The Additional Protocol to the Convention on Cybercrime, concerning the criminalisation of acts of a racist and xenophobic nature committed through computer systems (ETS 189) was opened for signature in Strasbourg, France, on 28 January 2003. In the light of the 20th anniversary of this Protocol since its opening for signature in January 2023, it was decided to prepare the present good practice study on the implementation of this treaty. The overall objective of this study is (...) to facilitate implementation of and increased membership in this Protocol by: ▪ underlining the relevance of this Protocol given increasing hate speech and hate crime online; ▪ documenting good practices by Parties to this Protocol and other States; ▪ explaining key issues and concepts; ▪ promoting synergies between this Protocol and related instruments, tools and initiatives. (shrink)

The Convention on Cybercrime (the Convention) adopted in the framework of the Council of Europe is the main international legislative tool in the fight against cybercrime. It is the first international treaty on crimes committed via the Internet and other computer networks, dealing particularly with infringements of copyright, computer-related fraud, child pornography and violations of network security. Lithuania is among its signatory states, therefore, the provisions of the Convention have become binding on its legislator, (...) obliging it to take all necessary measures to harmonize national legal acts with the framework set out therein. The Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania (the CC) in force is the legal act establishing liability for criminal offences known as computer crimes and Internet crimes. Although the legislator of Lithuania had been combating cybercrimes since as early as 1994 by means of the amendments to the Soviet era Criminal Code of 1961, a significant effort was required to transpose the requirements of the Convention into the Lithuanian law, starting from the year 2007. The end result was not always as expected, leaving several serious gaps in the field of criminalization, which are thoroughly addressed in the article. In particular, this article deals with the topic of computer-related crimes and the legal approaches related to substantive criminal law of the Republic of Lithuania. The study is based on a comparative legal analysis of the Lithuanian CC and the Convention. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the general principles established in the caselaw of the European Court of Human Rights while applying and interpreting the Article 3 of the First Protocol of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms which provides: „The High Contracting Parties undertake to hold free elections at reasonable intervals by secret ballot, under conditions which will ensure the free expression of the opinion of the people in the choice of the legislature.“ (...) Article 3 of the First Protocol enshrines a fundamental principle for effective political democracy, and is accordingly of prime importance in the Convention system. It refers not only to positive obligation of the Contracting State to organize democratic elections, but also guarantees individual rights, including the right to vote and the right to stand for election, although this is not explicitly stated in it. These rights are not absolute; there is room for “implied limitations” and Contracting States are given a wide margin of appreciation in this sphere. However, these limitations must be such that the rights in question were not curtailed to such an extent as to impair their very essence and deprive them of their effectiveness, should be imposed in pursuit of a legitimate aim and should not be disproportionate. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the Convention’s “democracy clause,” that is Article 3 of Protocol No. 1, which provides for the right to free elections. Why should it be described as a “democracy clause” and what is its significance for today? The paper first sketches out the drafting history, which reveals that while the framers were keen to preserve their inherited domestic institutions, they also thought it crucial to promote democracy. The Convention invokes but does not (...) define democracy. It is within the Court’s competence to elucidate its meaning. The Court holds that pluralist democracy is the only system compatible with the Convention. This paper argues that Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 further presupposes a representative legislature. It does not require member states to introduce a specific system of elections and representation, but it obliges them to conform to parliamentary democracy. Thus, the Court’s model of democracy rests on two pillars: pluralism and parliamentarism. It subscribes to pluralist democracy theories but contradicts the monolithic conception endorsed by Carl Schmitt. The Court’s model has the potential to offer a robust account of democracy. Yet, Article 3 of Protocol No. 1 has never lived up to its potential. The Court’s relevant jurisprudence is inadequate to address the contemporary antidemocratic shifts that are underway in certain member states. Hence, the paper suggests that the Court’s power to apply this clause is not limited to general elections but also extends to presidential elections and referendums. (shrink)

Benefiting from a widely recognised experience of the field of bioethics, the Council of Europe which represents all the democratic countries of Europe, has embarked on the ambitious task of drafting a European Convention on bioethics. The purpose of this text is to set out fundamental values, such as respect for human dignity, free informed consent and non-commercialisation of the human body. In addition to this task, protocols will provide specific standards for the different fields concerned with the application (...) of biomedical sciences. The convention and the first two protocols (human experiments and organ transplants) are due to be ready for signature by mid 1994. (shrink)

The Kyoto Protocol became law in February 2005—eight years after its conception as a framework for reducing emissions and a full four years after the United States abandoned it. But while President George W. Bush embarrassed much of the scientific community by challenging the veracity of the greenhouse effect, and thus the impetus for Kyoto, officials elsewhere expressed far different concerns. _Reading the Kyoto Protocol_ explores their qualms and objections to everything from Kyoto's controversial policies on emissions trading to (...) the question of a "post-Kyoto era." Contributors include internationally known philosophers, researchers, and environmentalists. (shrink)

: The Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine developed by the Council of Europe, now undergoing ratification, is the first international treaty focused on bioethics. This article describes the background of the Convention's development and its general provisions and provides a comparison of its requirements with those of federal regulations governing research with human subjects. Although most provisions are comparable, there are significant differences in scope and applicability, for example, in the areas of compensation for injury, research (...) participation by persons with limited capacity to consent, assisted reproduction, organ transplantation, and research in emergency situations. The Convention represents a milestone in international bioethics and protection of human rights that will probably be referred to with increasing frequency. (shrink)

