Food security and human rights in Indonesia

Food is crucial to an adequate standard of living. The acknowledgement of the right to food in government policies is fundamental to the protection of human dignity, particularly in relation to food insecurity. It allows the right-holder to seek redress and hold government accountable for non-fulfilment. With reference to Indonesia, the article highlights deficits in meeting obligations to the right to food as stipulated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The state links food policy to the issue of national stability, with a resulting focus on the national rather than household or individual levels, and the inhibition at the grassroots of the right to food.     

Corporate security practices and human rights in West Papua

This article explores the intersections between large extractive companies, security governance and human rights. It contributes to understandings of how extractive companies can influence human rights protection in their areas of operation. Drawing on a case study of West Papua, the article argues that extractive companies have important opportunities to promote human rights through their security practices. However the power of extractive companies to determine human rights outcomes is limited by a variety of factors. Examples include: state narratives of nation-building, the financial interests of security personnel and the history of the company's involvement in the area.     

Australia's security and the threat of Islamic extremism in southeast Asia

Australian foreign and security policy confronts a series of difficult challenges in coping with the emergence of an Islamic extremist threat in Southeast Asia. Australian policy makers are being drawn into unfamiliar linkages with moderate Islam, and into closer cooperation with Indonesia, the most populous Islamic nation in the world, in an attempt to offset Islamic extremists. Further, they must achieve those objectives at a time when important interests are at stake beyond Southeast Asia, when bipartisan agreement about the direction of foreign policy is waning, and when divisions over the appropriate trajectory of Australian security policy are intense. A delicacy almost unprecedented in Australian foreign policy will be required.     

俄罗斯科技安全面临的威胁及其防范措施分析

科技安全是国家安全的一个重要组成部分,属于非传统国家安全范畴,在国家非传统安全中占据重要位置。科技是确保国家安全的物质保证,是一国维护国家安全的重要条件。随着经济的不断发展,综合国力的不断增强,俄罗斯越来越重视国家科技安全问题,采取各种行之有效的措施来维护本国的科技安全,从而维护国家安全。     

Famine and human rights

Famine is clearly and undeniably a terrible wrong, and famine is preventable. The occurrence of famine is an indictment of the ethics of the country in which it has occurred. Despite this, those claiming to represent ethical concerns in general and human rights in particular have had little impact on either understanding famine or dealing with it. This paper is an attempt to develop an agenda whereby human rights concerns can be brought to bear on the problem of famine.     

俄罗斯军事安全面临的威胁及其防范措施

军事安全在传统安全观中占据核心位置。军事安全或国防安全是国家安全的一个重要组成部分,属于传统国家安全范畴,是一个国家安全的根本保证,亦是一国维护自身国际地位的重要因素之一。在后冷战时期,俄罗斯军事安全面临着各种威胁。随着经济的不断发展,综合国力的增强,俄罗斯越来越重视国家军事安全问题,关注军队的建设和改革,采取各种行之有效的防范措施来维护本国的军事安全。     

Republicanism and human rights: a plausible combination?

I consider a small but growing corner of the global justice literature: conceptions of human rights advanced under republican lights. I outline three recent republican justificatory arguments for principles of global justice embodied in human rights: Stuart White's appeal to the republican emphasis on civic virtue, and the appeals to a republican conception of liberty advanced by Philip Pettit and James Bohman. I argue that in all three accounts, too little attention is paid to constraints on the reasons that can be offered to a diverse domain of agents. I sketch an outline of the criteria plausible justificatory reasons must contain. In the appeal to virtue, no such reasons are forthcoming. In the appeal to liberty, such reasons may be forthcoming if republicans give up the claim that human rights are justified by appeal to ‘liberty’ itself. I conclude that a suitably modified appeal to the republican conception of liberty may be plausible.     

The evolution of power,threat, and security: Past and potential developments

This paper describes the development of the international military situation over the past three decades and explores the potential for its transformation under different assumptions regarding economic conditions and the character of international relations. Using newly derived indices in the conventional military area, an assessment is made of the shifting tides in the power, threat and security situation that has confronted twenty‐five important states in the international system during the recent past. The past is then contrasted with some possible alternative developments. These developments are assayed using a global simulation model, GLOBUS, developed at the Science Center Berlin.     

