North Korean Refugees and International Refugee Law

The severe food crisis of the 1990s forced thousands of NorthKoreans to leave their country in search of food. Most of themcrossed the border into China, to which the Government of thePeople's Republic of China (the PRC) responded by forcibly repatriatingdefectors to North Korea, thus placing many of them at riskof being subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment and,at times, even death. This article provides an overview of thesituation of North Korean asylum seekers and analyses the legalprotection available to North Korean defectors under internationallaw. The article focuses specifically on the situation of NorthKoreans in mainland China and China's obligations under internationalhuman rights and refugee law. The aim of the article is to contributeto the elaboration of durable solutions for the plight of NorthKorean asylum seekers and to develop a range of recommendationsfor law reform and policy change.     

Citizenship,nationhood and the production of political space

The purpose of this essay is to provide a discussion of the way in which citizenship and nationhood are implied in the territorialization of the modem state. Moreover, it attempts a brief exposition of the manner in which a new form of citizenship is involved in the de‐territorialization of political space within the European Union. The main argument is developed as a critical engagement with Rogers Brubaker's study on ‘Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany’. Following a critical evaluation of Brubaker's exceedingly rigid ontological framework, this essay offers an alternative reading of the historical relationship between citizenship, nationhood and political space in France and Germany. With both nation and state stripped of their exclusive status as possible mediations of political organization, a brief sketch is offered in ‘which the European Union Citizenship is evaluated in terms of its contribution to the de‐territorialization of the EU.     

The Exceptional Case of the British Military Bases on Cyprus

As is widely known, Cyprus was the place used as springboard for all the US–British air operations in the region surrounding it, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya and so on. However, neither the Republic of Cyprus, nor the breakaway regime in the north of the island had anything to do with that. The logistical hub for those activities were the so-called Sovereign British Military Bases conceded to Britain in the 1960 Zurich Agreement in return for the independence Cyprus gained in the same year. Cyprus is the only place on the planet where the United Kingdom maintains as a legacy of British colonial rule sovereign military bases and a military presence secured as a result of a multilateral treaty of guarantee far surpassing those rights that the United Kingdom had managed to have recognized in the installation of military bases in Burma, Malta and Ceylon. Nevertheless, two things are very remarkable: why has the United States, despite its numerous other facilities in the Near East, preferred those bases for its activities? Why have the British clung on to their bases in Cyprus – in spite of the retreat of British forces from so many bases originally built by the United Kingdom in so many places around the world since 1960, although in comparison with other overseas garrisons still left of the British Empire, the one in Cyprus is the biggest and the most expensive to maintain? The article tries to illuminate the background of this paradox. It examines, based on primary and secondary sources from several countries, the historical evolution and regime of the UK Sovereign Military Bases on Cyprus, which constitute an exceptional case in both international relations and international law. It argues that the operation of the British bases in Cyprus has been exceeding the legal framework determined by the Treaty of Establishment and hardly complies with the British obligation to decolonize the entire territory of the island of Cyprus as well as the right of the Cypriot people to self-determination.     

DYNAMIC SCORING OF TAX REFORMS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

In this paper, we present the first dynamic scoring exercise linking a microsimulation and a dynamic general equilibrium model for Europe. We illustrate our novel methodology analyzing hypothetical reforms of the social insurance contributions system in Belgium. Our approach takes into account the feedback effects resulting from adjustments and behavioral responses in the labor market and the economy‐wide reaction to the tax policy changes essential for a comprehensive evaluation of the reforms. We find that the self‐financing effect of a reduction in employers’ social insurance contribution is substantially larger than that of a comparable reduction in employees’ social insurance contributions.     

China Investment Corporation’s Forays into Europe and the United States: explaining the different receptions

This study analyses the changing investment climates for China’s sovereign wealth fund, the China Investment Corporation (CIC), in the US, the UK and France. It assesses legislative flexibilities, public opinions and macroeconomic conditions in the three polities in order to ascertain whether the investment review process of each is susceptible to politicization, and if such susceptibility has changed in line with macroeconomic variations. The study finds that the US investment review process is susceptible to politicization and that such politicization has likely taken place following the recovery from the global financial crisis, resulting in a worsened investment climate for Chinese investors, including CIC. The investment review processes in the UK and France have not been susceptible to politicization. Moreover, negative macroeconomic conditions for each of the two countries following the eruption of the Eurozone crisis have resulted in an improved investment climate for CIC, although brought about by the proactive stance of governments and companies rather than by any de-politicization.     

Analytical Fingerprint of Wolframite Ore Concentrates

Ongoing violent conflicts in Central Africa are fueled by illegal mining and trading of tantalum, tin, and tungsten ores. The credibility of document‐based traceability systems can be improved by an analytical fingerprint applied as an independent method to confirm or doubt the documented origin of ore minerals. Wolframite (Fe,Mn)WO₄ is the most important ore mineral for tungsten and is subject to artisanal mining in Central Africa. Element concentrations of wolframite grains analyzed by laser ablation‐inductively coupled plasma‐mass spectrometry are used to establish the analytical fingerprint. The data from ore concentrate samples are multivariate, not normal or log‐normal distributed. The samples cannot be regarded as representative aliquots of a population. Based on the Kolmogorov–Smirnov distance, a measure of similarity between a sample in question and reference samples from a database is determined. A decision criterion is deduced to recognize samples which do not originate from the declared mine site.