Climate business for poverty reduction? The role of the World Bank

The World Bank is increasingly active in the area of climate change mitigation. While it justifies this engagement with its poverty reduction objective and its capacity to pave the way for new business activities in developing countries, critics blame the World Bank as a ??climate profiteer?? and as an unfair competitor in private markets. Our econometric analysis of over 2,000 projects registered until May 2010 under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol allows us to compare the activities of the Bank with those of other, primarily private actors. The results indicate that hardly any of the CDM projects can be considered as strongly pro-poor. Nevertheless, in comparison to the rest of the CDM projects, the Bank??s portfolio shows a relatively clearer orientation towards poor countries. Within these countries, however, the Bank does not show any particular pro-poor focus, and tends to implement those projects that are commercially most attractive. Moreover, there is no evidence of the Bank phasing out its activities once the market becomes fully operational, which goes against its professed pioneering and catalytic role in carbon markets.     

Climate finance in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS)

Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) countries lack sufficient funds to combat climate change. The growth of projects under the clean development mechanism (CDM) is not consistent in the region and the relation of that growth to national GDP is not equivalent either. The disbursement of climate funds promised by different countries and donor organisations to different countries in GMS region is very low. A few countries have relied more on external funds to combat climate change, while some have developed their own funds. A strong database and involvement of civil societies might help the region better utilise these climate funds.     

印度应对气候变化战略和清洁发展机制项目的实践

本文介绍了印度应对气候变化战略和在开发清洁发展机制项目中的实践，包括印度国家气候变化行动计划的主要内容、气候变化的主要协调部门和有关机构。印度开发清洁发展机制（CDM）项目的进程，CDM项目的协调机构，CDM项目的背景、开发潜力预测，分析了已经注册的印度CDM项目的类型和地区分布，最后给出了印度应对气候变化战略和开发CDM项目实践对中国的几点启示。     

Neo‐nationalism and Neo‐Atlanticism in Italian foreign policy

The European Union has low expectations for the international climate regime after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol effectively expires. The United States is not thought likely to sign up to new binding international commitments, whereas EU countries have experienced unexpected difficulties in implementing existing commitments. As a consequence, the European Union may be prepared to settle for a surprisingly weak follow-up to the Kyoto Protocol. At the same time, the European Union will pursue bilateral and regional climate agreements with like-minded countries, parallel to the UN framework and possibly independently of it. Collectively, such agreements could produce an international climate regime that is more robust than what could be agreed at the consensus-based UN level. Nevertheless, the European Union will continue to support the UN process as the only legitimate forum for international negotiations on climate change.     

The United Nations and Terrorism: Rethinking Legal Tensions Between National Security, Human Rights, and Civil Liberties

As the international community responds to the September 11 attacks and the general war on terrorism, member states in the United Nations (UN) must continue to address the balance between the rights of the individual and the security of the state. This study highlights the various roles that the UN plays in combating transnational terrorism through norm setting, codification of human rights law, as well as the drafting and effective implementation of 12 key multilateral agreements aimed at counter-terrorism. In these ways, the UN provides direction and guidance for implementing human rights rules and the ways in which they should be enforced. Even so, national governments must make these rules work. In a system of sovereign states, the role of the UN organization in checking or reversing these human rights abuses remains severely limited and largely dependent upon the political will of the member states. As a consequence, part of the price paid for protecting national security against threats posed by terrorism may well be the curtailment of some human rights and civil liberties within the liberal democratic state.     

Conflicts of decision-making processes between Clean Development Mechanism and project financing

Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects are believed to be financially unviable without additional revenues from CDM in the form of saleable certified emission credits; this is an important premise to be verified in the CDM approval process. However, in financing a CDM project, it is crucial for financiers and investors to ensure that the project is viable without CDM revenues. Thus, there are clear conflicts in the processes and priorities between the CDM approval in theory, and financing and investment decisions in practice. Considering the post-CDM frameworks, this article uses a case study of Bhutan’s Dagachhu hydropower project, the world’s first cross-border CDM project, to suggest practical lessons learnt.     