Crime and economic instability: the real security threat from North Korea and what to do about it

This essay examines the domestic and international causationof the socioeconomic transformation that has taken place inthe DPRK since the 1990s. In the process the essay demonstrateshow the DPRK socio-economy has become an enabling environmentfor crossborder illicit economic activity. The argument is thatthere is little evidence that the DPRK government fully comprehendsthe potential problems for its own society from the lack ofregulation of market transactions and therefore not much likelihoodthat it is currently able or willing to prevent spillover ofthe numerous grey areas of North Korean marketization into thesocio-economies of its neighbours. What is therefore neededis positive interaction by foreign economic interlocutors, includinggovernments and international institutions. A policy of 'intelligentintervention' that combines closely monitored but relativelysubstantial economic interaction integrally linked to a programmeof market institution-building in the DPRK, along with a policyof military deterrence, could best contribute to preventingthe growth of economic and political instability in NortheastAsia.     

Terrorist profiling: human rights concerns

Post-9/11, law-enforcement agencies have expanded the processing of personal data for terrorist profiles; this is actually among the very reasons why personal data are processed in the first place. De facto terrorist profiles tend to be based predominantly on the use of such criteria as ‘race’, colour, religion, or ethnic and national origin to single out persons for enhanced scrutiny. Terrorist-profiling practices, therefore, raise the question as to their conformity with the right to privacy, the protection of personal data, and the principle of non-discrimination. This article critically examines to what extent, if any, terrorist-profiling practices may be regarded as compatible with the principle of non-discrimination and the fundamental rules pertaining to the protection of personal data. For this purpose, it looks at various approaches to defining profiling in the context of countering terrorism, as well as describing de facto manifestations of terrorist-profiling practices. The conclusion is that terrorist-profiling practices all too often fail to comply with the fundamental requirement that any restrictions on the right to privacy and the protection of personal data are adequately regulated, necessary and proportionate. The so-called ethnic profiling gives rise to particularly serious problems. It tends to assume the nature of ‘racial’ profiling and, accordingly, entail discriminatory effects that can result in feelings of humiliation and stigmatisation among the targeted groups. Since the risk of further marginalisation and even radicalisation within those groups also appears to be a very real consideration, the whole necessity of ethnic profiling in the name of countering terrorism must be called into question in a contemporary democratic society built on the principles of pluralism and respect for different cultures.     

Women's human rights in a changing climate: highlighting the distributive effects of climate policies

A women's rights perspective can inform and structure research on climate policy impacts on women. To date, climate policy analysis has mostly considered women as agents of climate protection, that is, objects of mitigation policies, rather than subjects in their own right. However, climate change mitigation involves direct and indirect distributive effects depending on which sectors are involved, which instruments are chosen and how funds are obtained and allocated. Since gender roles impact on individual livelihoods and activities, distributive effects are likely to be gendered. This paper suggests that women's human rights can be used as a framework for research aiming to fill this gap. They provide a well-developed, tested range of criteria for gender justice. Such assessments would allow for a more systematic and comprehensive understanding of the gendered distributive effects of climate policies, notably with regard to the particularly understudied situation in the industrialized world.     

Counterterrorism and expert regimes: some human rights concerns

The recently retired Homeland Security Advisory System constituted a main means by which the intensity of the terrorist threat was communicated to the United States' public. An examination of its inner workings and its social impact shows the System as part of a modality of government: an encapsulation of intelligence-led governmentality. Informed by the political philosophy of Cornelius Castoriadis, I contextualise this modality as a settling of fundamental tensions inherent in modern sociopolitical culture, those between the principle of social and personal autonomy, and that of rational mastery of people and nature. These principles are strongly connected to democratic and oligarchic political organisation, respectively, and they give rise to different justifications of state authority. In turn, they pertain to the fundamental question of whether scientific expertise on politics is possible.