Monitoring first year Maori students enrolled in selected Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences courses: A report prepared for the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Monitoring first year Maori Students Enrolled in Selected Faculty of Arts andSocial Sciences Courses. The total number of Maori students targeted by this project was 182, representing 93% of the total number of Maori students enrolled in Semester B level one courses. The majority of students participating in this initiative were first year students, although a small number of students taking 100 level courses were second, third or graduate year students. 11 Student views on the monitoring and support initiative Students were provided with the opportunity to comment on the monitoring and support initiative. All students contacted (49) recommended that this intervention continue for future first year Maori students enrolled in FASS

The Growing Influence of the Courts over the Fate of Refugees

A number of migration scholars suggest that domestic courts have become the key protective institution for refugees. How can we explain this claim? One prominent explanation identifies group litigation as the key source of the increasing influence of the courts. How well does this explanation travel empirically? The article evaluates this explanation by examining the puzzling behaviour of German refugee NGOs. They have not entered the legal arena directly (either as parties or as interveners), nor have they concentrated on developing extensive litigation campaigns. Still, they are remarkably ‘judicialized’: their frequent engagement with the law in other respects has heightened their legal consciousness. Why have German refugee NGOs made such different choices than their North American counterparts and what do these choices tell us about the expanding influence of the courts over the fate of refugees in Germany and North America? To make sense of the different choices that these organizations have made, we need to understand the role that institutional norms and procedures, in particular policy legacies, have played in directing the behaviour and identity of these groups. For a number of reasons, German refugee NGOs historically have been discouraged from directly accessing the courts in favour of indirect participation. Since Canadian and American refugee organizations follow a pattern closer to the expectations of the (largely North American) literature on the subject, we need to be more careful in thinking through our presuppositions when constructing a theory of the worldwide expansion of judicial power

Improving access to climate financing for the Pacific Islands

Executive summary The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) commits developed countries to provide assistance to ‘developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change in meeting the costs of adaptation.’ Although recent commitments of ‘fast-start’ climate funding from partners like Australia, Japan and the European Union are welcome, Pacific Island countries face wider obstacles in accessing appropriate and timely levels of funding for adaptation and mitigation to manage the adverse effects that environmental challenges have on core areas for economic, social and human development. The experience of Solomon Islands, the first Pacific country to obtain funding from the Kyoto Protocol Adaptation Fund for a project on food security and agricultural production, offers some important lessons for the region. Access to climate financing could be improved through seeking special access for small island states in financial mechanisms, establishing programs and structures that improve donor coordination and build the capacity of national institutions, developing national climate trust funds and a Pacific Regional Climate Change fund and, most importantly, implementing more targeted action on the ground to assist the most vulnerable communities with concrete adaptation programs

Bucking the Trends: Increasing retention rates of Māori students enrolled in Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences courses at the University of Waikato

Reports on the success of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Waikato’s monitoring and support for Maori students initiative. The aim of the initative was to implement a support system in the FASS that would enhance retention rates for Māori students in the Faculty

New Occupations Emerging Across Industry Lines

[Excerpt] Emerging occupations may be entirely new, created by changes in technology, society, markets, or regulations. They may also be existing ones that have been substantially modified by the same trends, and are increasing in employment. Emerging occupations are most often found in the most rapidly growing or changing industries. For example, the services division reported the greatest number of emerging occupations. (See table.) Within this division, the industry groups reporting the most emerging occupations were social services, health services, business services, and education. Quite often, such occupations are specific to an industry—resettlement coordinators are not often found outside of their social service niche, nor are bus aides found outside of educational services