The Company You Keep: International Socialization and the Diffusion of Human Rights Norms

Does membership in Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) affect states' human rights behavior? One might expect IGOs with a specific human rights mandate, like the International Labour Organization or the Council of Europe, to have a positive effect on the human rights practices of their member states. But what about other sorts of IGOs, particularly those with no direct connection to human rights issues? This study employs cross-national data on abuses of "physical integrity rights" for 137 countries over the period 1982–2000 to test the hypothesis that IGOs can promote the diffusion of human rights norms by providing venues for interstate socialization. Recent empirical work on IGOs has suggested that this sort of socialization effect can play an important role in promoting democracy and can also lead to a more general convergence among states' interests. The results presented here suggest that IGOs can have a surprisingly powerful influence on states' human rights practices as a result of this process.     

Withering consent,but mutual dependency: UN peace operations and African assertiveness

Consent has always been a cornerstone of UN peacekeeping. However, consent in peace operations is often elusive, as recent events in a number of African countries, where the heads of state have explicitly requested the departure or the downsizing of UN missions, have demonstrated. This paper uses evidence from Côte d'Ivoire and Chad to explore the game of conflicting priorities and mutual dependency that underlines UN peacekeeping missions' relations with African host states. It argues that such a dynamic renders consent ambiguous and volatile. African leaders maximise possible benefits that they can obtain from a UN mission, while minimising the potential menace that ‘liberal peace’-style peace-building may pose to their rule. Withdrawal of consent may be facilitated when alternative ‘resources of extraversion’ become available, such as those provided by natural goods or by emerging commercial players. The current situation poses a difficult dilemma to the UN, balancing between keeping peacekeeping missions on the ground with limited or no consent, or leaving and risking breaking its implicit engagements with the civilian population.     

Sovereignty in the Balance: Claims and Bargains at the UN Conferences on the Environment, Human Rights, and Women

States vary the content and subject matter of their claims to sovereignty. In an analysis of when states invoked sovereignty at recent UN World Conferences on the environment (1992), human rights (1993), and women (1995), the authors revise and extend Litfin's (1997) notion of bargains among components of sovereignty. At the conferences, states invoked sovereignty in debates over cultural and religious values, economics, and increased international accountability. The authors interpret the debates based on how four elements of sovereignty—autonomy, control, and legitimacy in the eyes of other states and nonstate actors—are traded by states through implicit or explicit bargaining. They identify patterns that vary by issue area. The authors argue that nongovernmental organizations as well as other states may legitimate or delegitimate states' sovereign claims. They find that countries of the global South made more sovereignty claims of all kinds than Northern states. And, sovereignty bargains may be struck more easily over power and economics than social values.     

Counter-terrorism and communities: an interview with Robert Lambert

The targeted sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council against individuals and entities suspected of association with terrorism are managed through procedures that infringe fundamental human rights, and there are no mechanisms for actual accountability. With the exception of the ECJ in Kadi, municipal and regional courts tend to consider the UN Security Council's resolutions and domestic measures implementing them outside the scope of judicial review. This article argues that the Security Council is bound to observe human rights even in the context of international security action, and that States are not exonerated from international responsibility for violations committed under the umbrella of Chapter VII resolutions.     

Putting Principle into Practice: The Role of Human Rights in Foreign Policy

This commentary by Robin Cook reflects upon what was accomplished during his four years as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs after the new Labour government in 1997 placed the promotion and protection of human rights at the heart of its foreign policy. The paper emphasises this partnership by introducing a programme of exchanges and secondments between human rights NGOs and the Foreign Office, focusing on the pursuit of human rights in both principle and practice. While discussing the role of the British government the author provides an overview of many of the most important examples of attempts at ethical foreign policy over the last five years. It is argued that that national interest is promoted, not hindered, by a commitment to human rights and suggests new rules for when the UN can intervene to keep peace within states rather than among states.     

