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34531. Assessment of Israel’s Position in the 1991 Gulf War

Author:
Furkan Halit Yolcu
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Turkish Journal of Middle Eastern Studies
Institution:
Sakarya University (SAU)
Abstract:
The Persian Gulf War was one of the defining incidents that shaped the current situation of the Middle East. There has been a vast amount of studies about this conflict but on a specific case why Israel stayed out of the conflict even though she was attacked continues to be an intriguing question for researchers. Saddam’s decision on invading Kuwait and the war following this is going to be summarized in order to present the structure when this incident took place and also to build an environment in which Israel’s decision on refraining itself from the war is going to be analyzed. Israel is perceived as one of the most agg- ressive countries in the Middle East mostly because of the wars that it included so far and the grand projects that it wants to put in practice in the future. With these assumptions it is rather hard to understand Israel’s passive behaviour during the Persian Gulf War and possible reasons of this is going to be main focus of this study to understand the motivations behind such policy. Israel’s state in that period and its capacity will be analyzed in order to understand whether this decision was taken directly and solely by Israel or it was a result of long-going dependency to another country or any other possible situation. Possible reasons that resulted with Israel’s passive attitude will be under the scope to explain whether what Israel did was rather rational or not. In addition to that, the advantages that Israel enjoyed and disadvantages that it faced will be shown at the last part of the study.
Topic:
Military Strategy, Military Affairs, Conflict, and Gulf War
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Middle East, Israel, and North America

34532. Access to Justice and Electoral Integrity

Author:
International Foundation for Electoral Systems
Publication Date:
11-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Foundation for Electoral Systems
Abstract:
What is the importance of granting access to justice for the rule of law and electoral integrity? What are the key principles for effective, timely and impartial administration of justice? The Kofi Annan Foundation’s policy brief, entitled “Access to Justice and Electoral Integrity,” reviews international standards and best practices in which key principles are applied at the crossroads of elections and human rights. It demonstrates the importance of an effective institutional framework that provides legal redress to protect and effectively exercise rights linked to political participation and representation, as well as the remedies and reparations of those violations.
Topic:
Human Rights, Elections, Election watch, and Voting
Political Geography:
Global Focus

34533. State Building Interventions in Post Cold War Period: A Critique of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ and ‘Humanitarianism'

Author:
Shahid Aman
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Review of Human Rights
Institution:
Society of Social Science Academics (SSSA)
Abstract:
This paper explores the concepts of humanitarianism and responsibility to protect, which have most influentially guided state building interventions in the post Cold War period. With more than fifty states intervened in the guise of ‘responsibility to protect,’ this paper attempts to analyze why interventionist state building has developed as a major concern for the international state system. It further delves into the impacts of such interventionist rationale on the nature and functioning of the international state system. This paper argues the rise of sovereignty as responsibility and humanitarianism challenged the inviolable sovereignty of states by making it conditional on the government’s exercise of monopoly over violence within its territory and extension of protection to its citizens against war, crimes, violence and bloodshed. The paper further argues that the selective application of the principle of human security and non-intervention by major powers in crucial conflicts makes the moral ground of this principle very dubious. It also highlights that in post 9/11 period, the mixed successes of these concepts in practice, resulting form a large number of political, institutional and operational challenges, underlie the need to use non-military diplomatic, political and economic means for conflict resolution.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid, State Building, Responsibility to Protect (R2P), and Post Cold War
Political Geography:
Global Focus

34534. Uneven Humanitarianism: Abandoned Refugees along the Thai-Myanmar Border

Author:
Tani Sebro
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Review of Human Rights
Institution:
Society of Social Science Academics (SSSA)
Abstract:
This essay considers the case of uneven humanitarian aid distribution along the Thai-Myanmar border, where forcibly displaced migrants from Myanmar have been abandoned by the UNHCR and international humanitarian organizations. Based upon long-term ethnographic fieldwork along the Thai-Myanmar border amongst Tai migrants from the Shan State in Myanmar, I attend to the effects of the inequitable distribution of rights and privileges in an international humanitarian system that is predicated on the neoliberal logic of uneven development. After two centuries of British colonial occupation and later Burman authoritarian rule, the ethnic minority groups along the Thai-Myanmar border are now facing another crisis – that of abandonment as NGOs search for new and more pressing humanitarian disasters elsewhere. The essay addresses a concept I call uneven humanitarianism as a neocolonial condition for peoples living in the Thai-Myanmar borderlands by specifically focusing on Tai peoples who are living in unofficial refugee camps that lost foreign funding in 2017. I argue that the ad hoc treatment and eventual abandonment of these vulnerable groups – that are currently in the midst of the world’s most protracted civil war and displacement situation – constitutes a failure of the “responsibility to protect” humanitarian project.
Topic:
Refugees, Displacement, NGOs, and Humanitarian Crisis
Political Geography:
Asia, Thailand, Southeast Asia, and Myanmar

34535. Resisting Necro-biographies

Author:
Michael Shapiro
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Review of Human Rights
Institution:
Society of Social Science Academics (SSSA)
Abstract:
In order to determine whether an individual or a specific identity-bearing group has potential for terrorism, the state engages in a systematic practice of constructing biographies, which could warrant its use of lethal power. This practice privileges a security consciousness while discounting the vagaries of everyday life contingency, which plays a crucial role in creating who we are and what we do. The element of contingency becomes more visible when we focus on the lives of migrants and their movements. The State’s excessive concern with security inhibits the opportunity spaces for role exits from the indemnity economies it invents. In this brief response to such actions of the state, I take an ethical stance that affords victims the right to refute their constructed identities and to presenting counter-biographies.
Topic:
Migration, Terrorism, Ethics, State, and Identity
Political Geography:
Global Focus

