Confronting the Reality of Gender-based Violence in Northern Uganda

Two decades of conflict in northern Uganda have had a devastatingimpact on the lives of thousands of civilians. Like so manyof today's ‘dirty wars,’ gender-related crimes havebeen pervasive. While numerous disciplines over the past centuryhave developed sophisticated theories for understanding thenature and agency surrounding sexual offences, the nascent fieldof transitional justice is only just beginning to grapple withthese issues or design appropriate measures of redress. Thispaper is based on research undertaken to look at issues of gender-basedviolence (GBV) in four camps for the internally displaced innorthern Uganda in order to provide insight into the natureand prevalence of GBV within a specific context. The findingsshow that specific GBV dynamics need to be scrutinised withinzones of conflict and taken into consideration in the policiesadopted post-conflict. The paper both illuminates the natureof such abuses within the Ugandan context and points to theneed for concerted attention to be paid to the pervasive genderdimensions of violence when designing transitional justice mechanisms.     

Revenue Source and Electoral Accountability: Experimental Evidence from Local US Policymakers

Political Behavior - Existing research suggests that tax-reliant governments are more accountable to citizens. This pattern is consistent with micro-level evidence that citizens who are taxed are...     

The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (QLD): A form of private governance in action?

The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act 2003 (QLD) (ACHA) removes the Queensland Government from any direct role in the regulation of Aboriginal cultural heritage, and operates by encouraging and in certain circumstances, requiring agreements between developers and Aboriginal groups. This paper argues that these agreements constitute a form of private governance. Agreements between developers and Aboriginal groups have traditionally been seen as falling outside private governance literature as they are domestic and contractual in nature. However, private governance theory has recently been used to understand agreements between developers and Indigenous groups in Canada and this paper will demonstrate that the approach of the ACHA constitutes a form of private governance. This paper will analyse the ACHA against key principles for good governance and explore the challenges for the protection of Aboriginal cultural heritage when the state is removed as regulator.     

The probability of achieving full allelic representation for LCN-STR profiling of haploid cells

Modern forensic techniques allow DNA to be extracted from ever decreasing amounts of cellular material. Low copy number (LCN) profiling enables the production of STR profiles from small numbers of cells. Moreover, methods such as laser micro-dissection enables forensic scientists to potentially isolate individual cells for PCR. The DNA derived from haploid cells (semen) is a common source of forensic evidence in sexual assault cases. Haploid cells contain only half the DNA complement of diploid cells (3 pg compared to 6 pg). The smaller the number of cells sampled, the smaller the probability that there is a full representation of the alleles comprising the donor profile. This paper investigates the relationship between the number of cells sampled and the probability of full representation of all alleles in the donor sample. It also considers the effect of typing several loci as opposed to just a single locus.