Unrecognized states are places that do not exist in international politics; they are state-like entities that have achieved de facto independence, but have failed to gain widespread international recognition. Since the Cold-War, unrecognized states have been involved in conflicts over sovereign statehood in the Balkans, the former Soviet Union, South Asia, the Horn of Africa, and the South Pacific; some of which elicited major international crises and intervention, including the use of armed force.
There has been a lot of debate lately about the shape of the international currency system. Increasingly, we are told, the world is moving toward a multicurrency system with several poles, implying that the system is becoming more competitive. Polarity, however, is a notoriously crude measure of the level of competition in any kind of system, economic or political. If analysis is to be at all accurate, it should take into account not only the number of poles in a system but also the inequalities among them -an alternative approach encompassed by the concept of concentration. In this paper we make use of the concept of concentration to provide a more accurate picture of the competitive structure of the currency system today. When taking account of concentration as well as polarity, our results suggest that the competitive structure of the system is little changed over a period stretching back more than two decades. Adapted from the source document.
Child sexual maltreatment now violates international law. This is an incredible development. International law no longer limits itself to sex crimes that have explicit international dimensions, such as child abduction, child trafficking, and sex tourism. International law now aims to halt practices that are more clearly domestic. These practices include Western conceptions of "child sexual abuse" such as incest and child rape. More controversially, prohibited practices also include those that large segments of certain societies may view as normal and even necessary to proper socialization, such as child marriages and gender‐related rituals. This article explores these developments and highlights obstacles that may be encountered in attempts to protect children from sexual maltreatment.
In: Revue internationale de la Croix-Rouge: débat humanitaire, droit, politiques, action = International Review of the Red Cross, Band 81, Heft 834, S. 412-413
Le Comité international de la Croix-Rouge a réaffirmé sa politique de «porte ouverte» pour les chercheurs qui s'intéressent au rôle de l'institution pendant et après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les médias ayant à nouveau fait état d'informations selon lesquelles le criminel de guerre nazi Josef Mengele, a amené par tromperie le CICR à lui délivrer un document de voyage.
Die Stärkung der Handlungsfähigkeit und Effizienz der EU-Entscheidungsverfahren bildet neben ihrer Demokratisierung und Transparenzsteigerung das zentrale Ziel, dem die Arbeit des EU-Verfassungskonvents gewidmet ist. Seit Maastricht steht die institutionelle Reform auf der Agenda der Union, ohne daß bislang eine Lösung gefunden wurde, die die Handlungsf ähigkeit und demokratische Legitimation einer erweiterten EU verbürgen würde. Darum geht es bei den hier ausgewählten Artikeln. (Autorenreferat)
Research on the international relations of the African continent has generally eschewed the phenomenon of rivalry among the advanced capitalist powers for commercial and political influence south of the Sahara. Most studies of Africa's international relations, especially from a critical perspective, have tended to emphasize the unityof the northern, capitalist powers in opposing challenges from third world countries. During the 1970s, research emphasized the efforts of multinational corporations and their home governments to prevent or undermine efforts at economic nationalism in third world countries. While such studies did recognize the potential for somewhat varied responses to rationalistic 'threats', there was a widespread assumption that the rich nations would exhibit a significant degree of unity in preserving international property rights and the free flow of capital. More recently, critical studies have emphasized the salience of the international financial community and the International Monetary Fund in reestablishing political and economic hegemony over peripheral areas, including Africa (Mohan & Zack‐Williams, 1995). Such approaches tend to overlook the phenomenon of conflict and competition among these powers. This article will examine the historical basis of international rivalries in Zaïre, focusing on the rise of General Mobutu's regime, primarily during the late 1960s. During this period, the United States was seeking to expand its commercial and political influence in Zaïre, generally at the expense of established European interests. The principal protagonist of the US was the former colonial power, Belgium. In essence, it will be argued, inter‐capitalist rivalries in Zaïre were an inevitable outgrowth of decolonization. The European powers had always used colonialism as a method to maintain exclusive or quasi‐exclusive trading and investment opportunities for home country interests and to exclude potential interlopers ‐ such as the United States. During the 1960s, the US viewed the circumstances of decolonization as an opportunity for political and commercial expansion, sometimes at the expense of European interests. European‐US conflicts, some of which continue to the present day, were the result. Historical conflicts such as these are highly relevant to understanding present‐day international relations in Central Africa when once again, rivalries among the western powers ‐ this time between the US and France ‐ are apparent.
