoid the disadvantages that may emerge from the potential deceptive practices in using a CSR strategy. This study investigates the evidence of economic benefits as incentives to corporations for using CSR. CSR is measured in terms of the firm‘s relationships with primary stakeholders. A model is constructed to identify the primary stakeholders and to estimate the association between CSR, corporate reputation and business performance. Policy implications of CSR are discussed.

Judicial responses to the protected confidential communications legislation in Australia

The article examines the background, aims and scope of recent legislation enacted in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia to protect from disclosure in court of "confidential communications" generated in the context of counselling persons who allege that they were victims of sexual offences. In drafting the "confidential communications" legislation, the legislators undertook a difficult task of balancing the public interest in therapeutic confidentiality that would encourage victims of sexual assaults to report these offences and seek psychological and psychiatric care on the one hand, and the public interest in fairness of the trial, which may be prejudiced by exclusion of evidence pertinent to the forensic process on the other. In South Australia this task was fulfilled with greater success than in New South Wales and Victoria.

Protect grids from DDoS attacks

Recently a number of highly publicised incidents of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks have made people aware of the importance of providing available securely the grids’ data and services to users. This paper introduces the vulnerability of grids to DDoS attacks, and proposes a distributed defense system that has a mixture deployment of sub-systems to protect grids from DDoS attacks. According to the simulation experiments, this system is effective to defend grids against attacks. It can avoid overall network congestion and provide more resources to legitimate grid users.

Two important exceptions to the relationship between energy density and fat content: food with reduced-fat claims and high-fat vegetable-based dishes

Objective: To test the hypothesis that many foods with reduced-fat (RF) claims are relatively energy-dense and that high-fat (HF) vegetable-based dishes are relatively energy-dilute.

Design: Nutrient data were collected from available foods in Melbourne supermarkets that had an RF claim and a full-fat (FF) equivalent. Nutrient analyses were also conducted on recipes for HF vegetable-based dishes that had more than 30% energy from fat but less than 10% from saturated fat. The dietary intake data (beverages removed) from the 1995 National Nutrition Survey were used for the reference relationships between energy density (ED) and percentage energy as fat and carbohydrate and percentage of water by weight.

Statistics: Linear regression modelled relationships of macronutrients and ED. Paired t-tests compared observed and predicted reductions in the ED of RF foods compared with FF equivalents.

Results: Both FF and RF foods were more energy-dense than the Australian diet and the HF vegetable-based dishes were less energy-dense. The Australian diet showed significant relationships with ED, which were positive for percentage energy as fat and negative for percentage energy as carbohydrate. There were no such relationships for the products with RF claims or for the HF vegetable-based dishes.

Conclusion: While, overall, a reduced-fat diet is relatively energy-dilute and is likely to protect against weight gain, there appear to be two important exceptions. A high intake of products with RF claims could lead to a relatively energy-dense diet and thus promote weight gain. Alternatively, a high intake of vegetable-based foods, even with substantial added fat, could reduce ED and protect against weight gain.

Back to the future : the war on terror and its impact on civil liberties

This comment looks at the capacity of the Australian Constitution to protect the civil liberties of a small number of citizens and would be citizens whose lives have been forever changed by recent acts of terror and the legislative and executive actions taken by the Commonwealth in response to those terrorist acts. These legal changes have included the creation of specific "terrorism" offences, the legislative proscription of two foreign organisations and, most notably, a significant expansion of ASIO's investigative powers.1
Whilst the Constitution contains a number of provisions and principles protective of civil liberties, in most instances they cannot resist government action expressly aimed at curtailing or infringing individual rights and freedoms. To this end, steps ought to be taken to strengthen existing institutions and mechanisms capable of providing meaningful civil rights scrutiny of government legislation. The comment begins with an examination of the close historical and legal parallels that exist between the present day and the Cold War era and suggests how the High Court might interpret the defence power should a terrorist attack occur on Australian soil. It concludes with a proposed reform. The reform involves vesting Ch III courts with the power to measure Commonwealth laws against the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights when determining a legal controversy. This may operate to secure better legislative outcomes from a civil liberties perspective without compromising the supremacy of Parliament.