“Complete Labelling” and Domestic Prosecutions for Crimes Against Humanity

Criminal Law Forum - Fair labelling is an established principle of criminal justice that scrutinises the way that States use language in labelling criminal defendants and their conduct. I argue...     

The political strategy of external aid

When creating a process of international aid, the definition of a political strategy is critically important. In theory, a government able to deliver services and goods to its population and to guarantee participation in decision-making might not need the presence of international aid. International aid should bridge an existing gap between a government and its own population by adopting a relevant political strategy. This viewpoint proposes a reference framework for international cooperation actors to define their basic political strategy and provides a comprehensive framework for situating different political strategies into a wider approach.     

A Veteran Hotelier

Thirty five years ago,Javier Albar was askedby his father, a hotelier at Hilton Madrid: "Would you like to go to a hotelschool in Switzerland?"The boy, who had a stronginterest in art and     

Victims of Terrorism and Political Violence: Identity,Needs, and Service Delivery in Northern Ireland and Great Britain

Terrorism and political violence exist fundamentally as communicative acts; inherently the acts themselves serve to inspire anxiety and fear. As the recipients of such a communicative act, victims of terrorism and political violence serve as the vehicle for the dissemination of these communications to both the intended and broader audiences. Their victimising experience is thus a complex interplay between a profound personal trauma and the political/communicative dimension of the attack. Given this complexity, this article addresses how victims’ needs are understood by victims of terrorism and political violence in both Northern Ireland (NI) and Great Britain (GB). Through engagement with practitioners, victims, survivors, and community activists, this article conceptualises the existing perceptions amongst these different groups regarding needs, the delivery of services to victims in NI and GB, and examines the origins of the different approaches. Results demonstrate that victims’ needs are highly context-dependent at a public level, but relate heavily to the experiences of other victims of terrorism and political violence at a private level.     

Welfare,Inequality and Financial Effects of a Multi-Pillar Pension Reform: The Case of Peru

This paper studies the potential effects of a multi-pillar pension system on pension inequality, actuarial liability and welfare in Peru, by means of simulations of future distributions of pensions with social security administrative records. The results show that actual pension inequality and actuarial liability can be substantially reduced with welfare preserving policies. The simulations illustrate that when welfare is considered, it is important to define the implied value judgments, which are not universally agreed upon. Therefore, this paper highlights the trade-offs of a pension policy reform and contributes to assess the second generation of pension reforms in Latin America.     

INTERPOL's Surveillance Network in Curbing Transnational Terrorism

This paper investigates the role that International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) surveillance—the Mobile INTERPOL Network Database (MIND) and the Fixed INTERPOL Network Database (FIND)—played in the War on Terror since its inception in 2005. MIND/FIND surveillance allows countries to screen people and documents systematically at border crossings against INTERPOL databases on terrorists, fugitives, and stolen and lost travel documents. Such documents have been used in the past by terrorists to transit borders. By applying methods developed in the treatment‐effects literature, this paper establishes that countries adopting MIND/FIND experienced fewer transnational terrorist attacks than they would have had they not adopted MIND/FIND. Our estimates indicate that, on average, from 2008 to 2011, adopting and using MIND/FIND results in 0.5 fewer transnational terrorist incidents each year per 100 million people. Thus, a country like France with a population just above 64 million people in 2008 would have 0.32 fewer transnational terrorist incidents per year owing to its use of INTERPOL surveillance. This amounts to a sizeable average proportional reduction of about 30 percent.