The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its 2010 Nagoya Protocol brought about a breakthrough in global policy making. They combined a concern for the environment with a commitment to resolving longstanding human injustices regarding access to, and use of biological resources. In particular, the traditional knowledge of indigenous communities was no longer going to be exploited without fair benefit sharing. Yet, for 25 years after the adoption of the CBD, there were no major benefit sharing agreements (...) that led to significant funding streams for indigenous communities. This changed with the signing of the Rooibos Benefit Sharing Agreement in South Africa, described in this paper. As the authors report, the Rooibos Agreement is a superlative in two respects. It is the biggest benefit sharing agreement between industry and indigenous peoples to date. It is also the first industry-wide agreement to be formed in accordance with biodiversity legislation. This article is a co-production between traditional knowledge holders, the lawyer who represented their interests, the Co-Chair of the Nagoya Protocol negotiations, and an ethicist who analyzed the major challenges of this historic agreement. With no precedent in the benefit sharing world, the agreement stands as a concrete example of the ‘art of the possible.’ Although the rooibos case is unique in a number of aspects, the experience offers many transferable insights, including: patience; incrementalism; honesty; trust; genuine dialogue; strong legal support; a shared recognition that a fair, win-win deal is possible; government leadership; and unity amongst indigenous peoples. Such ingredients of success can apply well beyond southern Africa. (shrink)

Background: The new human coronavirus that leads to COVID-19 has spread rapidly around the world and has a high degree of lethality. In more severe cases, patients remain hospitalized for several days under treatment of the health team. Thus, it is important to develop and use technologies with the aim to strengthen conventional therapy by encouraging movement, physical activity, and improving cardiorespiratory fitness for patients. In this sense, therapies for exposure to virtual reality are promising and have been shown to (...) be an adequate and equivalent alternative to conventional exercise programs.Aim: This is a study protocol with the aim of comparing the conventional physical therapy intervention with the use of a non-immersive VR software during COVID-19 hospitalization.Methods: Fifty patients hospitalized with confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19 will be divided in two groups under physiotherapy treatment using conventional or VR intervention: Group A: participants with COVID-19 will start the first day of the protocol with VR tasks in the morning and then in the second period, in the afternoon, will perform the conventional exercises and Group B: participants with COVID-19 will start the first day with conventional exercises in the morning and in the second period, in the afternoon, will perform activity with VR. All participants will be evaluated with different motor and physiologic scales before and after the treatment to measure improvements.Conclusion: Considering the importance of benefits from physical activity during hospitalization, VR software shows promise as a potential mechanism for improving physical activity. The results of this study may provide new insights into hospital rehabilitation.Trial Registration:ClinicalTrials.gov, identifier: NCT04537858. Registered on 01 September 2020. (shrink)

The objective of this paper is to stimulate academic debate on embryo and fetal research from the perspective of the drafting of a protocol to the European Convention on Biomedicine. The Steering Committee on Bioethics of the Council of Europe was mandated to draw up such a protocol and for this purpose organised an important symposium on reproductive technologies and embryo research, in Strasbourg from the 16th to the 18th of December 1996.

With the advent of synthetic biology, scientists are increasingly relying on digital sequence information, instead of physical genetic resources. This article examines the potential impact of this shift on the access and benefit-sharing (ABS) regime of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya Protocol. These treaties require benefit-sharing with the owners of genetic resources. However, whether “genetic resources” include digital sequence information is unsettled. The CBD conceives genetic resources as genetic material containing functional units of heredity. (...) “Material” implies tangibility, and for some scholars, “functional units of heredity,” undefined in both treaties, mean full-coding sequences. This article argues that digital sequence information obtained from physical genetic resources, full-coding or not, should be treated as genetic resources. Literal construction of the CBD risks eroding its usefulness and the ABS regime. This is because through bioinformatics, sequence information can easily be obtained from genetic resources for utilization, without physically moving them or concluding ABS agreement with owners. The CBD must evolve with scientific progress also because sequence functionality depends on the state of knowledge. These arguments are vindicated by domestic ABS laws equating genetic information with genetic resources; Nagoya Protocol provisions deeming research exploiting the genetic composition of genetic resources as utilization of genetic resources; and CBD provisions requiring the sharing of benefits from the utilization of genetic resources. Moreover, treaty interpretation and case law demand that generic, scientific terms, such as “genetic resources” and “functional units of heredity” be interpreted in an evolutionary manner to capture scientific developments. (shrink)

Uwe Steinhoff’s The Ethics of War and the Force of Law contains an extended critique of ‘moral fundamentalism’, or the project of uncovering an individualist ‘deep morality’ of war governed by the same moral principles and rules that govern ordinary moral life, as well as a more positive account of war that depicts it as a social practice. Much of Steinhoff’s account is indebted to a series of claims involving the standing to blame, reciprocity, and the necessity and proportionality conditions (...) on self-defence. On all these claims, Steinhoff is open to challenge. First, he is arguably over-dependent on ‘standing to blame’ considerations. Second, his commitment to reciprocity is under-explained. Third, the necessity condition does not clearly explain how conventional elements explain the formation of defensive standards. Fourth, there are problems in explaining how the distinct defensive conventions adopted by distinct communities can actually be made to get on to the same page when these communities go to war with each other. (shrink)

