International Soft Law, Human Rights and Non-state Actors: Towards the Accountability of Transnational Corporations?

During this age of globalisation, the law is characterised by an ever diminishing hierarchical framework, with an increasing role played by non-state actors. Such features are also pertinent for the international enforceability of human rights. With respect to human rights, TNCs seem to be given broadening obligations, which approach the borderline between ethics and law. The impact of soft law in this context is also relevant. This paper aims to assess whether, and to what extent, this trend could be a proper path to enforce the legal accountability of transnational corporations for human rights. It will be argued that the interplay between law and ethics should be assessed differently depending on which kind of correlative duty is at stake. With regard to negative duties, soft law tools concerning TNCs’ conduct may weaken the impact of hard law. By contrast, when positive duties are concerned, insofar as the horizontal effect of rights cannot be assumed, soft law turns out to be much more useful.

中国城乡经济失衡的成因及调整——基于县域经济分析

我国经济失衡表现为内外资结构不平衡、内外需求结构不平衡和城乡经济不平衡。我国经济失衡根源于由外资推动的以城市为中心经济发展模式。以城市为中心的发展模式推动经济的过快发展,并积累大量的社会经济问题。县域经济是我国城乡经济联系的纽带,在国际产业转移的背景下,发展县域经济既能调整我国内外资结构,也能启动内需,进而缩小城乡差距。发展县域经济必须要通过金融创新来动员和配置资源,并且要走新型工业化道路。     

The European Union's role in networks on removal of fossil fuel subsidies and disclosure of climate change information

This article deals with newly emerging international collaborative initiatives around two issues connected to climate change: removal of fossil fuel subsidies and improving climate information disclosure practices in the business sector. While networked initiatives on the gradual removal of fossil fuel subsidies and a multi-actor network on disclosure of climate change information do not explicitly mobilize collective actions around climate change, they supplement and reinforce a wide array of other transnational initiatives and partnerships around climate change mitigation efforts. Analysed networks equip transnational policy processes around the climate change issue, initially formed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's member states, with new policy tools to mitigate human-induced climate change and hugely expand the membership of policy-making at the international level. Newly emerging transnational networks in the area of fossil fuel subsidies removal and improving climate change information disclosure practices in the corporate world also strive for harmonization of policy methods and instruments across international boundaries. The experience of the European Union (EU) in promoting climate change actions among its member states and in sustaining collaboration with private actors can serve as an exemplary and learning tool for transnational policy networks across continents. And the size of the EU's market together with its governance structure provides it with a common legitimate voice at the international arena for climate change decision-making.     

The benefits of norm ambiguity: constructing the responsibility to protect across Rwanda,Iraq and Libya

Over the past two decades, International Relations scholars have highlighted the importance of efforts by hegemonic states and norm entrepreneurs to foster norm clarity when promoting the establishment, institutionalisation, and internalisation of norms. Yet, such analyses obscure the benefits of norm ambiguity in facilitating consensus, flexibility, and compliance. The authors offer a framework positing that hegemonic and institutional ambiguity can help create consensus and facilitate incremental reform necessary to sustain that consensus. Empirically, the authors then show how such ambiguity has facilitated the development of the responsibility to protect norm, tracing Rwanda-era debates over humanitarian intervention, Iraq-era backlash over interventionist abuses, and Libya-era norm implementation.     

International Trends in Prison Upsizing and Downsizing: In Search of Evidence of a Global Rehabilitation Revolution

Abstract

Our review of global trends in the use of incarceration reveals that both the number of people incarcerated worldwide and the global rate of incarceration continue to increase in every global region. In addition, there have been sizable global increases in the use of pretrial detention, the proportion of female prisoners, the proportion of foreign prisoners, prison privatization, and prison crowding. After reviewing these global trends, we examine the available data on correctional performance, focusing on global crime trends in the subgroup of countries (n = 20) where three-quarters of the world’s prison population is currently located. While most (17/20) of these countries continued to increase their prison population despite decreases in most crime categories, three countries—the Russian Federation, South Africa, and Pakistan—have reduced their reliance on incarceration (number and rate) while also reducing their crime rates. Compared to other countries with large prison populations, the United States’ overall increase in both the prison population (+14.4% since 2000) and incarceration rate (+2.2) can be described as modest. Our review of global trends in corrections and sentencing policy reforms revealed an emerging focus on offender rehabilitation in both prison and community corrections settings and a growing recognition of the link between community development and crime. Focusing on the potential impact of rehabilitation-rich policy reforms in the United States, we highlight the results of a recent simulation modeling study (Taxman & Pattavina, 2013 Pattavina, A., & Taxman, F. S. (2013). Using discrete-event simulation modeling to estimate the impact of RNR program implementation on recidivism levels. In F. S. Taxman & A. Pattavina (Eds.), Simulation strategies to reduce recidivism (pp. 267–281). New York, NY: Springer.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) designed to estimate the impact of expanding our institutional corrections treatment infrastructure. This study reported significant, but relatively small, long-term reductions in prison populations when treatment capacity and treatment quality are increased. These findings suggest that even major improvement in the quantity and quality of prison programming—by itself—will not fundamentally change the life course of prisoners, resulting in continued high return-to-prison rates for these offenders. We conclude that for the United States to significantly reduce its reliance on incarceration, we will need to rethink our approach to crime and punishment. Our global review of corrections and sentencing strategies identified a number of possibilities. Using the global incarceration rate and the global crime rate as benchmark performance “tipping points,” we call for the development of corrections and sentencing policies—and the hiring of corrections personnel—based on the new goal of corrections: individual and community rehabilitation.     

