Transition and Justice: An Introduction

Since the end of the Cold War, political new beginnings have increasingly been linked to questions of transitional justice. The contributions to this collection examine a series of cases from across the African continent where peaceful ‘new beginnings’ have been declared after periods of violence and where transitional justice institutions played a role in defining justice and the new socio-political order. Three issues seem to be crucial to the understanding of transitional justice in the context of wider social debates on justice and political change: the problem of ‘new beginnings’, of finding a foundation for that which explicitly breaks with the past; the discrepancies between lofty promises and the messy realities of transitional justice in action; and the dialectic between logics of the exception and the ordinary, employed to legitimize or resist transitional justice mechanisms. These are the particular focus of this Introduction.

Vulnerability Following a Critical Life Event: Temporary Crisis or Chronic Distress? A Psychological Controversy, Methodological Considerations, and Empirical Evidence

This contribution deals with psychological vulnerability resulting from marital breakup after a long-term relationship. Despite the existing vast body of consolidated knowledge on divorce and psychological adaptation, there are still several controversies concerning the vulnerabilizing impact of marital breakup. One major issue refers to the question of whether vulnerability after marital breakup is a temporary crisis or rather a chronic strain. In this chapter we want to present two possible methodological options to tackle this question: First, comparing a sample of almost 1000 middle-aged persons, who were married on average 19 years, and who experienced a marital split within the last 5 years (4 time groups), with a group of age-matched married controls with regard to various indicators of psychological vulnerability (such as depression and hopelessness). Second, comparing within the divorced group the most vulnerable individuals (in terms of depression, hopelessness, life satisfaction) with those who were the least affected, regarding intra-personal resources (personality, resilience), divorce circumstances, post-divorce situation, and socio-economic resources. The study results underline the vulnerabilizing impact of marital breakup, but at the same time they reveal individual differences in psychological adaptation especially due to personality, new partnership, economic resources, and last but not least due to time. Furthermore our data strongly suggest that there is not a generalized psychological vulnerability after marital breakup, but that the emotional dimensions such as depression or feelings of not overcoming the loss are more affected than the more cognitive ones such as life satisfaction.

Towards a treaty instrument on marine genetic resources

Marine genetic resources other than fish and mammals are of increasing commercial interest and importance in genetic engineering, but fail being properly addressed in the law of the sea and in international economic law. The paper analyses the implication of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Convention on Biodiversity, the WTO Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights and related instruments under the auspices of WIPO. The paper argues that the triangle of these agreements does not adequately address marine genetic resources in particular in the high seas. Neither concerns of protecting biodiversity nor of access and benefit sharing find appropriate answers commensurate to the commercial potential of marine genetic resources. The paper suggests developing an instrument inspired by, and comparable to, the mechanisms developed by the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The instrument would grant facilitated access to marine genetic resources and offer a more detailed set of rules with respect to the sharing of benefits resulting from their use, thereby addressing the existing legal gaps in a comprehensive way.

God, the WTO – and hunger

Considering that endemic hunger is a consequence of poverty, and that food is arguably the most basic of all human needs, this book chapter shows one of the more prominent examples of rules and policy fragmentation but also one of the most blatant global governance problems. The three monotheistic religions Judaism, Christians and Islam are surprisingly unanimous about God’s prescriptions on hunger or, put theologically, on what can be said, or should be said, about the interpretations and traditions which, taken together, form the respective and differentiated traditions, identities and views of these beliefs on how to deal with poverty and hunger. A clear social ethos, in the form of global needs satisfaction, runs through both Jewish and Christian texts, and the Qur’an (Zakat). It confirms the value inversion between the world of the mighty and that of the hungry. The message is clear: because salvation is available only through the grace of God, those who have must give to those who have not. This is not charity: it is an inversion of values which can not be addressed by spending 0.7% of your GDP on ODA, and the implication of this sense of redistributive justice is that social offenders will be subject to the Last Judgement. Interestingly, these religious scriptures found their way directly into the human rights treaties adopted by the United Nations and ratified by the parliaments, as a legal base for the duty to protect, to respect and to remedy. On the other side the contradiction with international trade law is all the more flagrant, and it has a direct bearing on poverty: systematic surplus food dumping is still allowed under WTO rules, despite the declared objective ‘to establish a fair and market-oriented agricultural trading system’. A way forward would be a kind of ‘bottom up’ approach by focusing on extreme cases of food insecurity caused by food dumping, or by export restrictions where a direct effect of food insecurity in other countries can be established. Also, international financing institutions need to review their policies and lending priorities. The same goes for the bilateral investment treaties and a possible ‘public interest’ clause, at least in respect of agricultural land acquisitions in vulnerable countries. The bottom line is this: WTO rules cannot entail a right to violate other, equally binding treaty obligations when its membership as a whole claims to contribute to the Millennium Development Goals and pledges to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

Choosing the Path of Austerity: How Policy Coalitions Shape Welfare-policy Choices in Periods of Fiscal Consolidation

In general, fiscal adjustments are associated with significant reductions in social spending. Hence, the welfare state is not spared from austerity. Because the welfare state is still central to party competition, this is electorally risky. The paper addresses the following questions: Do left parties differ from their centrist and rightist competitors in the design of austerity measures? And does government type has an impact on the extent to which austerity policies rely on social spending cuts? By comparing 17 OECD countries between 1982 and 2009 we show that if governments embark on a path to austerity, their ideology does not have a significant effect on the magnitude of welfare state retrenchment. However, if major opposition parties and interest groups rally against social spending cuts, a broad pro-reform coalition is a crucial precondition for large fiscal consolidation programs to rely on substantial cuts to social security.