This paper reviews the location of Responsible Research and Innovation approaches within the access and benefit sharing policy spaces of the Convention on Biological Diversity and Nagoya Protocol. We describe how a range of dialogues on ethical research practices found a home, almost inadvertently, within the ABS policy process. However, more recent RRI dialogues around emerging technologies have not been similarly absorbed into ABS policy, due in part to the original framing of ABS and associated definitional and scope (...) issues. Consideration is given to the challenges posed to these policy processes by the transformative and rapid nature of scientific and technological change today, including the emerging field of synthetic biology. Drawing on experiences from regulating ABS, we emphasize that the integration of RRI into policies for new, emerging, or poorly understood activities such as synthetic biology faces deficiencies such as limits to government capacity, jurisdictional confusion, shortages in funds, and an absence of strategic approaches. We conclude that a coordinated combination of diverse policy processes within the CBD might provide an invaluable space for RRI dialogues on social justice, sustainability, biosafety, and other issues raised by emerging technologies. (shrink)

The continuing philosophical interest in the famous 'Protocol Sentence Debate' in the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists is, to a large measure, due to the focus on the epistemological issues in the dispute, and the neglect of differences among the leading players in their philosophical views of logic and language. In Protocols, Truth and Convention, the current understanding of the debate is advanced by developing the contemporaneous views of logic and language held by the principal disputants. Rudolf Carnap (...) and Moritz Schlick. It is argued - largely on the basis of unpublished manuscripts and correspondence - that, despite apparent differences in their respective conceptions of language, there are nonetheless striking similarities, particularly with respect to the conventionality of language. Nonetheless, one key issue - concerning the syntacticism inherent in Carnap's early Thirties' philosophy - separates the two viewpoints in the clash over protocols. Finally, it is argued that Carnap's syntacticism is untenable, a conclusion that Carnap himself finally reached in the closing exchanges of the protocol sentence controversy. (shrink)

Judge Christian Byk renders service to the Steering Committee on Bioethics of the Council of Europe (CDBI) by proposing a draft of the protocol destined to fill in a gap in international law on the status of the human embryo. This proposal, printed in a previous issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics deserves nevertheless to be questioned on important points. Is Christian Byk proposing to legalise research on human embryos not only in vitro but also in utero?

Forced expropriations of immovable property were common during the Communist era in Eastern Europe. Today, many of the former owners or their heirs are interested in regaining legal ownership of such properties, often decades after the ownership has been reallocated to others. Therefore, the conflict between old and new owners is often resolved in favour of the new owners. While this is understandable from a contemporary political perspective, this approach results in a perpetuation of the results of an earlier human (...) rights violation, thereby resulting in a new human rights violation which will have to be measured against the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if the state in question has ratified it prior to deciding how to handle the long-term effects of expropriations. Firstly, in the article we will devote ourselves to the interpretation of the right to property with an emphasis on the problem of expropriation. Above all, we will elaborate on the definition of the term “property” as well as positive and negative obligations of the Member States regarding this right. Finally, we will address the question of expropriations prior to the entry into force of the Convention and just compensation under Article 41 ECHR. Interpretation of the right to property will be supported by the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights. (shrink)

The system of the European Convention on Human Rights created in 1950 is still regarded as the most important and effective regional system for the protection of human rights in the whole world. However, the experience of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has clearly showed that the steady growth in the number of cases brought before the ECHR makes it increasingly difficult to keep the length of proceedings within the acceptable limits and to maintain the effectiveness of (...) the ECHR. This aspect is becoming extremely important due to the fact that the European Union (EU) will join the Convention system in the near future. The legal basis for the EU accession to the Convention system has been made possible after the entering into force of the EU Lisbon Treaty on 1 December 2009, and, from the Convention’s perspective, the new Protocol No. 14 to the Convention, which entered into force on 1 June 2010, and which, in Article 17 (amending Article 59 of the Convention), stipulates that the EU may accede to this Convention. (shrink)

The continuing philosophical interest in the famous 'Protocol Sentence Debate' in the Vienna Circle of Logical Positivists is, to a large measure, due to the focus on the epistemological issues in the dispute, and the neglect of differences among the leading players in their philosophical views of logic and language. In Protocols, Truth and Convention , the current understanding of the debate is advanced by developing the contemporaneous views of logic and language held by the principal disputants. Rudolf (...) Carnap and Moritz Schlick. It is argued - largely on the basis of unpublished manuscripts and correspondence - that, despite apparent differences in their respective conceptions of language, there are nonetheless striking similarities, particularly with respect to the conventionality of language. Nonetheless, one key issue - concerning the syntacticism inherent in Carnap's early Thirties' philosophy - separates the two viewpoints in the clash over protocols. Finally, it is argued that Carnap's syntacticism is untenable, a conclusion that Carnap himself finally reached in the closing exchanges of the protocol sentence controversy. (shrink)

This study is an attempt to construct a quantitative link for international regimes with global leadership. The country's willingness to lead in solving global issues as the first mover in the formation of an international regime is measured and characterized by analyzing their ratification behavior in multilateral conventions deposited to the United Nations which shape of the global community. For this purpose, a set of quantitative indicators, the Index of Global Leadership Willingness and the Global Support Index, was defined (...) and calculated for each country based on its actual ratification year data for 120 multilateral conventions covering global issues such as peace and security, environment, commerce, communication, intellectual property protection, human rights, and labor. By proposing a framework of global leadership analysis, the study seeks to provide an empirical testing of the transformation of global governance towards cooperation without hegemony paradigm. The paper analyses changes in the leadership willingness indices of selected country groups, such as the G3, G7/8, and G20, over the century and finds that the will to drive the international agenda of these groups of leaders is in decline. Moreover, our study provides evidence to argue that our current world is actually without consistent global leadership across domains of the world affairs. Although several countries still show visible leadership in specific policy domains, such as environment and intellectual property, neither the G7/8 nor the G20 was playing a comparable role to those performed by the G3 a hundred years ago. (shrink)

