Applying the Responsibility to Protect to the ‘Arab Spring’

The doctrine of the responsibility to protect, since its inception in the ICISS report of 2001, has been the subject of considerable discussion. Arguably its most publicised component is the principle that the international community has the responsibility to protect civilian populations against severe suffering where the relevant national authorities are unable or unwilling to do so. Consequently, the main focus of discourse upon the responsibility to protect has centred on its impact upon the approach of the international community to intervention in respect of situations posing considerable humanitarian crises. The events of the Arab Spring, in which full blown conflict in some states gave rise to serious human suffering, provided a real opportunity for the international community to evaluate the role of the responsibility to protect in decision-making over responding to such instances, and potentially to develop it into a practical and meaningfully implementable concept. However, due to political flaws inherent in the doctrine, and its arguably overstated significance, the doctrine at best played a minimal role in guiding the international response to developments in the Arab World. Nonetheless, responses to the Arab Spring do allow certain conclusions to be drawn in respect of the future relevance of the doctrine.     

The Duty to Protect the Victim – Or the Duty to Suffer Punishment?

This paper addresses The Ends of Harm by Victor Tadros. In it, I attempted to explore some of the implications of Tadros’s theory of punishment, particularly those following from the uneasy relationship between punishment of the offender (D) and D’s duty to protect the victim (V) from future harm. Among my concerns were: the apparent underinclusiveness of Tadros’s theory of punishment; the vague and unpredictable scope of D’s liabilities; the taking away by the state of V’s right to be protected; and the lack of inherent limitations on the appropriate forms and amounts of punishment. I also questioned the true meaning of the duty incurred by D as a result of D’s wrongdoing and suggested that protection of Vs from future harm may not be as essential to Tadros’s justification of punishment as he has argued.     

The Right to Have What Rights? EU Citizenship in Need of Clarification

This paper provides a brief critical overview of the recent EU citizenship case‐law of the Court of Justice including Rottmann, Ruiz Zambrano, McCarthy and Dereci. While these cases open a number of new avenues of fundamental importance for the development of EU law, they also undermine legal certainty and send contradictory signals as to the essence of the EU citizenship status and the role it ought to play in the system of EU law. Most importantly, the Court's reluctance to specify what is meant by the ‘essence of rights’ of EU citizenship potentially has disastrous consequences following its own determination that such rights play a crucial role in moving particular factual constellations within the material scope of EU law. The substance and meaning of such rights is however left in suspense to harmful effects. An urgent clarification is needed.     

What shoe was that? The use of computerised image database to assist in identification

The use of a computerised (digital image-based) reference system for the capture, storage and retrieval of shoe soles and uppers has the ability to give quick and reliable information to the investigator in relation to the brand and model of shoe responsible for latent impressions located at crime scenes. The success of the system described is due to the diversity and simplicity of the classification codes, coupled with the ability to search part or all of a shoe sole area. This gives the user greater discriminating power and, with the use of icons and ‘click on’ features, makes the system user friendly when classifying and searching for shoes, thus reducing the possibility of interpretation error.     

What Happens to Law in a Refugee Camp?

How do people living in a refugee camp engage with legal practices, discourses, and institutions? Critics argue that refugee camps leave people in “legal limbo” depriving them of the “right to have rights” despite the presence of international humanitarian actors and the entitlements enshrined in international law. For that reason, refugee camps have become a highly visible symbol of failed human rights campaigns. In contrast, I found in an ethnography of the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana, West Africa, that although people living as refugees faced chronic insecurity and injustice, they engaged extensively with several different facets of the law. I illuminate three interrelated dimensions of their experiences: (1) their development as international legal subjects; (2) their alienation from domestic legal institutions; and (3) their agency within the legal field. The article contributes to the research agenda on law in humanitarian settings an empirically grounded account of the subjective dimensions of legal alienation and mobilization in a refugee camp. More broadly, it contributes to international human rights debates by theorizing a mixed outcome of international human rights campaigns: the emergence of wards of international law, people deeply embedded in the international legal system, but alienated from local law.     

The Principle of Solidarity and Fairness in Sharing Responsibility: More than Window Dressing?

The lack of fairness in asylum responsibility sharing within the EU has been a persistent problem demanding an urgent solution. This article seeks to inform the on‐going debate on European solidarity instruments from a constitutional law perspective by taking the principle of solidarity and fair sharing of responsibility pursuant to Article 80 TFEU as its reference point. The article sees this principle as an important mechanism in both the enhancement of fairness in responsibility sharing and the protection of refugees. It argues that the combined reading of Article 80 TFEU and the Charter of Fundamental Rights provides a strong reason to doubt the constitutionality of the Dublin III Regulation, and any decision reforming the asylum regime should take this view into account. Despite its limited enforceability, Article 80 TFEU can play an important role as an interpretation tool, in particular in the assessment of the legality of solidarity instruments.     

Do Prophylactics Prevent Inflation? Post-identification Feedback and the Effectiveness of Procedures to Protect Against Confidence-inflation in Earwitnesses

After viewing or hearing a recorded simulated crime, participants were asked to identify the offender’s voice from a target-absent audio lineup. After making their voice identification, some participants were either given confirming feedback or no feedback. The feedback manipulation in experiment 1 led to higher ratings of participants’ identification certainty, as well as higher ratings on retrospective confidence reports, in both the immediate and delay groups. Earwitnesses who were asked about their identification certainty prior to the feedback manipulation (experiment 2) did not demonstrate the typical confidence-inflation associated with confirming feedback if they were questioned about the witnessing experience immediately; however, the effects returned after a week-long retention interval. The implications for the differential forgetting and internal-cues hypotheses are discussed.     

