Transitional criminal justice in Spain

Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit den Fällen von Repression, die während des Spanischen Bürgerkriegs 1936-1939 und der franquistischen Diktatur stattfanden und die seit den 2000er Jahren vor Gericht gebracht wurden. Im ersten Teil der Arbeit werden diese Fälle unter spanisches Strafrecht subsumiert. Im zweiten Teil der Arbeit wird untersucht, ob das vom spanischen Parlament im Oktober 1977 verabschiedete Amnestiegesetz mit den internationalen Menschenrechtsnormen vereinbar ist. Schließlich werden im dritten Teil der Arbeit die Fälle aus der Zeit des Spanischen Bürgerkriegs 1936-1939 nach internationalem Strafrecht und humanitärem Recht analysiert.This work deals with the cases of repression that occurred during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship and that have been brought to court since the 2000s. A first part of the work has subsumed these cases under Spanish domestic criminal law. A second part of the work examines the compliance of the amnesty law enacted by the Spanish Parliament in October 1977 with International Human Rights Law. Finally, a third part of the work analyses the cases occurred during the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War under international criminal and humanitarian law

With Great Advantage Should Come Responsibility: How the Territorialist Approach in Private International Law Maybe Overcome to Ensure Justice is Done for those Left in the Wake of Canadian Business Abroad

Conflict of laws rules in Canada bias toward taking jurisdiction over matters involving human rights or environmental abuse inflicted abroad, particularly when inflicted by Canadian corporations. Contrary to enumerated tests for jurisdiction, many Canadian courts have instead preferred a regressive state-centric/hyper-comity anchor in applying such tests to putative foreign plaintiffs. This Thesis argues this preference can be effectively understood using the lens and language of Pierre Bourdieus field theory as representing a habitus of the Canadian judiciary. In light of the habitus of the Canadian judicial field, and in order to encourage an interpretation of conflict of laws rules in Canada that prefers an uptake of such claims, practitioners ought to introduce issues of jurisdiction to Canadian courts framed with respect to fairness, notably whether it is fair to provide Canadian corporations significant benefit when operating abroad and, through failure to take jurisdiction, allow such corporations to avoid civil prosecution

A policy analysis of the 2014 Mexican soda tax

Introduction: Mexico’s prevalence of adult overweight and obesity is 72.5%, and 34.4% for school children. Mexico has one of the highest consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages globally. In 2012, during the transition to a new President, a new obesity strategy was proposed and developed. As part of this policy, a soda tax was implemented in Mexico in January 2014. The aim of this thesis is to explore how the soda tax emerged as a policy issue in Mexico and how stakeholders influenced its development and implementation. Methods: Thirty-three semi-structured elite interviews were conducted with stakeholders involved in the obesity policy process. Interview data was triangulated with data collected through a documentary analysis, using a systematic search of a wide range of reports, policy and organisations documents generated before and during the soda tax design and implementation phases (January 2011 to December 2015). This resulted in the analysis of 145 documents. An iterative thematic qualitative analysis of both interviews and document data was conducted, guided by the policy network approach, framing theory and multiple steams theory. Results: Many contextual factors were found to have facilitated the soda tax policy development including: the new government needing to find additional sources of revenue; increased public and government awareness of the high sugar sweetened beverage (SSB) consumption in Mexico, and its relationship to obesity and diabetes trends: greater influence gained by national NGOs through use of the media and supported by international organizations, use of existing national networks and new collaborations within Mexico. Some key relationships and links influenced the agenda setting for important policy issues. This included how conflict of interests, accountability, and representations in the formal policy process were managed. This revealed power imbalances around the policy debates and shifts in the attitude, responsibilities and actions of major actors The Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Finance (MOF) were initially ambivalent and resisted development of a soda tax,not always being strong advocates as would have been expected. The formal policy design process followed a multi-stakeholder approach which actively involved the food and beverage industry (F&BI). They were able to influence policy actions to mitigate the soda tax impact on the F&BI, undermining some outcomes. Actions by other non-state actors (e.g. ) to influence public perception about benefits and constraints of the tax included: the use of marketing strategies, calls for action using the media, framing of arguments as “the right to health” and “the multi-causality of obesity” rhetoric and implementation of corporate social responsibility actions. The effectiveness of the soda tax was highly debated in public before and after implementation, resulting in public polarization. Until the soda tax emerged as a policy option, the influence of the F&BI on health policy had not been perceived as a conflict of interest or problematic and it continues to be ignored as such by some state policy actors. Conclusion: This thesis contributes to the debate on how power is exercised, framed and shifted throughout the health policy process. It discusses the contextual factors that facilitated the soda tax development in Mexico, including how framing of evidence about obesity as a policy problem and possible solutions influenced the agenda setting. It identifies the key organisations and networks that were instrumental in policy making. This research provides evidence about how the F&BI have wielded their influence in regulatory actions within the national strategy for obesity prevention, and specifically the soda tax in Mexico. It highlights how the soda tax also brought about new opportunities for some actors framed around the issue of provision of safe drinking water. The soda tax resulted in the empowerment of advocacy groups and networks nationally supported by international actors, which was counter-balanced by new public-private partnerships and corporate social responsibility actions. This thesis demonstrates that corporate interests continued to have an influence on Mexican health policy after the introduction of the soda tax