Mindfulness has come to be considered an important approach to help individuals cultivate transformative capacity to free themselves from stress and suffering. However, the transformative potential of mindfulness extends beyond individual stress management. This study contributes to a broadening of the scope of contemplative science by integrating the prominent, individually focused mindfulness meditation literature with collective mindfulness scholarship. In so doing, it aims to illuminate an important context in which mindfulness interventions are increasingly prevalent: workplaces. Typically, the intended effect of (...) workplace mindfulness training is to help workers manage stress better. Since mindfulness in organizations impacts individual and collective processes, the study blends the above literatures to create a cross-level “next-generation” Team Mindfulness Training pilot. Its potential in helping individuals and teams to manage work stress better is investigated via a two-phase mixed-methods research study in high-stress military work populations, and compared to a conventional 8-week mindfulness meditation program based on mindfulness-based stress reduction. Results suggest that compared to the “first-generation” mindfulness program, TMT seems no less effective in raising individual stress management skills, and may hold more promise in generating collective capacity to manage stress and unexpected difficulty, linked to an apparent interdependence between collective and individual mindfulness capacity development. Based on these empirical results, the study contributes to theory in three important ways: first, it outlines how individual and collective mindfulness in workplaces may be interdependent. Second, it explains why “next-generation” workplace training interventions should apply a cross-level approach. And third, it illustrates how its transformative potential for people at work, individually as well as collectively, can be extended by moving beyond an inward-looking meditation focus in mindfulness training. The study contributes to practice by providing a detailed outline of the pilot TMT program, and offers a series of follow-up research opportunities to inspire further scientific innovation in workplace mindfulness training, especially for high-stress work populations. The study’s ultimate aim is to prompt a shift away from adapting clinically oriented, self-focused “first-generation” mindfulness training protocols, and towards mindfulness as team sport: a more prosocially oriented mindfulness science intent on generating wisdom and compassion, for one and all. (shrink)

Nearly fifteen years after the Council of Europe first called for a pan‐European convention on issues in bioethics to harmonize disparate national regulations, in November 1996 the council's Committee of Ministers approved the Convention on Human Rights and Biomedicine for formal adoption. The draft convention, released in July 1994, provoked strong public, professional, and governmental debate among European nations, particularly regarding provisions for biomedical research with subjects unable to give informed consent. If ratified, the “bioethics (...) class='Hi'>convention” will become the first such document to have binding force internationally. (shrink)

Without doubt, the year 2001 will remain identified with the terrorist attacks of september 11. To some extent, this goes for the European Union as well. The events of september 11 left an important mark on the European integration process, of which the development of the European arrest warrant is an important illustration. Nevertheless, as for the European Union, the year 2001 was more than a year of anti-terrorism measures. In the second semester of2001, the Belgian government assumed the presidency (...) ofthe European Union. 2001 was also the year in which, only weeks after street violence disruputed the European Council ofGöteborg, a protester was killed in the margin ofthe G7-G8 Summit in Genova. In 2001, the gap between the European Union and the United States got larger for a number of policy fields, including National Missile Defence and the Kyoto Protocol. Yet, in the autumn of2001, both power blocks reconciliated at the WTO Ministerial Conference in Doha, Qatar. In Doha, a new global round of trade negotiations was launched. As in previous years, in 2001, the enlargement process was high on the European agenda. As for the latter, for the first time, ten candidate countries were mentioned by name, making their accession in 2004 a more realistic scenario. The eastern enlargement will radically change the face of the European Union. The Belgian presidency anticipated this impeding metamorphosis and stimulated the adoption of the Laeken Declaration in december 2001. The Declaration laid the foundation for the Convention on the Future of Europe which started on February 28, 2002. The Declaration of Laeken was one of the European highlights of 2001. The low point was the Irish referendum of June 7, 2001, in which a majority of the Irish population rejected the Treaty of Nice. Both events reflect the situation the European Union is faced with today, as they demonstrate the growing tension between the desires of «widening» and «deepening» the European construction. The future willreveal how the European Union went with this growing area of tension. (shrink)

Conformity is a large topic and its causes are undoubtedly heterogenous. Of the various mechanisms that contribute to conformity, I will comment on two: coordination and esteem. Game theorists have given coordination significant attention. Lewis first posited that social conventions are, roughly, particular equilibrium outcomes to recurrent coordination problems. Once the equilibrium occurs, it is, by definition, in everyone’s interest to conform. Evolutionary game theorists have explored the conditions that make a certain equilibrium likely to emerge and persist when (...) more than one equilibrium is possible. In the first section below, I set forth one point about the nature of conformity in such settings—that there can be a strong stability to conventions in which the required behavior varies by the observable physical differences among human beings, such as sex and those that come to be associated with race. In a certain class of important games, observable personal differences work to “break symmetry,” which significantly changes the possible outcomes to the game. My aim is not to provide a particular model of conformity involving sex and race, but to illustrate the usefulness of a particular approach to model-building. (shrink)

This essay introduces this special issue on virtue ethics in relation to military AI. It describes the current situation of military AI ethics as following that of AI ethics in general, caught between consequentialism and deontology. Virtue ethics serves as an alternative that can address some of the weaknesses of these dominant forms of ethics. The essay describes how the articles in the issue exemplify the value of virtue-related approaches for these questions, before ending with thoughts for further research.

