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The paper proposes the classification of health security as one of the non-military security dimensions of the second generation, determined more by globalization processes than by the end of the Cold War (first generation). The cognitive goal of the article is to identify and analyse the elements of the structure of international health security such as 1) the essence and specificity of securitization of threats to health security; 2) health security threats; 3) the referent object or whom it concerns; and 4) measures to ensure it. Specific to this dimension is the political motivation for its securitization. In the world of interrelated and global mobilities, what is significant for health security is the diversity of the development level, preferred values, and, consequently, the diversity of sensitivity and susceptibility of national healthcare systems to cross-border threats.

Adjusting the legal status, and support policies for migrant workers is an issue on the agenda of international institutions for nearly a hundred years. The first efforts to protect foreign workers have been taken during the first session of the International Labour Conference in 1919. In the following decades ILO activities has led to the preparation of three international documents concerning this issue (non-binding ILO Convention No. 66 in 1939, and Convention No. 97 of 1949, and No. 143 of 1975). For many decades, the problem of the protection and assistance of migrant workers' rights was considered as a narrow issue of international labor law. Codification efforts, undertaken during seventies, has led to the adaptation of the UN document (International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families) in 1990, and inclusion this issue into more general area of international human rights law. Despite this fact, and the existence of several categories of documents concerning migrant workers within Council of Europe, the European Union, and even ASEAN, the protection of migrant workers has never been effectively functioning system. The aim of this article is the analysis of the codification of that issue, and the main obstacles to consensus on the protection of migrant workers' rights. The state parties of the UN Convention contains primarily countries of origin of migrants (such as Mexico, Morocco and the Philippines). It seems, therefore, that despite 46 ratifications the, UN convention does not have a global character, and activities of its monitoring body (Committee on Migrant Workers-CMW) reflects primarily demands of sending countries. The article closely examines particularly controversial provisions of the ILO and UN documents from the point of view of current labour migrations and policies of sending and host countries.

This study aims to explore the concept of authoritarianism, which – presented in terms of the "wicked problem" of the contemporary world – seems to be a severe challenge to present-day International Relations (IR), both in theoretical and practical dimensions. The author of the article defines the concept of authoritarianism as a form of the political system in which the power and material resources of the state have been centralized, appropriated, and put at the disposal of either an individual or an elitist group "in power." In this way, the possibilities of integrating the authoritarian state – both in the political and economic dimension – with the global system of international relations are limited, and the vital administrative institutions of the state have been manipulated and appropriated. The applied research method allows for interpreting the discussed issues in a complex – albeit specific – systemic form, characteristic not only for politically fragile or declining countries and regions but also for politically stable and economically developed ones. The author's analysis allows for the presentation and reinterpretation of the issue of contemporary authoritarian regimes concerning international relations in terms that not only define but often legitimize – and repeatedly even validate – some of the most despotic, autocratic, and hegemonistic forms of the political systems in modern times.

The activity of international holding companies has become crucial for the European economy. In particular, attention should to paid to the tax-related issues, which arise out of the cross-border activity of holding companies. Increasingly, holding companies employ aggressive tax optimisation in their strategies. While the tax policies of individual E.U. Member States have turned out to be of little effectiveness, simultaneously, the lack of a common and harmonised tax policy designed to counteract tax optimisation has become a serious problem for the European Union. Therefore, the European Commission strives to develop a fiscal concept which will - on the one hand - allow to effectively combat international tax optimisation adopted by holding companies and - on the other hand - be integral with the internal tax systems of individual Member States.

The aim of the article is to introduce and explain the concept of the Three Seas Initiative, to show the external perspective of this new regional cooperation format, and to briefly discuss the articles and reviews found in the journal's volume.

The article discusses the relationship between the occurrence of international conflicts and the desire of states to implement their own geopolitical interests. The key factor in the emergence of conflicts is the concept of an inter-civilization clash by Samuel Huntington, where the role of states in the formation of the international system is the trigger for decision-making. The author states that in modern conditions Russia defends its interests, which should not be perceived by other actors of international relations as a threat, but as competition.

This book explores the issue of environmentally-induced migrations from the point of view of international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international refugee law and international law of statelessness. Last few years have become a period of unprecedented growth in the number of studies devoted to the forced migration caused by climate change. The book by professor Jane McAdam, published by Oxford University Press, differs significantly from previous studies in this area. The focus of the author became a state responsibility for the situation of climate-change induced displaced people with a particular focus on legal aspects of this problem. The basis of the author`s considerations are four particular areas of public international law: international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international refugee law and international law of statelessness. The issue of climate change-induced displacement is now becoming a growing challenge for public international law. The growing number of climate change migrants becomes a challenge for the international istitutions dealing with humanitarian assistance. Sea level rise become a factor of specific legal problems, such as climatic deterritorialization of the state, state succession on the new territory, the status of people forced to leave their country submerged under the waters of ocean (forced migrants?, refugees?, stateless people?, citizens of the former country continuing its status within a new territory?).