The Situation in Libya and the ICC’s Understanding of Complementarity in the Context of UNSC-Referred Cases

The PTCI’s decision on the admissibility of the case against Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi and the subsequent AC Judgement are the first expressions of the ICC’s understanding of complementarity in Article 13(b) cases. Admissibility decisions display how the ICC attempts to strike the balance between international justice and states’ right to exercise their territorial criminal jurisdiction. In relation to cases triggered by UNSC referrals, these decisions also mark the delicate moment in which the ICC’s interaction with the politics UNSC is unveiled. In the case against Saif Al-Islam Gaddafi the ICC seems to have taken deferent approach toward the highly authoritative mechanism that triggered the case. Legally speaking, these decisions might appear as a missed opportunity. They fail to provide a conclusive clarification of the parameters of the ‘same case’ test. First, the AC did not subscribe to the offence-specific interpretation of the ‘same conduct’ test embraced previously by PTCI and, in the name of consistency with the Court’s previous case law, reverted to the incident-specific approach adopted in Lubanga. However, the case-by-case approach adopted by the AC undermines the legal certainty that the AC meant to achieve in the definition of the admissibility test. Moreover, the AC has failed to appraise the PTCI’s conclusion that domestic implementation of international crimes is not necessary for the purposes of successfully challenging the admissibility of a case. Finally, in light of the constraints imposed by Article 17(2) on the relevance of due process violations, the PTCI’s decision to reject on the grounds of ‘inability’ as opposed to ‘unwillingness’, which again the AC did not consider, could be seen as evidence of a deferent stance toward the UNSC.     

What Makes Recovered-Memory Testimony Compelling to Jurors?

Little is known about how jurors arrive at verdicts in cases involving recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse. Study 1 investigated mock jurors' reactions to the recovered-memory testimony of an alleged victim when a therapist intervened with hypnosis, suggestion, or symptom management. When a therapist used hypnosis, jurors viewed the victim's recovered-memory testimony as particularly accurate and credible, and favored the victim in their verdicts. In Study 2, mock jurors were presented with a therapist who was sued for allegedly influencing a client's recall of false memories of abuse. In this case, however, jurors viewed therapists who used hypnosis or suggestion as more likely to have created false memories, more responsible for having caused harm, and less competent, and tended not to favor these therapists in their verdicts. We discuss these seemingly contradictory findings in terms of how culturally formed expectancies about hypnosis produce different causal explanations depending on the focus of a trial.     

What Are the Obstacles to Defense Counsel?

Many years ago, at a session of the USSR Supreme Soviet, Deputy I. A. Kairov uttered these words of bitter truth: "A kind of strange attitude still persists toward defense lawyers as if in some way they were impediments rather than contributors to the administration of justice."     

Seeking Help to Protect the Children?: The Influence of Children on Women’s Decisions to Seek Help When Experiencing Intimate Partner Violence

Intimate partner violence (IPV) has a detrimental effect on the wellbeing of victims and their children. Situational as well as individual factors shape victims’ responses to the experiences of IPV in many ways. This study uses a quantitative approach to examine the factors that influence victims’ decisions on whether and where to seek help. The role of (unborn) children has been examined together with other demographic and situational factors to reveal their influence on victims’ help-seeking decisions. Two items were used to measure the role of children, including victims’ pregnancy at the time of the abuse and children residing with the victim and witnessing the abuse. Relevant findings derived from the analysis of a sub-sample of women interviewed in the process of the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS) 2002/03 are discussed throughout this paper with a specific focus on the role of children. While the presence of unborn children (i.e., pregnancy) had no effect on victims’ help-seeking decisions, children witnessing the abuse emerged as the strongest predictor of general and more formalized help-seeking decisions.     

What is adaptation to climate change? Epistemic ambiguity in the climate finance system

Over the past decade developed states have committed significant public financing for climate change adaptation. Much of this public financing flows through international development organizations. States have delegated the implementation and monitoring of adaptation to existing international organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Scholars have noted that states delegate discretion to specialized organizations to perform a task on their behalf, but have not explored how uncertainties about the nature of the task affect delegation. This article addresses this gap by distinguishing the concept of epistemic ambiguity (when states are uncertain about the exact nature of a task) from strategic ambiguity (when states do not reach consensus over a task due to political differences) in order to address the question: how have states and international organizations defined and implemented adaptation activities? The question is answered through case studies of: (1) adaptation projects administered by the United Nations Development Programme and the International Organization for Migration in Kenya; and (2) states’ and international organizations’ attempts to develop methodologies for reporting adaptation financing. The case studies are based on: primary documents published by states and international organizations, secondary literature on climate finance, and interviews with adaptation experts. This article argues that states have not precisely defined adaptation, and that this is substantially due to epistemic ambiguity. It then identifies two consequences of epistemic ambiguity: a proliferation of activities labelled as adaptation, and difficulties tracking and monitoring adaptation assistance.     

What constitutes a “reasonable belief” in consent to sex? A thematic analysis

Abstract

The prosecution of rape frequently requires a jury to decide whether the defendant reasonably believed that the complainant consented to sexual intercourse, thereby assuming a shared understanding of what constitutes a “reasonable belief in consent”. This study provides a thematic analysis of interviews with 18 university students, studying in London, UK, to explore their perceptions of “a reasonable belief in consent” when considering other people's behaviour. The findings suggest that whilst these participants rejected many stereotypical ideas in judging reasonable belief in consent, the discussion regarding vulnerability, responsibility and the consumption of alcohol was less clear-cut. Discussions frequently sought to avoid directly blaming the victim for being raped, but would instead blame her for getting drunk or otherwise “allowing” herself to become vulnerable. The implications of these findings for the prosecution of rape and wider public education are considered.