Conspiracy theories should be neither believed nor investigated - that is the conventional wisdom. I argue that it is sometimes permissible both to investigate and to believe. Hence this is a dispute in the ethics of belief. I defend epistemic ‘oughts’ that apply in the first instance to belief-forming strategies that are partly under our control. I argue that the policy of systematically doubting or disbelieving conspiracy theories would be both a political disaster and the epistemic equivalent of self-mutilation, (...) since it leads to the conclusion that history is bunk and the nightly news unbelievable. In fact (of course) the policy is not employed systematically but is only wheeled on to do down theories that the speaker happens to dislike. I develop a deductive argument from hard-to-deny premises that if you are not a ‘conspiracy theorist’ in my anodyne sense of the word then you are an ‘idiot’ in the Greek sense of the word, that is, someone so politically purblind as to have no opinions about either history or public affairs. The conventional wisdom can only be saved (if at all) if ‘conspiracy theory’ is given a slanted definition. I discuss some slanted definitions apparently presupposed by proponents of the conventional wisdom (including, amongst others, Tony Blair) and conclude that even with these definitions the conventional wisdom comes out as deeply unwise. I finish up with a little harmless fun at the expense of David Aaronvitch whose abilities as a rhetorician and a popular historian are not perhaps matched by a corresponding capacity for logical thought. (shrink)

For much of 2021, allocating the scarce supply of Covid‐19 vaccines was the world's most pressing bioethical challenge, and similar challenges may recur for novel therapies and future vaccines. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) identified three fundamental ethical principles to guide the process: maximize benefits, promote justice, and mitigate health inequities. We argue that critical components of the recommended protocol were internally inconsistent with these principles. Specifically, the (...) ACIP violated its principles by recommending overly broad health care worker priority in phase 1a, using being at least seventy‐five years of age as the only criterion to identify individuals at high risk of death from Covid‐19 during phase 1b, failing to recommend place‐based vaccine distribution, and implicitly endorsing first‐come, first‐served allocation. More rigorous empirical work and the development of a complete ethical framework that recognizes trade‐offs between principles may have prevented these mistakes and saved lives. (shrink)

Lithuania had a different experience in legal regulation of private property. There were periods when right to private ownership was denied and on the other hand – the periods when right to private ownership was respected and protected. Authors wanted to review today’s status of rights to private property in retrospective. The main purpose of the article is to reveal functions of private property in Lithuania. The article analyzes peculiarities of legal regulation of private property in Lithuania during different stages (...) of the state’s development. The authors have analyzed the social significance of the right to private property, how it changed and how it has been reflected in Lithuanian legislation and the case law of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania, paying a particular attention to entrenchment of the right to private property in the Constitution of Lithuania. The authors evaluate the compliance of the national legal regulation and Article 1 of the First Protocol with the European Convention on Human Rights, and the case law of the European Court of Justice. (shrink)

Maritime services form an integral part of what regulatory agencies requires for the safe navigation and operation of vessels. Therefore, the maritime industry?s compliance with governmental regulations and international protocols has been essential for maritime safety management. As a basis to this aspect, the preparation of maritime students as the forthcoming maritime officers in the future has been a crucial point by the maritime educators in terms of maritime safety. Although English was adopted as the official language of the maritime (...) industries by the International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping (STCW Convention) in 1978, many difficulties remain in the teaching and assessing of Maritime English at maritime schools. Some research has examined these difficulties; however, no successful models for improving. Maritime English have been adopted Parallel to the teaching and assessing problems, there have also been many difficulties in reaching a training and testing proficiency in English communication that meets the international standards of the STCW requirements in the maritime industry. This paper concentrates upon the difficulties of teaching and assessing the outcomes of the teaching of Maritime Transportation English at the member schools of the International Association of Maritime Universities (IAMU) from all over the world. As a first step in the methodology of this study, a survey of techniques used at member schools of the IAMU is conducted to solve some difficulties in assessing the teaching of Maritime English. Then a positioning model is developed to identify and measure the positions of the IAMU member schools in comparison to one another by using a multidimensional scaling technique to analyse the multivariate data received through questionnaires. This information provides the foundation upon which the model of this research is built. Consequently, some strategies based upon the results of the analysis are developed to reduce the problems and difficulties in this context. (shrink)

In this article, a framework is suggested to deal with the analysis of global environmental risk governance. Climate Change is taken as a particular form of contemporary environmental risk, and mobilised to refine and characterize some salient aspects of new governance challenges. A governance framework is elaborated along three basic features: (1) a close relationship with science, (2) an in-built reflexivity, and (3) forms of governmentality. The UNFCCC-centered system is then assessed according to this three-tier framework. While the two-first (...) requisites are largely met, the analysis of governmentality points to some institutional weak spots. (shrink)

Corruption is a serious economic, social, political, and moral blight, especially in many emerging countries. It is a problem that affects companies in particular, especially in international commerce, finance, and technology transfer. And it is becoming an international phenomenon in scope, substance, and consequences. That is why, in recent years, there has been a proliferation of international efforts to tackle the problem of corruption. One such international cooperative initiative is the United Nations Convention against Corruption, signed in 2003, which (...) came into force in December 2005. This is the first truly global instrument to prevent and combat corruption, built on a broad international consensus. The purpose of this article is to explain the origin and content of the Convention, what it adds to existing international instruments for combating corruption, and its strengths and weaknesses, mainly from the point of view of companies. (shrink)

