Suchergebnisse

Ten years after 9/11 the architecture of international organizations has changed significantly. This also affects the United Nations, including its organizational structure and responsibilities. Despite the fact, that there is still no definition of terrorism, the Security Council and the General Assembly approved extensive Counter-Terrorism strategies including the reform of UN structure since 9/11. While the Security Council transforms continuously into the role of a "world legislator", the General Assembly's aim is to limit the Council's power with a broad approach to fighting terrorism and in consideration of human rights. The UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon initiated proposals to combat terrorism as well. But all these measures should not hide the fact that the disagreement among the Member States challenges the UN's ability to combat transnational terrorism. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines matters relating to the categorisation of individuals under the laws of armed conflict, with particular reference to issues that have been at the centre of attention in the past decade, including the debates over the notion of direct participation by civilians and, in particular, the so called "war on terror". The focus of this article is on the actual effects of categorisation of individuals -- particularly in the conduct of hostilities -- and whether the controversies over the labels used are in fact a major concern or, perhaps, more of a distracting smokescreen. Adapted from the source document.

This article delineates the different characteristics of collective apologies compared to individual trials in post-conflict Yugoslavia. While collective apologies are said to exert reconciliatory power through public atonement and the acknowledgement of collective historic responsibility for mass crimes, war crime trials, on the contrary, help to evade detrimental collective stereotyping by individualizing historical guilt. The article undertakes a critical empirical evaluation of these assumed effects by analysing the official reception of ICTY trials and political apologies in relation to Serbian war crimes in Vukovar and Srebrenica. The article demonstrates that (1) both the issued apologies and war crimes trails before the ICTY are used by representatives to divert collective responsibility for war crimes in Serbia. Furthermore (2), the article identifies some differences: While trials have contributed to the establishment of factual knowledge in relation to war crimes, the Serbian apologies have succeeded in situations in which the addressees of the apologies have had a vested interest in political rapprochement. Thus the article identifies the complementary and different effects in the implementation of both approaches. Adapted from the source document.

Faced with the threat of transnational terrorism, the European Union and its member states have adopted a broad range of new security measures. Remarkably though, when comparing different European countries, these measures differ immensely in terms of implementation and scale. This article analyzes these differences, trying to identify the crucial factors causing them. In particular, the article focuses on security measures in the areas of information and communications technology, civil aviation and video surveillance. For each issue area the article compares national policies in Britain and Germany as well as the impact of the EU level on both countries. Adapted from the source document.

This article looks at coming to terms with the past through the instrument of criminal tribunals. Two questions will be asked: What determines whether states chose criminal tribunals or other instruments of coming to terms with the past? Is the causal mechanism that theories of transitional justice accord to tribunals observable? A systematic comparison of the hybrid tribunals in Cambodia, East Timor and Sierra Leone seeks answers to these questions. Concerning the first question, the article argues that the establishment of tribunals is influenced by the existing balance of power. Tribunals are the more likely, the more the internal distribution of power among previous parties of a civil war favors the former victims and the easier crimes can be attributed to the now besieged party. The pattern emerging from the type of instruments used for different conflict periods, the distribution of indictments and the number of sentences suggests that tribunals do not live up to their claims of reaching reconciliation through retributive justice. The article discusses the implications of this finding. Adapted from the source document.