Courts and Consociations:How human rights courts may destabilize power-sharing settlements

We consider the use of consociational arrangements to manage ethno-nationalist, ethno-linguistic, and ethno-religious conflicts, and their compatibility with non-discrimination and equality norms. Key questions include to what extent, if any, consociations conflict with the dictates of global justice and the liberal individualist preferences of international human rights institutions, and to what extent consociational power-sharing may be justified to preserve peace and the integrity of political settlements. In three critical cases, the European Court of Human Rights has considered equality challenges to important consociational practices, twice in Belgium and, most recently, in Sejdic and Finci, concerning the constitutional arrangements established for Bosnia Herzegovina under the Dayton Agreement. The Court’s recent decision in Sejdic and Finci has significantly altered the approach it previously took to judicial review of consociational arrangements in the Belgian cases. We seek to account for this change and assess its implications. We identify problematic aspects of the judgment and conclude that, although the Court’s decision indicates one possible trajectory of human rights courts’ reactions to consociations, this would be an unfortunate development because it leaves future negotiators in places riven by potential or manifest bloody ethnic conflicts with considerably less flexibility in reaching a settlement. That in turn may unintentionally contribute to sustaining such conflicts and make it more likely that advisors to negotiators will advise them to exclude regional and international courts from having standing in the management of political settlements.

Effects of modified low-density lipoproteins on human retinal pericyte survival

According to a current paradigm cardiovascular diseases can be initiated by exposure of vascular cells to qualitatively modified low-density lipoproteins (LDL). Capillary leakage, an early feature of diabetic retinopathy, results in the exposure of retinal pericytes to modified LDL, including glycated (G-LDL) and heavily oxidized glycated LDL (HOG-LDL). We demonstrate here that modified LDL inhibits the proliferation and survival of cultured human retinal pericytes. Modified LDL also induced DNA fragmentation in bovine retinal pericytes. Overall, HOG-LDL produced a significantly higher extent of cytotoxicity and apoptosis in retinal pericytes. These results indicate that exposure of pericytes to HOG-LDL could be implicated in the development of diabetic retinopathy.

Effect of interleukin-6 polymorphisms on human longevity:a systematic review and meta-analysis

Several studies have assessed changes in frequency of -174 interleukin (IL)-6 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) with age. If IL-6 tracks with disability and age-related diseases, then there should be reduction, in the oldest old, of the frequency of homozygous GG subjects, who produce higher IL-6 levels. However, discordant results have been obtained. To explore the relationship between this polymorphism and longevity, we analyzed individual data on long-living subjects and controls from eight case-control studies conducted in Europeans, using meta-analysis. There was no significant difference in the IL-6 genotype between the oldest old and controls (Odds Ratio [OR]=0.96; 95% C.I.: 0.77-1.20; p=0.71), but there was significant between-study heterogeneity (I2=55.5%). In a subgroup analyses when male centenarians from the three Italian studies were included, the frequency of the IL-6 -174 GG genotype was significantly lower than the other genotypes (OR=0.49; 95% C.I.: 0.31-0.80; p=0.004), with no evidence of heterogeneity (I2=0%). Our data supports a negative association between the GG genotype of IL-6 SNP and longevity in Italian centenarians, with males who carry the genotype being two times less likely to reach extreme old age compared with subjects carrying CC or CG genotypes. These findings were not replicated in other European groups suggesting a possible interaction between genetics, sex and environment in reaching longevity.

Reconciling Children's Policy and Children's Rights: Barriers to Effective Government Delivery

Countries which have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, have committed to implementing its principles in law and policy. This article explores the challenges for securing children's rights through policy, drawing on a research project conducted for the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People, which sought to identify barriers to effective government delivery for children and young people from the perspective of key stakeholders. The research concluded that, while some barriers (such as delay and availability of data) are not child-specific, they can be accentuated when children and young people are the main focus of policy development and more so when seeking to adopt a child rights-compliant approach to policy development and implementation.