The Maputo Protocol, adopted in 2003, was intended to counterbalance the normative deficiencies of the African Charter with respect to women’s rights. However, 15 years down the line, there is not much case law on the Protocol. The ECOWAS Court made its first pronouncement on the Protocol in 2017 in Dorothy Njemanze & 3 Others v. The Federal Republic of Nigeria. This paper analyses three gender-based violence decisions by the Ecowas Court: Dorothy Njemanze, Aminata Diantou Diane (...) and Mary Sunday cases. The paper examines the potential of the Protocol and the due diligence principle in influencing the Ecowas Court’s jurisprudence on women’s rights and makes recommendations. (shrink)

Through a discursive and organizational analysis we seek to understand the Biosafety Protocol and the place of socioeconomic regulation of agricultural biotechnology in it. The literature on the Protocol has been fairly extensive, but little of it has explored debates over socioeconomic regulation during the negotiation process or the regulatory requirements specified in the final document. This case is especially important at a time when the spread of neoliberalism is increasingly associated with deregulation, because it sheds light on (...) the conditions under which circumvention of the market is deemed legitimate and socio-economic regulation of agricultural technology is possible. (shrink)

Abstract Conspiracy theories should be neither believed nor investigated - that is the conventional wisdom. I argue that it is sometimes permissible both to investigate and to believe. Hence this is a dispute in the ethics of belief. I defend epistemic “oughts” that apply in the first instance to belief-forming strategies that are partly under our control. But the beliefforming strategy of not believing conspiracy theories would be a political disaster and the epistemic equivalent of selfmutilation. I discuss several (...) variations of this strategy, interpreting “conspiracy theory” in different ways but conclude that on all these readings, the conventional wisdom is deeply unwise. (shrink)

The current international asylum regime recognizes only persecuted persons as rightful asylum applicants. The Geneva Convention and Protocol enumerate specific grounds upon which persecution is recognized. Claimants who cannot demonstrate a real risk of persecution based on one of the recognized grounds are unlikely to be granted asylum. This paper aims to relate real-world practices to normative theories, asking whether the Convention’s restricted preference towards persecuted persons is normatively justified. I intend to show that the justifications of (...) the persecution criterion also apply to grounds currently lacking recognition. My main concern will be persecution on the grounds of gender.The first section introduces the dominant standpoints in theories of asylum, which give different answers to the question of who should be granted asylum, based on different normative considerations. Humanitarian theories base their claims on the factual neediness of asylum-seekers, holding that whoever is in grave danger of harm or deprivation should be granted asylum. Political theories base their justifications on conceptions of legitimacy and membership, holding that whoever has been denied membership in their original state should be granted asylum. Under political theories, Matthew Price’s theory will be discussed, which provides a normative justification of the currently recognized persecution criterion. The second section provides a descriptive definition of persecution based on Kuosmanen, and evaluates the normative relevance of the different elements of this definition based on the theories presented previously. The third section is devoted to the examination of the normative justifiability of the nexus clause’s exclusive list of the bases upon which persons might be persecuted. The section argues that while the clause does not recognize that persecution might be based on gender, in fact many women experience harms based on gender that fulfil all the normatively relevant definitive conditions constituting persecution. The conclusion shows that although the current law’s preferences towards the persecuted are justifiable, the nexus clause’s limiting enumeration of grounds is not. This applies especially to the exclusion of gender as grounds for granting asylum.Article first published online: 21 DEC 2015. (shrink)

This paper explores the role of ethics and responsibility as drivers of a transition to a more sustainable agri-food system, by drawing on an investigation of the governance of social sustainability in the UK’s conventional food supply. The paper investigates how and why various non-state actors in the conventional food supply construe certain social obligations as being part of the remit of the food supply; whether ethics plays a motivating role; and the extent to which their activities are linked to (...) sustainability. The paper uses data collected via two surveys of diverse entities in the conventional food supply, the first a survey of public-facing websites, the second a series of in-depth interviews. The entities ranged from primary producers, manufacturers and food service operators to consultancies, standard-setting organisations and advocacy groups. The study finds that actors view a variety of socially focused or socially beneficial activities as legitimate governance concerns for the conventional food supply, and that ethics plays a role in motivating or justifying these activities. However, the activities are inconsistently associated with sustainability, a finding that may undermine the use of sustainability programmes as tools for driving ethical agendas. Moreover, the dominant business framing of the conventional food supply means that ethical considerations are often expressed in terms of more instrumental priorities. Social sustainability or responsibility actions can be justified on moral grounds as ‘the right thing to do’ but usually have to be backed up in more pragmatic terms as a way of ‘doing well by doing good’. (shrink)