34536. Shackled Liberties, or: How Security Came to Trump Everything Else

Author:
Jan-Peter Hartung
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Review of Human Rights
Institution:
Society of Social Science Academics (SSSA)
Abstract:
In this paper, the origins of the “security narrative” in contemporary German political discourse is traced back to the early modern conception of “natural law,” first emphasized by Thomas Hobbes. Underlying this conception is that individuals would – by acknowledgment of their inborn “natural law” – sacrifice their individual liberties for the sake of public security. It is shown that a conception of state based on such a metaphysical premise discounts the existence of any discontent as valid within a society, and allows for top-down coercive measures against anyone who does not buy into this narrative. Those measures, exemplified by political rhetoric in Germany and beyond in the wake of recent mass migration and “terrorist threat,” do quite often impair with even fundamental human rights and appear at odds with the simultaneous claim to represent a liberaldemocratic constitution.
Topic:
Security, Donald Trump, and Civil Liberties
Political Geography:
Germany and United States of America

34537. Anti-terrorism Legal Regime of Pakistan and the Global Paradigm of Security: A Genealogical and Comparative Analysis

Author:
Syed Sami Raza
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Review of Human Rights
Institution:
Society of Social Science Academics (SSSA)
Abstract:
Pakistan is often criticized for its anti-terrorism legal regime—which institutionalizes preventive indefinite detention, special courts, and speedy trials. Pakistani officials, on their part, rebut this criticism by pointing to the Anglo-American anti-terrorism legal regimes, and generally to “the global paradigm of security.” Interestingly, should we trace the genealogy of the anti-terrorism legal regime of Pakistan, we find rich historical-juridical linkages between the Pakistani and Anglo-American regimes. These linkages converge on, or at least begin from, the British law of high treason. This law was adopted in certain colonial regulations in the early 19th century. In this article I demonstrate how the legal form and substance of the high treason law and of certain other colonial regulations traveled through colonial and post-colonial security laws, such that they have recently come to converge with the global paradigm of security.
Topic:
Security, Terrorism, Counter-terrorism, Detention, and Due Process
Political Geography:
Pakistan and South Asia

34538. Volume 66 Issue 1

Author:
Haluk Alkan
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Istanbul Journal of Economics
Institution:
Istanbul University Faculty of Economics
Abstract:
Istanbul Journal of Economics-İstanbul İktisat Dergisi is an open access, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal published two times a year in June and December. It has been an official publication of Istanbul University Faculty of Economics since 1939. The manuscripts submitted for publication in the journal must be scientific and original work in Turkish or English. Being one of the earliest peer-reviewed academic journals in Turkey in the area of economics, Istanbul Journal of Economics-İstanbul İktisat Dergisi aims to provide a forum for exploring issues in basicly economics and publish both disciplinary and multidisciplinary articles. Economics is the main scope of the journal. However, multidisciplinary and comparative approaches are encouraged as well and articles from various social science areas such as sociology of economics, history, social policy, international relations, financial studies are welcomed in this regard. The target group of the journal consists of academicians, researchers, professionals, students, related professional and academic bodies and institutions.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, Income Inequality, and Political Science
Political Geography:
Europe, Turkey, and Global Focus

34539. Volume 66 Issue 2

Author:
Haluk Alkan
Publication Date:
06-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Istanbul Journal of Economics
Institution:
Istanbul University Faculty of Economics
Abstract:
Istanbul Journal of Economics-İstanbul İktisat Dergisi is an open access, peer-reviewed, scholarly journal published two times a year in June and December. It has been an official publication of Istanbul University Faculty of Economics since 1939. The manuscripts submitted for publication in the journal must be scientific and original work in Turkish or English. Being one of the earliest peer-reviewed academic journals in Turkey in the area of economics, Istanbul Journal of Economics-İstanbul İktisat Dergisi aims to provide a forum for exploring issues in basicly economics and publish both disciplinary and multidisciplinary articles. Economics is the main scope of the journal. However, multidisciplinary and comparative approaches are encouraged as well and articles from various social science areas such as sociology of economics, history, social policy, international relations, financial studies are welcomed in this regard. The target group of the journal consists of academicians, researchers, professionals, students, related professional and academic bodies and institutions.
Topic:
Economics, Environment, Health, International Political Economy, Political Science, and Air Pollution
Political Geography:
Turkey and Global Focus

34540. Valuation of World Heritage

Author:
Indira Rajaraman
Publication Date:
08-2016
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
India International Centre (IIC)
Abstract:
World Heritage sites are classified in two categories—cultural heritage, and natural heritage. Outstanding Universal Value—the basis for identification of a World Heritage site implies that valuation, from a global perspective, might be sufficiently greater than the valuation of that site in its immediate location for the World Heritage tag to provide a significant incentive for the preservation of it. The rise in tourist traffic consequent upon recognition, statistically validated in several contexts, seemingly justifies that prior. The common cliché of the historical structure allowed to fall into ruin, its stones prised out for constructing nearby dwellings, or the area within what remains of the structure put to base uses, conforms to that conception. Likewise, there are natural biodiversity reserves threatened by unregulated cutting of trees, where recognition as a World Heritage site may well be the statement of superior valuation needed to put a stop to such practices and preserve what remains. This paper does not therefore argue that the World Heritage convention should be abandoned, and its sites de-recognised. What it does argue is that the basis of indigenous valuation should be investigated for its constituents, so as to bring about a better alignment between global and local valuation.
Topic:
Globalization, History, Tourism, Culture, and Architecture
Political Geography:
Global Focus