How the indigenous got seats at the UN table

Indigenous peoples are the only distinct segment of national populations having voting membership in UN bodies devoted to defining their rights and advancing their concerns. This unusual result was the result of the confluence of three factors familiar to students of transnational social movement politics: a) presence within UN offices and bodies of supporters opening forums and agendas to indigenous concerns, b) deference to the growing network of indigenous activists by anthropologists—the professional community best placed to serve as advocates speaking on behalf of indigenous communities, and c) indigenous activists' success in developing and projecting a globally-valid indigenous identity as “peoples” simultaneously uniting the various indigenous communities and providing a rationale for establishing voting rights that enough other actors could be persuaded to accept. Comparison with UN treatment of other groups indicates that indigenous voting rights are more likely to remain an isolated success rather than a harbinger of similar practices in other UN bodies.     

Judgement without justice: on the efficacy of the European human rights regime

The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) is widely regarded as the most important human rights court worldwide. This article investigates the extent to which the court addresses cases from countries with the worst human rights performance. Using a new data set on all ECtHR judgments from 1995–2012, the analysis suggests that the ECtHR does not deliver its judgments against members of the Council of Europe with the worst human rights records, but instead against more democratic and affluent states. The reason is that litigating in front of a supranational court requires capacities that vulnerable people are unlikely to possess, except when aided by transnational advocacy groups. However, more judgements are issued against countries that lack independent judiciaries, where cases are less likely to be resolved at the domestic level. While the ECtHR might not address the worst human rights crimes, it plays a subsidiary role in the European human rights protection system by compensating for weak domestic judiciaries. However, the court's inability to independently pursue litigation, together with the lack of capacity in some countries to bring cases forward, have hampered more effective protection of human rights for the most vulnerable in Europe.     

The Zimbabwe Issue in Sino-U.S. Ties

The United States has criticized the domestic and foreign policies of the Mugabe regime, and has attempted to raise the Zimbabwe issue in the UN Security Council, thus creating a point of potential conflict in Sino-U.S. relations.China differs from the United States on this issue not because of the measures taken by the Western countries such as economic sanctions and political pressure, but,more significantly, because of the Western conception of democracy and human rights, and the difference between the U.S. and Chinese strategies in Africa. The policies of China and the United States on the Zimbabwe issue can be interpreted as a struggle between two powers in Africa. In the short term, however, it is the Middle East that will continue to preoccupy U.S. foreign policy, and Zimbabwe will not become a major flash point in Sino-U.S. relations.     

Digging up Spain's past: consequences of truth and reconciliation

Over the last decade the issue of transitional justice has attracted considerable media and academic attention. Diverse countries including such high profile cases as Chile, South Africa and the former East Germany have attempted to grapple with the complex question of how to respond to human rights abuses committed under a previous regime. Transitional justice generally surfaces as an issue during democratic transition. It is less common for this issue of past human rights abuses to be raised when democratic transition has been completed and democracy is fully consolidated. The subject of this article, however, is Spain, where the human rights abuses committed during the 1936–39 civil war, and the long Francoist dictatorship that followed, have only recently come to the fore, a full quarter of a century after the transition to democracy. The article argues that the current struggle to recover the bodies of the disappeared, and their historical memory, represents a significant case which not only provides new insights into the particular democratization process in Spain but also provides more general lessons for other countries grappling with similar problems.     

Trading amnesty for impunity in Timor-Leste

In 1999, the United Nations made a strong stand against impunity for human rights crimes by prohibiting the inclusion of blanket amnesties in peace agreements. This article examines the impact of the UN’s anti-amnesty policy on one of the first states to be affected by it, Timor-Leste. It argues that even in the absence of an amnesty, more than 15 years after independence impunity still reigns in Timor-Leste, due a lack of judicial capacity, political interference, the persistent belief that amnesties facilitate reconciliation, and an unwillingness on the part of the international community to adequately fund the justice process. That is, this article argues that the UN has oversold its position on amnesties, and that although its anti-amnesty policy is taking hold, in the case of Timor-Leste at least, justice seems as elusive as ever.     

