When Terrorism Hits Home: Domestic Newspaper Coverage of the 1998 and 2002 Terror Attacks in Kenya

Analyzing newspaper coverage of the 1998 Nairobi and 2002 Mombasa terrorist attacks by the Nairobi Daily Nation and East African Standard finds that generalizations from Western sources, such as newsworthiness criteria and coverage of government officials and terrorists, appear similar in Kenyan media, although interpretation of the attacks were colored by a “developing world” perspective in some respects. Terrorists also ironically are more prominent in subsequent attacks, although perhaps only when they fail to inflict heavy damage and casualties. The second attack also brought far more criticism on the Kenyan government, which may have implications for similar events in other countries.

Adhabu ya kaburi aijau maiti (The corpse knows the torment of the grave).

—Swahili proverb     

Engaging Modernity: the political making of indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador, 1900–2008

Most analyses of the recent indigenous mobilisations in Bolivia and Ecuador (as well as other Latin American countries) have sharply divided the new indigenous politics from earlier class-based political projects of the left. The emergence and mass-appeal of indigenous movements, in these analyses, are rooted in ethnic and cultural cleavages between indigenous peoples and the rest of Bolivian and Ecuadorean society. This article argues that a political interpretation of indigenous movements in these countries gives a more coherent explanation for their historical trajectories as well as their present situation, in particular their high degree of articulation with other popular political actors. Its historical section describes the emergence of indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador as part of an engagement with modernity that began in the first half of the twentieth century as part of the cross-ethnic projects of unions and radical parties of the traditional left and put indigenous communities into positive relationships to the modernizing Bolivian and Ecuadorean states.     

Ensuring that Regional Trade Agreements Complement the WTO System: US Unilateralism a Supplement to WTO Initiatives?

In the mid-1990s, the policy debate within the WTO focused onwhether regional trade agreements (RTAs) were building blocksor stumbling blocks for the WTO system, essentially questioningwhether regionalism was appropriate at all from an economicpolicy perspective. Given the proliferation of RTAs since thattime and the inability to roll back the clock, that policy debatehas been replaced by a search for strengthened constraints onRTA activity that might ensure it complements the WTO system.Three major controversies within many existing RTAs are theexclusion of agriculture from coverage, complex and restrictiverules of origin, and varied treatment of the application oftrade remedies. Despite some competing policy considerations,it is likely, on balance, that the WTO system would benefitif agriculture was required to be included in RTA coverage,if RTA rules of origin were simplified and liberalized, andif the controversy surrounding RTA treatment of trade remedieswas cleared up. However, the search for constraints within theWTO system to achieve these results, either through the Dohanegotiations or the dispute settlement system seems unlikelyto succeed in the near future. Accordingly, enhanced and extendedefforts by the US, either unilaterally or in conjunction withits RTA partners utilizing its negotiating leverage, may bea necessary supplement to efforts within the WTO in ensuringa more harmonious relationship between RTAs and the WTO system.     

Directed embryo donation: free choice or discrimination?

The issue of whether to allow or prohibit the directed anonymous donation of human embryos for reproductive use has been publicly contentious. The claims that directed donation are a donor's autonomous right contrast with claims that the practice is discriminatory. Recent legislation and legal recommendation on the issue has been inconsistent or contradictory. This article specifically addresses the question as to whether the directed donation of embryos is the exercise of free choice or an act of discrimination. This question is considered from both ethical and legal viewpoints.     

Historicising Criminalisation: Conceptual and Empirical Issues

This paper charts a renaissance in scholarly analysis of criminalisation, and suggests that we do not have the conceptual tools or empirical knowledge to make the claims about 'overcriminalisation' which motivate much of this scholarship. My argument gives further shape to projects under the umbrella of criminalisation, setting out some of the conceptual issues to be resolved before we can work towards an adequate interpretive, and normative, vision of how criminal law has been and might be used. The paper elaborates a number of projects in 'criminalisation scholarship', and suggests there is a failure adequately to distinguish the different senses of 'criminalisation' in the literature, or the varying methods which might be applied within historical, interpretive, analytic and normative studies of criminalisation. In conclusion, the paper argues for a certain genre of criminalisation scholarship, and for a multi-disciplinary criminalisation research agenda informed by history, sociology and political science as much as by law, criminology and philosophy.