Examining Sexual Violence in the Military Within the Context of Eritrean Asylum Claims Presented in Norway

Discussion of rape by soldiers as a form of persecution haslargely been directed towards the context of war or actual conflict.Nevertheless, there is a need for attention to be directed towardsthe phenomenon of rape within the military in the post-conflictperiod. This article discusses asylum claims presented in Norwayby Eritrean female soldiers claiming risk of persecution inthe form of sexual violence, rape, or torture within the military.First, presentation is made of the history of Eritrean women'sparticipation in the war of independence and the ensuing politicaland legislative gains won at the end of the war against Ethiopia.Review of Eritrea's report and responses to the Committee onthe Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) reveala state of backlash against women in the post-conflict period.Second, examination of how rape within the military and desertionmay fall under the criteria of the definition of a refugee accordingthe 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees is pursued. Comparisonis drawn to instances of rape of women soldiers in the US andIsrael, as well as sexual violence by United Nations Missionin Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) peacekeepers, revealing commonchallenges affecting prevention and protection strategies. Third,a comparative review is conducted of evidentiary standards inorder to highlight the importance of maintaining a flexibleapproach responsive to the special circumstances of sexual violence.The Norwegian practice indicated a tendency to provide protectionfor compassionate grounds or humanitarian protection, ratherthan asylum. This resulted in non-recognition of the legitimacyof claims based on gender related persecution as requiring legalprotection under the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees.     

Hard responses to corruption: Penal standards and the repression of corruption in Britain, France and Portugal

Despite its difficulties and inconsistencies in framing those practices andconducts recently unveiled by the press and judicial investigations whichhave caused considerable public discontent, the penal definition ofcorruption still highlights an interesting conceptual diversity across spaceand time that should not be overlooked. Most official discussions about andreferences to corruption and its volume are still framed within these hardparameters. It is, therefore, important to look at the intricacies ofcorruption as a crime in order to understand the virtues and failures ofnational repressive efforts. While crime statistics are of limited use for itsmeasurement, they can nevertheless help to interpret the way corruptionhas been treated through repressive instruments cross-nationally over aperiod of time.The aim of this paper is to assess the dynamics of the various processes ofsetting and revising penal standards to the conduct of office holders and theresults observable from the application of corruption and related offencesacross countries with different legal traditions.     

embodying memory: women and the legacy of the military government in Chile

The article argues that the prohibition of abortion in Chile, other than when the mother's life is in danger, is a form of human rights violation targeting women specifically. The Pro-Birth Policy was established in Pinochet's Chile as a response to the previous government's attempts, under Allende, to encourage family planning and to educate and inform women about their choices. This had been done to put an end to the increase in back-street abortions with the inevitable toll on women's lives. Pinochet's regime reversed these women-oriented family planning policies, and criminalized abortion, on the basis of costs to the state and, more importantly, the need to increase the birth rate for reasons of national security. Women's bodies were used by the Pinochet regime, both by sexual violence and torture, and by the denial of women's reproductive and sexual rights, as a means to impose discipline and order on society. The fact that this is still not acknowledged in the construction of a collective memory indicates that the issue has not yet been resolved in democratic Chile.     

Crises and unpredictability in developing countries

Developing countries have suffered most of the financial crises in the context of the process of economic and financial globalisation. Both current and previous crises have revealed that unpredictability is a feature common to all the episodes which occurred during the process of globalisation. Although certain alarms went off, any of those external financial crises were actually predicted by the advanced methods in use for prediction and country risk analysis. Taking into consideration the information above, the aim of this paper is to check the ability to foresee external financial crises in developing countries of both the country risk index published by Euromoney and the Credit Ratings variable included therein. We have focused on the external financial crises that took place between 1992 and 2011, that is, in a full globalisation era. The results are negative. It appears that neither the index nor the sovereign ratings are able to reflect early enough the vulnerabilities that arise previously to the setting off the crisis episodes. This leads us to conclude that the existing models of country risk have limits. Thus, it would necessary to develop new instruments to measure this risk, considering uncertainty as an essential feature of the current economic and financial environment.