Can human rights conditionality reduce repression? Examining the European Union’s economic agreements

The insertion of human rights commitments into international economic agreements is now a widespread practice. We argue that the effect of such commitments depends on the degree of leverage held by one partner over the other. In a comprehensive analysis of the European Union’s (EU’s) relations with developing countries, we find that human rights clauses are conditionally effective; they are associated with improved political freedom and physical integrity rights only in countries that are more heavily dependent on EU aid. An in-depth look at the EU’s enforcement of its human rights clause in the African-Caribbean-Pacific (ACP) group reveals that the Union most often responds to violations of political rights—particularly coups and flawed elections—and that enforcement is indeed a more powerful catalyst for change in highly aid-dependent states. Alternative explanations—that the impact of the human rights clause depends on legalization, the country’s strategic importance, NGO activity, or domestic institutions—find little support.     

The impact of preferential trade agreements on governmental repression revisited

Previous research suggests that most treaties are ineffective in ensuring countries’ compliance with human rights standards. It has been argued, however, that preferential trade agreements (PTAs) including ‘hard’ human rights standards can withhold economic benefits and, thus, can have a real potential to substantially reduce human rights violations. The following article questions this as existent work on the effects of PTAs on human rights standards neglects a selection process underlying the implementation of these treaties. Countries being aware of the ‘shadow of the future’ already take into account what may happen at the succeeding enforcement stage when establishing a particular PTA. This implies that states agree on ‘hard’ human rights standards in PTAs only if they have a general propensity to abide by human rights in the first place. For testing the empirical implications of their argument, the authors collected new data on PTAs in 1976/77-2009, and employ genetic matching techniques. The results support the theoretical argument that PTAs are unlikely to affect human rights compliance when controlling for the outlined selection problem.     

突尼斯妇女法律地位浅析

突尼斯在保障妇女权益方面有丰富的经验。在维护妇女法律地位方面,突尼斯是非洲和阿拉伯国家中取得最大成就的国家之一。主要原因有三:第一是历史原因,突尼斯改革运动为社会解放和知识分子的意识形态变化奠定了良好基础。"凯鲁万婚约"的适用亦有利于国家独立以后执行一夫一妻制;第二是政治原因,妇女解放是突政府最重要的现代化与发展政策之一;第三是社会原因,20世纪80年代以来突尼斯妇女组织对妇女社会地位提高的推动作用。当前突尼斯面临的经济与社会问题可能对妇女现有地位构成一定的挑战。     

Counter-terrorism and alien justice: the case of security certificates in Canada

This article examines the security certificate process that has been in effect in Canada since 1978 and the 2008 amendment (Bill C-3) of the Immigration and Refugees Protection Act. It highlights how democratic means can be used to subvert meaningful policy changes, and underscores the antinomy inherent in a nation-state's zeal to protect its citizens and appeals by a group of Arab Muslim men held under security certificates for suspected terrorist activities for their human rights to be recognised and respected by a state in which they are non-citizens. The problematic immanent in nation-states serving as guarantors of human rights and its concomitant misconstruing of human rights for citizenship rights are used to demonstrate that an ‘internal Other’ has been created in Canada. The security certificate, it is argued, in stipulating that detainees may request to be deported to countries where they regularly reside or hold nationality, makes them akin to Hannah Arendt's notion of the ‘rightless’ – people who have not only lost their home (i.e., polity) or ‘distinct place in the world’, but also their legal status. Consequently, even in an advanced democracy with grandiose claims to, and assurances of, individual liberty and fundamental freedoms, ‘rightless’ people face a great danger by the fact of being nothing beyond ‘human’.