Realising the Potential of the International Criminal Court: The African Experience

To date efforts of the International Criminal Court (ICC) toeradicate impunity for international crimes have been focussedin the African region. With arrest warrants now issued in relationto the situations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ugandaand the surrender of one individual to the Court, this articleprovides a timely examination of the efforts of African Statesto adopt legislation to provide for cooperation with the ICCand the prosecution of ICC crimes in national courts. The articledemonstrates that despite their willingness to make use of theICC system for prosecutions, African States, reflecting thegeneral trend in other regions, have made very little progressin implementing the Rome Statute. The article also examineshow the ICC has conducted its investigations in light of thelack of such implementing legislation.     

The Case of <Emphasis Type="Italic">variae lectiones</Emphasis> in Classical Islamic Jurisprudence: Grammar and the Interpretation of Law

The qirā?āt or variae lectiones represent the vast corpus of Qur?ānic readings that were preserved through the historical processes associated with the textual codification and transmission of the Qur?ān. Despite the fact that differences among concomitant readings tend to be nominal, others betray semantic nuances that are brought into play within legal discourses. Both types of readings remain important sources for the history of the text of the Qur’ān and early Arabic grammatical thought. While some recent scholars have questioned the historical function and nature of the corpus of qirā?āt, others have argued that specific types of variant readings were the resultant products of attempts to circumvent legal inconsistencies which were found in text of the Qur?ān or were generated through legal debates. Following a preliminary review of the historical framework of the genesis of qirā?āt through reference to early grammatical literature, an attempt will be made to shed some light on the role that semantic variation among concomitant readings played in the synthesis and interpretation of law. The aim will be to draw attention to the subtle theoretical frameworks employed by jurists for their contextualization and analysis. This will also include a review of attitudes towards the forms of qirā?āt that classical scholarship designated as being anomalous or shādhdha.     

Strategic organizational drivers of corporate environmental responsibility in the Caribbean hotel industry

This study identifies strategic organizational drivers of corporate environmental responsibility (CER) in the Caribbean hotel sector. Hotels face institutional pressures that question their environmental legitimacy, competitive pressures that force market re-positioning decisions and constraints/advantages based on their resources and capabilities for managing CER. Empirical evidence collected here suggests that CER improves when hotels declare environmental policies; target eco-conscious tourists; are foreign owned; affiliated to MNCs; and experience healthy financial performance. The latter three factors also enable the implementation of environmental policies thereby strengthening CER. They play no such role in how market re-positioning strategies impact CER. Neither did strategic targeting of luxury tourists affect CER. These findings are useful to policy makers in tourism-dependent economies where CER is intrinsically tied to sustainable development and the tourism product is so dependent on the quality of the natural environment in which it is immersed.     

Perceived public condemnation and avoidance intentions: The mediating role of moral outrage

The effects of intrapersonal emotion on consumers' behavior have long been studied, but the effects of interpersonal emotions on public's intentions remain poorly understood. People often get angry when they observe injustice with others but not themselves. Drawing on emotions as social information theory, we investigated how perceived public condemnation (knowledge that other also condemn a particular norm violation by an organization) affects the moral outrage of public and their future intentions toward the organization. A quantitative study was empirically examined through a sample of 107 users of a leading riding service in Pakistan. Data were analyzed through statistical tools (IBM SPSS & AMOS 21). Finding shows that perceived public condemnation was positively correlated with moral outrage and avoidance intentions of individuals. However, moral outrage mediates the association between perceived public condemnation and avoidance intentions of the public. The implications highlight the importance of a community's social norms and values to gauge the organization's reputation in people's eyes.     

雇员离职后的竞业禁止

在制定商业秘密保护法与劳动合同法时,我国对离职后竞业禁止协议的规制应当建立在正确的法益目标之上,即以保护商业秘密和维护正常竞争秩序为目的,通过合理适度的竞业限制,谋求雇主、雇员、社会三者之间的利益平衡。     

‘A life wasted making dust’: affective histories of dearth,death, debt and farmers' suicides in India

A significant number of farmers committing suicides in various parts of India are routinely attributed to agrarian crisis. The crisis is further related to the structural transformations induced by globalisation and liberalization and the resulting forms of scarcities or shortages, for example, prices, growth, and resources. I contend in this essay that the framework of economic rationality is insufficient to explain why a disturbingly high number of middle farmers are taking their lives. This essay is an attempt to provide an alternative explanation of the suicides by undertaking a study of the affective histories of scarcities. It argues that for the suicides whether scarcity actually exists is less relevant than how the idea of scarcity is articulated in affective responses. The affective histories explain the way in which suicides and the wider feelings of rural alienation relate to the fear of pauperization. This fear relates to the bounded imagination of the self and the other, glued by a long history of deeply ingrained ideologies of hierarchy. If farmers' suicides point to any crisis, it is the crisis of lack of alternative political and cultural imagination emerging from a rounded critique of all forms of social injustice and violence.     

The Decade of International Engagement in Afghanistan

As a result of the Bonn and Tokyo Conferences when extensive international engagement began in Afghanistan in early 2002,hopes rose high that now peace and stability would be restored in this war ravaged country.Given the scale of the commitment and excitement demonstrated by the international community to combat terrorism and help Afghanistan in its overall reconstruction process,it appeared that extensive political and economic activities would soon revive that would help in ending the decades-long miseries of the poor Afghan nation.In the immediate aftermath a significant performance was also recorded in some spheres,such as: On diplomatic front,it helped finish Afghanistan' s acute isolation among the world nations that it was faced with during the Taliban rule.