Organized crime did not arise suddenly, it is an occurrence that dates back to the nineteenth century. Its modern form is characterized by exceptional diversity both in terms of goods threatened by its impact, as well as the forms in which it manifests itself. The main area of threats are drug production and trafficking. It is a global problem and the links of organized crime groups cover the whole world, regardless of the system, political or economic situation of a given country. The international drug crime has been developed too rapidly and individual governments are not abble to cope with it. Countries have been confronted with joining forces and creating a strong legal instrument, based on international cooperation, which will be able to give the relevant national authorities the right powers to counter organized drug crime. The aim of the article is to present the legislative and institutional dimension of the fight against organized drug crime in the global, european and national perspective.

This article analyses the international conditions during the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It is an outline of a broad research problem, a historical analysis from the perspective of the decades-long evolution of Yugoslavia's international position. After its expulsion from the Eastern Bloc in 1948, the country balanced between East and West, becoming one of the founders and leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement. The author focuses on the aspect of Yugoslavia's role in the politics of the West, especially the US and the EEC, during and at the end of the Cold War. It was the West that could, possibly, have played a role in preventing the disintegration of the country in the early 1990s, in contrast to the USSR, which had its own internal problems at that time. What factors influenced Western support for the SFRY during the Cold War? How did Yugoslavia's position in Western politics change when the Cold War rivalry ended? The author points out the temporal connection between the disintegration of the SFRY and, among other things, the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union, the democratisation process in Eastern Europe, German reunification, European integration, and the crisis in the Middle East. In the end, there was a lack of real and coherent action by Western countries to bring about a peaceful solution to the crisis in the Balkans. The consequence of this would be the disintegration of the SFRY and several years of war in the former Yugoslavia.

This article is a case study that presents the international cooperation of one of the 66 Polish cities with the district status - Płock, a city of average size in this category of Polish local self-governments, which, however, is not average in terms of its historical traditions. For several decades it was the capital of Poland and the historical capital of one of its regions, Mazovia. Today, it is a medium-sized city, which is very active in the international arena. For its international cooperation it has been awarded many Council of Europe awards: the European Diploma, the Flag of Honour and the Plaque of Honour. This article presents the activities undertaken by the Płock authorities which led to the awarding of these distinctions.

The main research objective of the presented study is to analyse, in accordance with selected theoretical and methodological assumptions, the main challenges of international energy security. This will be possible thanks to a comprehensive analysis in the explanatory and predictive dimension. Analyses of energy security issues take into account long-term development trends as well as unpredictable events related to the functioning of infrastructure and energy technology. Thus, unexpected, sudden phenomena resulting from the dynamics of the international environment gain in importance. The energy security policy has been narrowly defined so far, and thus the issue of thinking in terms of various development opportunities in the raw materials industry is often overlooked. The dilemma related to "non-linear" thinking often ignores a variety of solutions that, taken together, can cause a radical turn in the energy market and its evolution. The methodological framework of the conducted research included research methods appropriate to the science of international relations. The factor method was useful in identifying the determinants of energy security redefinition in the contemporary world. The prognostic analysis turned out to be helpful in the part of the thesis on the prospects for the development of energy security.

The article discusses the experience of creation of peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Eastern Slavonia, Kosovo and East Timor with the use of comparative method. It also raises the role of international and regional actors in post-conflict peacebuilding. The author presents some practical solutions for the implementation of the effective peace process in eastern Ukraine, aimed at the reintegration of temporarily occupied territories.

The European Union does not have an autonomous and self-standing public policy concerning the protection of landscape. Instead, it adopts fragmentary and incidental measures meant to protect landscape. These measures are adopted within the frameworks of other EU policies, most importantly the EU environmental policy as well as other policies which are integrated with it (such as agricultural policy or policy concerned with special planning). In all these realms, the EU shares its powers with its member states. In some important areas, such as e.g. the property regime, the member states retained their exclusive competences. This particular distribution of powers makes the implementation of the extra-EU international law instruments rather difficult and not sufficiently effective to produce a worthwhile impact. These obligations have a limited influence because most of them are obligations of "a diligent pursue" rather than "firm result". As such, they are unlikely to give rise to direct application of respective conventional provisions. Notwithstanding, their importance is much more pronounced in the area of legal reasoning, where even the EU or domestic measures have to be interpreted in the light of the EU and/or its member states' obligations arising from international conventions on landscape protection.

Bilateral relations between the Republic of Turkey and the individual successor states of former Yugoslavia differ, after thirty years since its dissolution, in form and in substance. While just after the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Turkey managed to establish and sustain cordial ties with such countries as, for instance, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, relations with Serbia (Serbia and Montenegro) remained tense and the two countries perceived themselves, in the best case, as traditional opponents. The basic aim of this paper is to analyse the bilateral relations of these two states and Turkish foreign policy towards Serbia, a country currently perceived as a 'neighbour,' despite the fact that they do not share common border. The paper argues that rapprochement of two countries, so clearly visible in several dimensions after 2002, marks a new phase in Turkey's general foreign policy. The paper will trace the thirty-year evolution of bilateral contacts while arguing that the current positive relations have their source also in the domestic arena, both of Turkey and Serbia, which is willing to increase influence in the Western Balkans and institutionalise her international position. Thus, the two states for the first time share similar foreign policy goals. The whole analysis is theoretically anchored in the behavioural approach of the 'middle power' paradigm. An author-applied qualitative content analysis is the main research technique. The main sources are official documents, selected monographs, academic articles, and analytical reports.