The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) - Pharmaceuticals Transitional Period: Can it Help Build Capacity in African Least Developed Countries (LDCs)?

ABSTRACT

African least developed countries LDCs face unique challenges in the implementation of minimum standards for the protection of IPRs, most poignantly illustrated in the field of pharmaceuticals. This was to an extent recognised by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in providing a transitional period during which LDCs are not obliged to implement the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement in order to afford them an opportunity to develop a viable technological base in the pharmaceutical sector before being required to provide patent protection for pharmaceuticals. This article explores some options available to African least developed countries LDCs to use the transitional period in a manner that could help develop their pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity. Rwanda has already shown itself to be a pioneer in the use of policy flexibility available in the TRIPS Agreement and related instruments to fulfil the country's demand for essential pharmaceutical products. Therefore, much of the analysis draws on Rwanda for illustrative purposes.     

Afghanistan: transitional justice in the midst of war

In Afghanistan, there has been much talk about, and international support for dealing with past injustices by developing transitional justice mechanisms. Reconciliation is being promoted as a nation-building strategy. This article argues that the implementation of transitional justice poses several challenges. First, a significant component of such a strategy is based on reconciliation taking place internally among competing armed groups and ethnic identities with the goal of transforming Afghan society. This assumes the cause of past conflicts to be internal and along ethnic divisions which limits the accountability for war crimes. It also considers violence and crimes of war as a thing of the past, ignoring the present situation. Furthermore, given the ongoing war between the US-led forces and the Taliban, insecurity and escalating levels of violence one has to question whether transitional justice can take place during a war. This article concludes that transitional justice is interconnected to perceptions of security and stability. The analysis of the present situation in Afghanistan poses critical questions as to whether memories of victims can be considered as the past in the midst of war.     

Explaining lustration in Central Europe: a ‘post-communist politics’ approach

Lustration, the vetting of public officials in Central Europe for links to the communist-era security services, has been pursued most systematically in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. Prior attempts to explain the pursuit or avoidance of lustration focused on the differing experiences of communist rule or transition to democracy. A closer examination finds that although the three countries in question had very different histories, there were identical demands for lustration in the early 1990s. These demands were translated into legislation at different times and varied considerably in the range of offices affected and the sanctions imposed. This article offers an explanation of this variation by focusing on the dynamics of post-communist political competition. We find that the passage of a lustration bill depended on the ability of its most ardent advocates to persuade a heterogeneous plurality of legislators that the safeguarding of democracy required it.     

Digging up Spain's past: consequences of truth and reconciliation

Over the last decade the issue of transitional justice has attracted considerable media and academic attention. Diverse countries including such high profile cases as Chile, South Africa and the former East Germany have attempted to grapple with the complex question of how to respond to human rights abuses committed under a previous regime. Transitional justice generally surfaces as an issue during democratic transition. It is less common for this issue of past human rights abuses to be raised when democratic transition has been completed and democracy is fully consolidated. The subject of this article, however, is Spain, where the human rights abuses committed during the 1936–39 civil war, and the long Francoist dictatorship that followed, have only recently come to the fore, a full quarter of a century after the transition to democracy. The article argues that the current struggle to recover the bodies of the disappeared, and their historical memory, represents a significant case which not only provides new insights into the particular democratization process in Spain but also provides more general lessons for other countries grappling with similar problems.     

Democratization and Transitional Justice

Any country which attempts to establish accountability for past abuses of human rights during the process of democratization faces political, judicial, and ethical problems. With regard to politics, the question of which transitional justice measures are appropriate, functional, and feasible has to be decided for every individual case. A judicial approach has to decide which judicial standards to apply and how to justify prosecution. Finally, the ethical dilemmas of dealing with historical injustices have to be understood. There are no ready-made concepts to define guilt and justice. In many cases it is even difficult to tell the victims from the perpetrators. This study examines the different strategies subsumed under the term ‘transitional justice’ used by emerging democracies to deal with a legacy of human rights abuses. It explores the problems and challenges posed by different mechanisms of reconciliation and societal reintegration. While existing analyses of the contribution that transitional justice measures make to the process of social re-integration stress the importance of consensus among citizens and social groups for the emergence of trust and solidarity, this study suggests also thinking about how conflicts over competing ‘truths’ can help to build social capital and reconciliation. Noting a global diffusion of international legal norms, which means at least formal universal acceptance of basic rights and judicial procedures, it is argued that international justice cannot be a substitute for transitional justice measures taken by the domestic regime itself.     

Evaluating Spain's Reparation Law

The Reparation Law1 This article follows Aguilar, Balcells, and Cebolla in referring to the Law of Historical Memory as the Reparation Law. Although Aguilar et al. do not specify why they choose this terminology, the term is used here as it better denotes the law's content. Aguilar, Balcells, and Cebolla, ‘Determinants of Attitudes Towards Transitional Justice’, 3. View all notes approved on 26 December 2007 is the latest link in a chain of reparatory measures from the earliest days of Spain's transition to democracy to deal with the legacy of the Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship. Numerous articles have analysed the historical memory movement2 See Encarnación, ‘Reconciliation After Democratization’; and Gálvez Biesca, ‘El proceso’. View all notes and the reasons behind the timing and scope of Spain's reckoning with the past.3 See Encarnación, ‘Reconciliation After Democratization’; Aguilar, ‘Justice, Politics and Memory’, Barahona de Brito, Gonzaléz-Enríquez, and Aguilar, The Politics of Memory; and Blakeley, ‘Digging Up Spain's Past’. View all notes This literature presents the case of Spain as a counterpoint to the received wisdom of the transitional justice literature that successful democratization requires reconciliation. This article contributes to the specific literature on Spain, and the wider transitional justice literature, by focusing on an area which has not yet been analysed: the ‘co-construction’ and content of the Law. Through a comparison of the draft bill and the final Law, this article fills this gap.     

电信诈骗打防对策探究

随着我国金融业、通信业的快速发展,电信诈骗作为一种跨境、跨地域新型团伙犯罪,借助于网络与通信工具实施非接触式虚假信息诈骗犯罪,其发展趋势迅速蔓延。公安机关应进一步探索和研究侦破此类犯罪的打防对策,从根本上遏止电信诈骗违法犯罪的高发态势。     

简论当代中国社会转型及其对法治化的影响

当代中国社会处于由传统向现代转型的深刻变革过程中。社会转型是社会在整体意义上与质的意义上的嬗变。社会转型在各种利益与关系的冲突撞击中追求社会朝法治方向发展 ,同时转型时期的社会环境也为法治的发展提供了契机。     

基于文化视角的英汉成语翻译比较研究

成语在英语和汉语中都占有很大比例,其意义不能只从该成语的字面上理解,而应该从其民族文化内涵的深层次上进行分析。对英汉成语在形式和出处等方面的异同进行剖析,透视两种语言的文化渊源,才能更好地在翻译中理解和使用英汉成语,以减少或避免文化隔阂,增强跨文化交际能力。     

贪污罪理论研究六十年

建国60年来,刑法学界关于贪污罪的研究成果颇为丰硕。从研究历程上看,贪污罪的研究可以划分为三个阶段,即从建国初期到1979年刑法典的颁布,从1979年刑法典的颁布到1997年刑法典的系统修订,自1997年刑法典系统修订并颁布实施至今。贪污罪理论研究的内容主要涉及以下几个方面：贪污罪的概念界定,贪污罪的构成要件,贪污罪的共犯形态,贪污罪的停止形态,贪污罪的定罪量刑,贪污罪的立法完善等。贪污罪的理论研究对依法惩治贪污犯罪、促进贪污罪的立法完善具有极其重要的意义。