Acts of Truth Telling and Testimony in the Conceptualisation of Reparations in Post-conflict Peru

ABSTRACT

The internal armed conflict of Peru (1980–2000), a struggle which saw the rise of various guerrilla movements, notably Shining Path, against the State, left an estimated 69,280 fatalities and countless survivors of human rights violations. Among the victims, particularly toward the end of the conflict, were over 300,000 indigenous, predominantly illiterate, women in impoverished rural communities who had been targeted by State officials and forced into undergoing sterilisation surgeries. To date, no reparation has been enacted in response. This article reviews acts of truth telling, in particular the use of oral testimony within the project of Quipu, of the victims of these enforced sterilisations, as a nonviolent method of historical justice. The article finds that calls for violent social justice (that is, the internal armed conflict) have not protected the rights of the most vulnerable (among them, indigenous women), though arms may have been taken up in an attempt to do so, but have in fact increased the forms of violence within the armed conflict. By contrast, testimony as nonviolent action protects victims’ right to the truth and their right to resist, as it turns against violent histories and toward possible reparation.     

Taif and the Lebanese State: The Political Economy of a Very Sectarian Public Sector

Abstract

The political reforms adopted in the 1989 Taif Agreement created a veritable postwar paradox: a more balanced consociational power-sharing arrangement led to a bigger, more clientelist, more corrupt, less autonomous public sector, one preoccupied by predatory rentier practices along sectarian and clientelist lines. The more durable the power-sharing arrangement the less the state in Lebanon acts as a state with a measure of bureaucratic autonomy, extractive capacities, and a national agenda. This article problematizes this postwar anomaly by examining the instrumental role played by the public sector in the reproduction of the political elite’s clientelist ensemble undergirding the political economy of sectarianism.     

Identification of sex depending on radiological examination of foot and patella

Forensic anthropology involves the building of an antemortem profile of an individual from skeletal remains. This includes sex, race determination, and age and stature estimation. Because most bones that are conventionally used for sex determination are often recovered either in a fragmented or incomplete state, it has become necessary to use denser bones that are often recovered intact, eg, the patella, calcaneus, and talus. The present work was performed to investigate the possibility of estimation of sex from some radiologic measurements among a known cross-section of Egyptian population. In this study lateral and anteroposterior radiographs of the right foot and knee were made on 160 living unfractured and nonpathologic individuals comprising 80 males and 80 females aged 25 to 65 years referred to the Radiology Department of Assiut University Hospital. Two measurements on right patella (maximum height and maximum width) and 2 measurements of metatarsal bones (length and midshaft diameter), were used to determine sex by univariate and multivariate discriminant analysis. Eighty radiographs of foot and patella of individuals not used in the original sample were randomly selected to test the accuracy of this method. The study revealed that significant sex differences were demonstrated based on these measurements taken on metatarsal bones more than on patella. One function associating 2 parameters (length and midshaft) of the third metatarsal bone obtained the highest value of correct sex determination with rate of 100% accuracy. The multivariate function associating length of the first, third, and fifth metatarsal bones and midshaft of first, second, and fifth metatarsal gave 100% accuracy. Test of multivariate function on the independent sample revealed a correct classification of 87.5%.     

The Arab Uprisings and the Geopolitics of the Middle East

The contest between Saudi Arabia and Iran played out in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, postwar Iraq and, to a lesser extent, Yemen and Bahrain, has shaped the geopolitics of the region since the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Arab uprisings intensified this geopolitical contest and spread it to Syria. The sectarianisation of the region’s geopolitical battles, and the instrumental use of some of the uprisings for geopolitical ends, has hardened sectarian sentiments across the region, complicated post-authoritarian democratic transitions, and, at least in Syria’s case, transformed its popular uprising into a veritable civil war.