The regional outcome of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement five years down the road: Are external forces playing a progressive role?

ABSTRACT

The Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) of January 2005 is the outcome of regional and international mediation led by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD)1 and the IGAD Partners’ Forum broadened to include the United States of America, Norway, the Netherlands, Canada, Italy and the United Nations. Five years into its implementation the peace agreement appears to have transformed the war between North and South Sudan into a series of engagements of conflicting nature. Numerous contradictory actions by both the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the National Congress Party (NCP) (the main political forces behind the CPA) have been noted during the ongoing implementation process (Grawert forthcoming 2010; Grawert and El-Battahani 2005; Wassara 2008). Although internal Sudanese forces are the key actors in implementing the CPA, external forces are critical in providing the support and pressure needed for a complete realisation of the peace deal. The New Regionalism Approach (NRA), as advanced by Grant and Soderbäum (2003), is instrumental in understanding this dynamic. This article is based on the result of a study that seeks to examine why positive engagements of external forces are needed for a timely implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement.     

Understanding European asylum cooperation under the Schengen/Dublin system: a public goods framework

Abstract

Recent developments in European Union (EU) asylum cooperation raise important questions about the nature of cooperation and the potential problems facing collective action in the realm of EU internal security. The emergence and the subsequent stability of the Schengen/Dublin system is especially puzzling, given the highly inequitable distribution of costs and benefits that this system entails among the participating states and begs the question as to why those states that are likely to face a disproportionate ‘burden’ under the system would have agreed to it. This article seeks to provide an alternative approach to answering this question by drawing on a public goods framework. We argue that a simple focus on free-riding and exploitation dynamics, as emphasized in the traditional collective action literature, falls short as an explanation and instead demonstrates how more recent theoretical contributions to the public goods literature can offer new insights into the origin and evolution in cooperation in this sensitive policy area.     

东盟国家国际商事仲裁协议制度比较研究

仲裁协议是国际商事仲裁的基石。文章以国际商事仲裁的一般理论为基础,详细地比较分析了东盟主要国家有关国际商事仲裁协议的形式与内容、仲裁协议的当事人、可约定提交仲裁解决的争议事项以及仲裁协议的效力等方面的法律制度。     

中国-东盟自由贸易区商贸争端仲裁解决机制若干问题研究

中国-东盟自由贸易区的建立对于其缔约国的经济发展,对世界区域经济一体化具有重要的作用。但是,伴随其经济发展、贸易交往的频繁,其商贸争端也增多。仲裁作为一种解决商贸纠纷的手段,对区域内经济和谐稳定增长、商贸关系发展良好有着不可替代的作用。本文旨在分析商贸争端的仲裁解决机制。     

Border battle line

ABSTRACT

The demarcation of a North–South boundary in the Sudan opens up the possibility of the creation of a new international border in Africa, following the outcome of the Southern Sudanese and Abyei Area referenda in 2011. The line of the proposed boundary runs through the grazing areas of numerous pastoralist peoples, and it is these peoples who will be most directly affected if the new border becomes the frontline between two states. In fact, pastoralists were mobilised to fight on either side of the boundary during both of Sudan's civil wars. This article looks at select areas of the North–South borderlands, particularly areas of shared rights, to analyse the potential impact of the new boundary. It looks at how overlapping rights claims were managed in the past, and goes on to analyse various peace-making efforts between border pastoralist peoples from the Condominium period until today. The article looks at the way the border issue has been dealt with in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, including the Abyei arbitration process, as an indicator of whether this border region will become the focus of continued conflict, whatever the 2011 referendum result.     

《巴黎协定》下碳市场实施环境完整性风险及其应对研究

市场方法是减缓气候变化、降低减排成本的重要手段。继《京都议定书》灵活履约机制之后,《巴黎协定》第六条提供了减缓成果国际转让机制(ITMOs)和可持续减缓机制(SMM)两种碳市场机制,但在实施过程中却很容易导致环境完整性风险。从理论层面看,影响环境完整性的因素主要有转让单位的质量、国家自主贡献(NDCs)的多样性与力度、国际转让的稳健核算等。对此,未来国际气候谈判中针对《巴黎协定》碳市场机制的实施,应从完善国际报告和审查制度、设定资格标准以及完善相应调整等方面来确保环境完整性。同时,我国在国内碳市场建设中,也需要不断强化碳市场制度体系与能力基础设施建设,保障碳交易实施的环境效果,为有效衔接《巴黎协定》下国际碳市场进行充分准备。     

中国高水平参与DEPA的关键领域与路径选择

申请加入DEPA不仅是中国主动参与全球数字治理的“先手棋”,更是深化国内改革和高水平开放的关键决策,有助于中国加快构建新发展格局。为推动数字经济由产业创新驱动转向更多依赖技术创新、制度创新驱动的新阶段,中国可重点在数据流动、数字技术、数字产品、数字创新和网络安全五大领域主动对接DEPA协定要求;进一步地,系统化构建以数字自由贸易港为核心,以数字营商环境示范区为抓手、以数字经济产业先行区为重点、以数字经济国际合作区为纽带、以数字经济创新试验区为动能的“一港四区”格局,推动中国数字经济开放发展、创新发展。     

略论国际商事仲裁的优势及其实现途径

与国际民事诉讼相比 ,国际商事仲裁的优越性表现在其所具有的自主性、专业性、灵活性、经济性、保密性以及国际性等方面 ;其局限性则表现在仲裁庭权力的有限性以及仲裁公正的不确定性等方面。要充分实现国际商事仲裁的优势 ,完善国际商事仲裁制度应从三个方面着手 :树立正确的仲裁理念、制定完善的仲裁规范 ;提高相关人员的仲裁意识。     

New media and strategic narratives: the Dutch referendum on Ukraine – EU Association Agreement in Ukrainian and Russian Internet blogs

ABSTRACT

This article analyses two confronting narratives authored by Ukrainian and Russian bloggers who reported the Dutch referendum held on 6 March 2016, and discussed Dutch citizens’ referendum vote on the Ukraine–EU Association Agreement. The considered narratives, addressed to the Ukrainian and Russian audiences respectively, are viewed as strategic because they specifically portray political actors of the referendum “drama” – the Netherlands, the European Union (EU), Ukraine and Russia. These actors are significant participants of European international relations, and their perceptions of one another are important for European security at the present time of critical diplomacy. In this paper, information about the DUTCH REFERENDUM obtained from the new media texts is regarded as a narrative-based political concept (NBPC). It is argued that this concept has different versions, or images that reflect the narrators’ biased perceptions imposed upon the public. Identification and comparison of such images require a particular methodology. Therefore, the objective of this paper is two-fold: to expose the two confronting versions of a strategically relevant political image, and to develop an authentic, interdisciplinary methodology for its analysis. The proposed methodology is informed by the ontology theory employed in cognitive science and cognitive linguistics.     

国际投资与环境保护的法律冲突与协调——以晚近区域性投资条约及相关案例为研究对象

经济一体化所带来的环境损害已成为国际社会关注的焦点问题之一。国际社会已开始尝试运用贸易投资条约防范贸易投资自由化带来的消极环境影响。以《北美自由贸易协定》为代表的国际投资法立法新模式,在其投资章节中规定了环境条款,试图兼顾投资自由和环境保护两种利益需求。虽然实践表明,该协定仍然没有有效协调投资与环境保护之间的关系,并在执行上出现了诸多法律冲突,但该协议所彰显的贸易投资自由化不得以牺牲环境为代价的立法理念和原则,可能会成为未来国际经济法中重要的理念和原则,将会对未来国际投资法和国际经济法的发展产生重大而深远的影响。