Coupled human and natural system dynamics as key to the sustainability of Lake Victoria's ecosystem services

East Africa’s Lake Victoria provides resources and services to millions of people on the lake’s shores and abroad. In particular, the lake’s fisheries are an important source of protein, employment, and international economic connections for the whole region. Nonetheless, stock dynamics are poorly understood and currently unpredictable. Furthermore, fishery dynamics are intricately connected to other supporting services of the lake as well as to lakeshore societies and economies. Much research has been carried out piecemeal on different aspects of Lake Victoria’s system; e.g., societies, biodiversity, fisheries, and eutrophication. However, to disentangle drivers and dynamics of change in this complex system, we need to put these pieces together and analyze the system as a whole. We did so by first building a qualitative model of the lake’s social-ecological system. We then investigated the model system through a qualitative loop analysis, and finally examined effects of changes on the system state and structure. The model and its contextual analysis allowed us to investigate system-wide chain reactions resulting from disturbances. Importantly, we built a tool that can be used to analyze the cascading effects of management options and establish the requirements for their success. We found that high connectedness of the system at the exploitation level, through fisheries having multiple target stocks, can increase the stocks’ vulnerability to exploitation but reduce society’s vulnerability to variability in individual stocks. We describe how there are multiple pathways to any change in the system, which makes it difficult to identify the root cause of changes but also broadens the management toolkit. Also, we illustrate how nutrient enrichment is not a self-regulating process, and that explicit management is necessary to halt or reverse eutrophication. This model is simple and usable to assess system-wide effects of management policies, and can serve as a paving stone for future quantitative analyses of system dynamics at local scales.

Communication services

This is a concise encyclopedia entry that discusses the applicable law of the World Trade Organization (WTO) with regard to telecommunications, audiovisual, postal and courier services, which are framed in terms of existing WTO classification under the common heading of 'Communication Services'. The chapter analyzes the pertinent rules of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), the present state of commitments, the problems faced in light of the recent technological advances that affect, albeit differently, all these sectors. It includes insights from the case-law and a brief overall appraisal of the prospects for change.

Contact, Mobility and Authenticity: Language Ideologies in Koineisation and Creolisation

Part II - Christoph Neuenschwander: Language ideologies in the legitimisation of Tok Pisin as a lingua franca Pidgins and Creoles all over the world seem to share common aspects in the historical circumstances of their genesis and evolution. They all emerged in the context of colonialism, in which not only colonisers and colonised, but also the various groups of the colonised population spoke different languages. Pidgins and Creoles, quite simply, resulted from the need to communicate.¬¬ Yet, the degree to which they became accepted as a lingua franca or in fact even as a linguistic variety in its own right, strikingly differs from variety to variety. The current research project focuses on two Pacific Creoles: Tok Pisin, spoken on Papua New Guinea, and Hawai'i Creole English (HCE). Whereas Tok Pisin is a highly stabilised and legitimised variety, used as a lingua franca in one of the most linguistically diverse countries on Earth, HCE seems to be regarded as nothing more than broken English by a vast majority of the Hawai'ian population. The aim of this project is to examine the metalinguistic comments about both varieties and to analyse the public discourses, in which the status of Tok Pisin and HCE were and still are negotiated. More precisely, language ideologies shall be identified and compared in the two contexts. Ultimately, this might help us understand the mechanisms that underlie the processes of legitimisation or stigmatisation. As Laura Tresch will run a parallel research project on language ideologies on new dialects (New Zealand English and Estuary English), a comparison between the findings of both projects may produce even more insights into those mechanisms. The next months of the project will be dedicated to investigating the metalinguistic discourse in Papua New Guinea. In order to collect a wide range of manifestations of language ideologies, i.e. instances of (lay and academic) commentary on Tok Pisin, it makes sense to look at a relatively large period of time and to single out events that are likely to have stimulated such manifestations. In the history of Papua New Guinea - and in the history of Tok Pisin, in particular - several important social and political events concerning the use and the status of the language can be detected. One example might be public debates on education policy. The presentation at the CSLS Winter School 2014 will provide a brief introduction to the history of Tok Pisin and raise the methodological question of how to spot potential sites of language-ideological production.