In August 2011 Edward Fullbrook, the editor of the Real World Economics Review and the driving force behind the World Economics Association (WEA), asked the three of us to take on editorial roles in the newly established philosophy, methodology and history of thought journal of the association. The project was, to say the least, rather daunting. We had a document outlining the scope and editorial policies of the would-be journal written by Grazia Ietto-Gillies. Grazia had also developed the proposed Open (...) Peer Discussion Forum (OPD), based on her research into similar peer review systems used within the natural sciences. However, we had never met each other nor worked together and we lacked administrative and technical support. In addition, scheduling editorial meetings between Rome, Mexico City and Oxford proved rather challenging! Nevertheless, a combination of belief in the cause of the WEA and foolhardiness led us all to accept. The first issue of the journal is the fruit of our collective labours as well as those of our authors. In addition, both Jake McMurchie (the association's IT expert) and Jane Spurr (our production and layout expert) have been instrumental in the process of transforming a vibrant open peer discussion into six conventional journal articles. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to clarify the meaning of the term saṁketa, which is usually translated as ‘ convention’, in the Yogasūtrabhāṣya, the first and the most authoritative commentary to the Yogasūtras. This paper is a contribution to the reconstruction of the classical Yoga view on the relation between word and its meaning, for saṁketa is a key term used by this darśana in discussing this relation. The textual analysis of the Yogasūtrabhāṣya has led me to (...) the conclusion that its author’s understanding of the linguistic convention is different from the notion of the linguistic convention of the Vaiśeṣikas and Naiyāyikas and similar to the notion of the linguistic convention of the Grammarians. These are interpretations of the term saṁketa which reflect Yogasūtrabhāṣya’s understanding of the linguistic convention: the tradition of the usage of words, established usage of words. Saṁketa of the Yogasūtrabhāṣya, unlike saṁketa/samaya of the Vaiśeṣikas and Naiyāyikas, is not an agreement established by anyone, but an agreement in the sense of tradition, established practice, or established custom. Unlike the saṁketa/samaya of these philosophers, the saṁketa of the Yogasūtrabhāṣya, having neither beginning nor end, is not re-created, but only made known at the beginning of each cycle of existence of the world. (shrink)

The conventional wisdom among many sociologists is (1) that it is their prerogative to define, document, and explain the inequalities that exist in society and (2) that there are two general theoretical perspectives useful for studying inequality: functionalism and conflict theory. Some scholars have recently challenged the latter portion of this view by advocating the development of more interpretive, interactionist approaches. However, these scholars'' agendas often tend to perpetuate the first half of the conventional wisdom. While interactionists (and other (...) constructionist scholars) can choose to study inequality in any number of ways, I argue that the most distinctive contribution they can make is to focus on the meanings that inequalities have for people in everyday life, as well as how those meanings are achieved. (shrink)

Mental fatigue can be studied by using either the time-on-task protocol or the sequential task protocol. In the time-on-task protocol, participants perform a long and effortful task and a decrease in performance in this task is generally observed over time. In the sequential task protocol, a first effortful or control task is followed by a second effortful task. The performance in the second task is generally worse after the effortful task than after the control task. (...) The principal aim of the present experiment is to examine the relationship between these two decrements in performance while concomitantly using a sequential task protocol and assessing the performance of the first effortful task as a function of time-on-task. We expect a positive correlation between these two decrements in performance. A total of 83 participants performed a 30-min fatiguing mental task or a control task followed by a time-to-exhaustion handgrip task. As expected, this protocol combining the time-on-task and sequential task protocols allowed us to observe a decrease in performance over time during the Stroop task, a worst performance in the handgrip task after the Stroop task by comparison to the control task, a positive correlation between these two effects. The decrease in performance during the Stroop task also correlated with the subjective measures of boredom and fatigue, whereas the detrimental effect observed in the handgrip task did not. Our findings suggest that the two fatigue-related phenomena share a common mechanism but are not completely equivalent. (shrink)

Linguistic convention is one of the central notions of Indian philosophy of language. The well-known view of samaya/saṃketa is its conception as the agreement initiating the relationship between words and their previously unrelated meanings. However, in Indian philosophy of language, we also encounter two other important but little-researched interpretations of samaya/saṃketa, which consider it as the established usage of words. I present a new classification of traditions of Indian thought based on their view of linguistic convention. This classification (...) is to be verified and expanded in further studies. As far as I know, such a classification has never been undertaken before. 1) Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Buddhism, and later classical Yoga of the Tattvavaiśāradī accept samaya/saṃketa as an agreement initiating the relationship between words and their previously unrelated meanings. 2) Bhartṛhari the Grammarian and the continuators of his thought acknowledge samaya/saṃketa as the established usage of words that is rooted in the natural relationship between words and their meanings; the convention manifests the relationship. This view was probably also shared by Mīmāṃsakas and Advaitins. 3) Classical Yoga of the Yogasūtrabhāṣya and probably also earlier Grammar thought of the Mahābhāṣya accept linguistic convention as the established usage of words, but this usage, though having neither a beginning nor an end, is not based on any natural and necessary word–meaning relationship. In this view, linguistic convention not only manifests the word–meaning relationship but also keeps it in existence. Another new contribution of this research is my explanation for why the same Sanskrit term samaya/saṃketa was applied to the different ways of understanding linguistic convention. I explain this through the common aspects of all three kinds of samaya/saṃketa. The first aspect is the content of all these kinds of samaya/saṃketa. Irrespective of how linguistic convention is understood, its content is the same: “such and such a word has such and such a meaning”. The second aspect is the crucial role of linguistic convention in language acquisition, communication, and transmission. (shrink)