Las fuerzas tras la migración global

Movements of people are a crucial element of global integration. Most destination countries favor the entry of highly skilled migrants, but restrict that of lower-skilled workers, asylum seekers and refugees. A major cause of migration is the growing inequality in incomes and human security between more- and less-developed countries. Further driving factors include uneven economic development; rapid demographic transitions; and technological advances in transport and communications. Increasingly, migrants do not shift their social existence from one society to another, but maintain transnational connections. The global economic crisis that began in 2008 has brought a hiatus in some of these factors, but has not undermined their long-term significance. Australia's traditional model of permanent-settlement migration needs to be adjusted to the new realities of global mobility and connectivity.     

On fighting for global justice: the role of a Third World international lawyer

Abstract

The life of a Third World international lawyer is devoted to resistance to the norms of international law designed by agents with power to promote the interests of the powerful sections of the international community. Increasingly the instrumental norms of international law are fashioned through the use of private power, making the positivist claim that public international law is a law between states illusory. The task of this paper is to identify a framework of common concerns so that a collectivity of Third World lawyers can work together, examine how mechanisms of power can be countered, and devise a confrontational strategy.     

Disrupting civility: amateur intellectuals,international lawyers and TWAIL as praxis

Abstract

This paper is a reflection on the role of intellectuals in engaging with Palestinian solidarity movements and liberation discourses, and on the place of international lawyers specifically within that context. The paper considers ‘the question of Palestine’ as a rigorous test for intellectuals in the Global North today, and examines particular debates over free speech, civility and balance that unfolded in the wake of Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza. It considers the interventions of international lawyers in these debates with reference to Edward Said’s ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ intellectuals, and explores ways in which anti-colonial international lawyers (as amateur intellectuals) can transcend prevailing professional orthodoxies to deploy language, arguments or tactics that rupture liberal legal processes and narratives on Palestine.     

Legitimising liberal militarism: politics,law and war in the Arms Trade Treaty

Post-cold war efforts to knit together human rights and international humanitarian law in pursuit of tougher arms transfer control reached their apogee in the UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). In contrast to dominant accounts based on human security norms, I argue that a key effect of the ATT is to legitimise liberal forms of militarism. During negotiations the US and UK governments justified their arms export practices in terms of morality, responsibility and legitimacy. More broadly their arms transfer practices are explained away by reference to national regulatory regimes that exceed the standards set out in the ATT. Arms transfers to Egypt and intra-Western transfers illustrate the way these justifications and regimes serve to shield US–UK weapons transfers and use from scrutiny and accountability. Rather than signalling the victory of human security, the ATT is better understood as facilitating the mobilisation of legitimacy for contemporary liberal forms of war fighting and war preparation.     

Anti-corruption or accountability? International efforts in post-conflict Liberia

This paper analyses anti-corruption efforts in post-conflict Liberia. It highlights citizens’ views on the definition of corruption and argues that, in the past, anti-corruption efforts have often focused on institution building and formal justice mechanisms without sufficient understanding of accountability dynamics on the ground. Anti-corruption approaches in Liberia have only nominally examined whether there is a shared understanding of what ‘corruption’ is and why it is regarded as a problem. The paper examines the social norms and perceptions that underlie understandings of the term corruption. It argues that the international community may have overlooked the fact that ‘corruption’ has become an all-encompassing term that masks a myriad of differing priorities and concerns. The authors posit that ‘accountability’ may be a more useful lens for those actors hoping to improve governance in these contexts.