Micro-facies and µXRF element scanning data of Dead Sea sediment cores DSEn and 5017-1

Laminated lake sediments from the Dead Sea basin provide high-resolution records of climatic variability in the eastern Mediterranean region, which is especially sensitive to changing climatic conditions. In this study, we aim on detailed reconstruction of climatic fluctuations and related changes in the frequency of flood and dust deposition events at ca. 3300 and especially at 2800 cal. yr BP from high-resolution sediment records of the Dead Sea basin. A ca. 4-m-thick, mostly varved sediment section from the western margin of the Dead Sea (DSEn - Ein Gedi profile) was analysed and correlated to the new International Continental Scientific Drilling Program (ICDP) Dead Sea Deep Drilling Project core 5017-1 from the deep basin. To detect even single event layers, we applied a multi-proxy approach of high-resolution microscopic thin section analyses, micro-X-ray fluorescence (µ-XRF) element scanning and magnetic susceptibility measurements, supported by grain size data and palynological analyses. Based on radiocarbon and varve dating, two pronounced dry periods were detected at ~3500-3300 and ~3000-2400 cal. yr BP which are differently expressed in the sediment records. In the shallow-water core (DSEn), the older dry period is characterised by a thick sand deposit, whereas the sedimentological change at 2800 cal. yr BP is less pronounced and characterised mainly by an enhanced frequency of coarse detrital layers interpreted as erosion events. In the 5017-1 deep-basin core, both dry periods are depicted by halite deposits. The onset of the younger dry period coincides with the Homeric Grand Solar Minimum at ca. 2800 cal. yr BP. Our results suggest that during this period, the Dead Sea region experienced an overall dry climate, superimposed by an increased occurrence of flash floods caused by a change in synoptic weather patterns.

Gestión de efluentes y consumo de agua en bodega

Se estudió la gestión de efluentes y el consumo de agua en una bodega productora de vinos tintos ubicada en Maipú (Mendoza, Argentina) y se propusieron alternativas para mejorar la situación actual organizando y reduciendo el consumo de agua y disminuyendo el impacto ambiental que causan los efluentes. La empresa no mide con precisión el consumo de agua, estimándolo por las veces que se llena y vacía la pileta que recoge los efluentes. Con ese dato, y en función del volumen elaborado de vino, se infirió que el gasto de agua quintuplica aproximadamente al de un establecimiento similar en Francia. Tampoco son medidas la salinidad y la toxicidad de las aguas residuales. Los cambios propuestos se basaron en: • la medición de los flujos de aguas de lavado y efluentes; • la reducción del consumo de agua adaptando materiales y maquinarias; estableciendo protocolos de limpieza y sensibilizando e instruyendo al personal; • la separación de los efluentes tóxicos; • la separación eficiente de los residuos sólidos de los líquidos; • los tratamientos oxidativos en aguas efluentes; • la reutilización parcial de las aguas tratadas en usos no bromatológicos.

Dinámicas territoriales en el frente portuario de la microregión de Zárate y Campana en las últimas dos décadas

Este trabajo es parte de un Proyecto de Incentivos de mayor envergadura. En esta oportunidad, se presenta el análisis realizado sobre las dinámicas del sector industrial y los espacios portuarios de la microregión de Zárate y Campana haciendo énfasis en las tensiones territoriales resultantes durante la etapa neoliberal y neodesarrollista iniciada en el año 2002. La elección de estas ciudades se debió a que han mostrado en los últimos años un dinamismo superior a la media de la región y conforman un importante polo industrial y portuario. En los períodos analizados se pudo observar que recibieron grandes inversiones en industria, servicios e infraestructuras de parte de firmas trasnacionales y del Estado, en sus diversos niveles jurisdiccionales, que ayudaron a consolidar su liderazgo en la Región Metropolitana de Buenos Aires y redefinir su posición a diferentes escalas. Pasaron así a integrar un nuevo espacio geoeconómico, por su inserción en cadenas productivas globales en el contexto del Mercosur

Dinámicas territoriales en el frente portuario de la microregión de Zárate y Campana en las últimas dos décadas

Este trabajo es parte de un Proyecto de Incentivos de mayor envergadura. En esta oportunidad, se presenta el análisis realizado sobre las dinámicas del sector industrial y los espacios portuarios de la microregión de Zárate y Campana haciendo énfasis en las tensiones territoriales resultantes durante la etapa neoliberal y neodesarrollista iniciada en el año 2002. La elección de estas ciudades se debió a que han mostrado en los últimos años un dinamismo superior a la media de la región y conforman un importante polo industrial y portuario. En los períodos analizados se pudo observar que recibieron grandes inversiones en industria, servicios e infraestructuras de parte de firmas trasnacionales y del Estado, en sus diversos niveles jurisdiccionales, que ayudaron a consolidar su liderazgo en la Región Metropolitana de Buenos Aires y redefinir su posición a diferentes escalas. Pasaron así a integrar un nuevo espacio geoeconómico, por su inserción en cadenas productivas globales en el contexto del Mercosur