Based on the concept of the third paradigm of the «first philosophy», the article analyzes the theo- retical and practical philosophy of Karl-Otto Apel. The role of discursive practices as a paradig- matic basis of the philosophy of communication and meta-institutions of all the rest institutions of society is revealed. The author considers the achievements of Ukrainian philosophers in the study of Apel’s heritage, as well as the possibilities of applying Apel’s philosophical theorizing in the study of Ukrainian realities, (...) development of the Ukrainian ethos, and possibility of theo- retical substantiation and practical legitimization of institutions and values. In addition to this, it is also about the relationship between universalist morality and the particular ethos of local worlds, as well as the relationship between the concepts of universalist ethics and global ethos. Using Apel’s methodology, the author of the article argues that the revival of the conventional ethos and the institutional stage of development of moral consciousness does not end the problem of moral development of the Ukrainian nation. The next, no less important, task is the transition to a potentially democratic postconventional morality, which is achieved by communicative ratio- nalization of the world, the creation of institutions of deliberative democracy. The great role and influence of Apel’s philosophy in the world, which is manifested in the fact that there is a kind of communicative international, which unites many supporters of the Apel paradigm in such well known organization as the “Karl-Otto Apel Centro Filosofico Internazionale”, and in such journals as “Topologik”, “Ethik+Diskurs”, etc., which conduct researches based on the Apel paradigm. (shrink)

This article discusses the effects of the OECD Convention on Combating the Bribery of Foreign Public Officials, which was signed in 1997 and is due to be implemented by the signatory nation‐states this year. The Convention represents the expansion of legal measures to combat the bribery of foreign public officials by individuals or corporations, and it has been accompanied by the Organisation of American States’ Convention Against Corruption. Previously the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act , which applied only (...) to United States individuals or corporations, ‘stood alone in the world as a legal barrier to transnational bribery’ . This article proceeds in stages to evaluate implications of the Convention. Firstly the Convention is placed in the context of the increased focus on transnational business bribery in recent years. Second, the main points of the Convention are outlined. Third, the issues and problems posed by the Convention for business are discussed. Finally some themes regarding enforcement by the relevant authorities are outlined. (shrink)

Evidence is accumulating that individual and environmental factors in childhood and adolescence should be considered when investigating adult health and aging-related processes. The data required for this is gathered by comprehensive long-term longitudinal studies. This article describes the protocol of the Zurich Longitudinal Studies (ZLS), a set of three comprehensive cohort studies on child growth, health, and development that are currently expanding into adulthood. Between 1954 and 1961, 445 healthy infants were enrolled in the first ZLS cohort. Their (...) physical, motor, cognitive, and social development and their environment were assessed comprehensively across childhood, adolescence, and into young adulthood. In the 1970s, two further cohorts were added to the ZLS and assessed with largely matched study protocols: Between 1974 and 1979, the second ZLS cohort included 265 infants (103 term-born and 162 preterm infants), and between 1970 and 2002, the third ZLS cohort included 327 children of participants of the first ZLS cohort. Since 2019, the participants of the three ZLS cohorts have been traced and invited to participate in a first wave of assessments in adulthood to investigate their current health and development. This article describes the ZLS study protocol and discusses opportunities, methodological and conceptual challenges, and limitations arising from a long-term longitudinal cohort recruited from a study about development in early life. In the future, the ZLS will provide data to investigate childhood antecedents of adult health outcomes and, ultimately, will help respond to the frequent call of scientists to shift the focus of aging research into the first decades of life and, thus, to take a lifespan perspective on aging. (shrink)

The paper investigates the interaction of lexical and constructional meaning in valency coercion processing, and the effect of (in)compatibility between verb and construction for its successful resolution (Perek, Florent & Martin Hilpert. 2014. Constructional tolerance: Cross-linguistic differences in the acceptability of non-conventional uses of constructions. Constructions and Frames 6(2). 266–304; Yoon, Soyeon. 2019. Coercion and language change: A usage-based approach. Linguistic Research 36(1). 111–139). We present an online experiment on valency coercion (the first one on Italian), by means of (...) a semantic priming protocol inspired by Johnson, Matt A. & Adele E. Goldberg. 2013. Evidence for automatic accessing of constructional meaning: Jabberwocky sentences prime associated verbs. Language & Cognitive Processes 28(10). 1439–1452. We test priming effects with a lexical decision task which presents different target verbs preceded by coercion instances of four Italian argument structure constructions, which serve as primes. Three types of verbs serve as target: lexical associate (LA), construction associate (CA), and unrelated (U) verbs. LAs are semantically similar to the main verb of the prime sentence, whereas CAs are prototypical verbs associated to the prime construction. U verbs serve as a mean of comparison for the two categories of interest. Results confirm that processing of valency coercion requires an integration of both lexical and constructional semantics. Moreover, compatibility is also found to influence coercion resolution. Specifically, constructional priming is primary and independent from compatibility. A secondary priming effect for LA verbs is also found, which suggests a contribution of lexical semantics in coercion resolution – especially for low-compatibility coercion coinages. (shrink)

This paper is focused on the analysis of two documents (the Council of Europe's Bioethics Convention and the Additional Cloning Protocol) inasmuch as they refer to the relationship between human dignity and human genetic engineering. After presenting the stipulations of the abovementioned documents, I will review various proposed meanings of human dignity and will try to identify which of these seem to be at the core of their underlying assumptions. Is the concept of dignity proposed in the two (...) documents coherent? Is it morally legitimate? Is it, as some might assume, of Kantian origin? Does it have any philosophical roots? (shrink)

Available for the first time in English, this work explores a range of mental disorders in the context of Frankl's theory of human motivation. Skillfully translated and featuring extensive annotation, this English language edition remains true to the original while updating assessment and treatment protocols to be compatible with 21st century medicine. As the title suggests, On the Theory and Therapy of Mental Disorders applies a theoretical treatise to the practical treatment of variety of disorders. This long-awaited addition to (...) the body of English language literature introduces Viktor Frankl's clinical insights to a new generation of mental health professionals, and has much to offer to practitioners of all levels of experience. (shrink)