When Protest Becomes Crime

How does protest become criminalised? Applying an anthropological perspective to political and legal conflicts, Carolijn Terwindt urges us to critically question the underlying interests and logic of prosecuting protesters. The book draws upon ethnographic research in Chile, Spain, and the United States to trace prosecutorial narratives in three protracted contentious episodes in liberal democracies. Terwindt examines the conflict between Chilean landowners and the indigenous Mapuche people, the Spanish state and the Basque independence movement, and the United States' criminalisation of 'eco-terrorists.' Exploring how patterns and mechanisms of prosecutorial narrative emerge through distinct political, social and democratic contexts, Terwindt shines a light on how prosecutorial narratives in each episode changed significantly over time. Challenging the law and justice system and warning against relying on criminal law to deal with socio-political conflicts, Terwindt's observations have implications for a wide range of actors and constituencies, including social movement activists, scholars, and prosecutors

British perceptions of Spain during the 1930s,and their use in the interpretation of the events of the Spanish Civil War

On 11 September 1936 a Times editorial made reference to the 'clamourous partisanship' that had been brought about by the civil war in Spain. In literature since the war this polarisation of opinion has been central to representations of British responses to the conflict. Much attention has focused on the divergent British political responses, and particularly on those of the left, responses which became increasingly bitter as Spain became a 'distorting mirror in which Europe[could] see an exaggerated reflection of her own divisions'. Yet, as The Times editorial continued at the time, in spite of all 'incitements the great mass of public opinion (remained) firmly opposed to any taking of sides. This public resistance to the 'clamourous' efforts of supporters of the Republic or advocates of the Nationalists has been noted in subsequent literature but has not been explored in any depth, explanation generally centring around the policy of appeasement. While not ignoring such explanations, this study argues that the imagery and language employed in the various contemporary interpretations of events played a significant part in distancing events. The study, then, aims to add a cultural perspective to the more widely examined political understanding of British responses to Spain during the 1930s. Through an analysis of representations in mass culture, and through an examination of the experiences of the growing numbers of British visitors to the Peninsula, the study first seeks to identify the expectations of Spain and the Spanish people most commonly held in Britain of the 1930s. It then goes on to examine how, during the life of the Republic and especially throughout the Civil War, supporters of both sides, in every form of mass media available, repeatedly referred to this framework of preconceived notions as they endeavoured to interpret issues and events for their British audiences. Particular attention is given to differing portrayals of the Spanish political scene and the Catholic Church, to the representations of the two sides and what they reportedly stood for. Finally, by looking at reactions to events in the Basque provinces, examining responses to humanitarian aid appeals and once again assessing the attitudes found in fictional representations of the war the study offers some measure of the impact of the war on the wider British public

Feminism, Writing and the Media in Spain

This book explores the different treatment of writing by women and writing by men in twenty-first-century Spain. Focusing on contemporary Spanish authors Ana María Matute (1926–2014), Rosa Montero (1952–), and Lucía Etxebarria (1966–), the author examines how Spanish women writers are marketed in Spain and, in particular, how current marketing strategies reinforce traditional structures of femininity. Through an analysis of their work and lives in the context of the Franco Regime, the Transition to democracy and contemporary Spain, this book provides an innovative study of the construction of the public personae of these key female writers. As social media and the internet transform authors’ relationship with their readers, the rapidly shifting publishing industry offers an important context for the difficult balance between high levels of reception and visibility and the persistence of traditional gender stereotypes

MEDIATING INDIGENOUS IDENTITY: VIDEO, ADVOCACY, AND KNOWLEDGE IN OAXACA, MEXICO

In the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, many indigenous communities further their struggles for greater political and cultural autonomy by working with transnational non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Communication technology (what I call comtech) is increasingly vital to these intersecting socio-spatial relations of activism and advocacy. In this dissertation, I examine how comtech offer indigenous individuals and organizations with the means for visualizing their political-cultural agendas. Approaching the access and use of comtech, especially video technologies, as a partial and situated technoscience, I inquire into how and why these activities reconfigure the production and evaluation of authoritative knowledge about indigenous peoples, places, and practices. More specifically, I undertook an organizational ethnography of a small intermediary NGO comprised of individuals who self-identify as indigenous and others who do not, Ojo de Agua Comunicacin Indgena, which endeavors to place communication technologies (especially video equipment) at the disposal of indigenous communities. Through participation-observation and interviews, I explored this groups everyday strategies of networking in the name of assisting indigenous actors access and appropriation of visual technologies. I also pursued interpretive analyses of video-mediated articulations of indigenous knowledge and identity that were enabled by Ojo de Agua. My research indicates that Ojo de Agua has selectively built upon the ambitions and the socio-spatial connections of a government program that emerged from the initiatives of academic advocates, who sought to open new spaces of participation for indigenous peoples. Members of Ojo de Agua have, however, found their goal of service somewhat stymied by a situation that positions them within a flexible labor force of knowledge workers. Their livelihoods as media makers did not allow them (the time or money) to pursue as much altruism and advocacy as they would have liked. Nonetheless, Ojo de Aguas corpus of videos established the group as an alternative and yet authoritative source of visual knowledge of indigenous peoples, places, and practices. This relocation of advocacy is symptomatic of the creative destruction fueled by the neo-liberal economic policies that, for the last thirty years, have been reconfiguring spaces of cooperation and conflict in Latin America