The human rights commission of Ethiopia and issues of forced evictions: a case-oriented study of its practice

In addition to the past endeavour to meet the MDGs, the Ethiopian government launched an ambitious program, ‘Growth and Transformative Plan (2011-2015)’ in 2011 to transform the country’s economic growth and development. As core part of the Plan, the economic and infrastructure sections envisage massive investment and infrastructure development. While the ultimate target is to improve socio-economic conditions and fulfil basis needs, the Plan will likely heighten massive eviction of people from their ancestral lands and thousands from their houses, and deprive many more of the traditional means of livelihood. In both the past as well as the present development endeavour, little attention has been given to a human rights-approach to development. The discourse on economic growth and development tends to focus more on mere economic improvement, implying needs-based approach. This will reinforce the notion that the fulfilment of economic, social and cultural rights is an aspiration realized by government program, with no obligation on the part of the government. One of the core functions of national human rights institutions (NHRIs) is to investigate complaints. The Human Rights Commission of Ethiopia (Commission) has been receiving complaints on wide range of issues since it started rendering its quasi-judicial functions. Among them, many complaints relating to forced have been brought to its attention. The Commission has rejected the bulk of the complaints or referred them to either courts of law or and the Ombudsman Institute on the ground they do not involve human rights issues (i.e. they are mere administrative matters that do not qualify for its inquiry). By the same token, investigation of complaints on forced eviction is an exception rather than the norm. Disclaiming jurisdiction might shed light on the underlining issues-it might mark fear on the part of the Commission not to confront the economic and development policies of the government; or adoption of pre-conceived approach to issues of economic, social and cultural rights, or erroneous interpretation of its mandate or incapacity to deal with such issues. This paper will deal with the Commission’s handling of complaints pertaining to the right to housing in general and forced eviction in particular. Some of interesting complaints handled by the Commission will be reviewed to see the underlining reasons hampering the Commission from examining the essence of specific cases. Some measures to be adopted so that the Commission could probe complaints of all sorts and of forced evictions in particular are hinted

Programming with Algebraic Effects and Handlers

Eff is a programming language based on the algebraic approach to computational effects, in which effects are viewed as algebraic operations and effect handlers as homomorphisms from free algebras. Eff supports first-class effects and handlers through which we may easily define new computational effects, seamlessly combine existing ones, and handle them in novel ways. We give a denotational semantics of eff and discuss a prototype implementation based on it. Through examples we demonstrate how the standard effects are treated in eff, and how eff supports programming techniques that use various forms of delimited continuations, such as backtracking, breadth-first search, selection functionals, cooperative multi-threading, and others

RAFDA: A Policy-Aware Middleware Supporting the Flexible Separation of Application Logic from Distribution

Middleware technologies often limit the way in which object classes may be used in distributed applications due to the fixed distribution policies that they impose. These policies permeate applications developed using existing middleware systems and force an unnatural encoding of application level semantics. For example, the application programmer has no direct control over inter-address-space parameter passing semantics. Semantics are fixed by the distribution topology of the application, which is dictated early in the design cycle. This creates applications that are brittle with respect to changes in distribution. This paper explores technology that provides control over the extent to which inter-address-space communication is exposed to programmers, in order to aid the creation, maintenance and evolution of distributed applications. The described system permits arbitrary objects in an application to be dynamically exposed for remote access, allowing applications to be written without concern for distribution. Programmers can conceal or expose the distributed nature of applications as required, permitting object placement and distribution boundaries to be decided late in the design cycle and even dynamically. Inter-address-space parameter passing semantics may also be decided independently of object implementation and at varying times in the design cycle, again possibly as late as run-time. Furthermore, transmission policy may be defined on a per-class, per-method or per-parameter basis, maximizing plasticity. This flexibility is of utility in the development of new distributed applications, and the creation of management and monitoring infrastructures for existing applications.Comment: Submitted to EuroSys 200

Instrumenting self-modifying code

Adding small code snippets at key points to existing code fragments is called instrumentation. It is an established technique to debug certain otherwise hard to solve faults, such as memory management issues and data races. Dynamic instrumentation can already be used to analyse code which is loaded or even generated at run time.With the advent of environments such as the Java Virtual Machine with optimizing Just-In-Time compilers, a new obstacle arises: self-modifying code. In order to instrument this kind of code correctly, one must be able to detect modifications and adapt the instrumentation code accordingly, preferably without incurring a high penalty speedwise. In this paper we propose an innovative technique that uses the hardware page protection mechanism of modern processors to detect such modifications. We also show how an instrumentor can adapt the instrumented version depending on the kind of modificiations as well as an experimental evaluation of said techniques.Comment: In M. Ronsse, K. De Bosschere (eds), proceedings of the Fifth International Workshop on Automated Debugging (AADEBUG 2003), September 2003, Ghent. cs.SE/030902

Towards Enhanced Usability of IT Security Mechanisms - How to Design Usable IT Security Mechanisms Using the Example of Email Encryption

Nowadays, advanced security mechanisms exist to protect data, systems, and networks. Most of these mechanisms are effective, and security experts can handle them to achieve a sufficient level of security for any given system. However, most of these systems have not been designed with focus on good usability for the average end user. Today, the average end user often struggles with understanding and using security mecha-nisms. Other security mechanisms are simply annoying for end users. As the overall security of any system is only as strong as the weakest link in this system, bad usability of IT security mechanisms may result in operating errors, resulting in inse-cure systems. Buying decisions of end users may be affected by the usability of security mechanisms. Hence, software provid-ers may decide to better have no security mechanism then one with a bad usability. Usability of IT security mechanisms is one of the most underestimated properties of applications and sys-tems. Even IT security itself is often only an afterthought. Hence, usability of security mechanisms is often the after-thought of an afterthought. This paper presents some guide-lines that should help software developers to improve end user usability of security-related mechanisms, and analyzes com-mon applications based on these guidelines. Based on these guidelines, the usability of email encryption is analyzed and an email encryption solution with increased usability is presented. The approach is based on an automated key and trust man-agement. The compliance of the proposed email encryption solution with the presented guidelines for usable security mechanisms is evaluated

Efficient Memory-Protected Integration of Add-On Software Subsystems in Small Embedded Automotive Applications

Current innovations in the automotive industry evolve mainly in the electronics and software domain. This leads to an increasing integration of additional software subsystems into already existing electronic control units (ECUs) to cope with the raised amount and complexity of present ECUs in modern high-end vehicles. This paper discusses different approaches which are required to integrate such add-on software subsystems in an isolated memory domain, and considers particularly the special needs of small embedded systems—including the limited hardware support. Special focus is brought to the efficient detection of malicious memory accesses, as well as the benefits of a thereupon possible and adaptable failure-handling strategy. All investigations are based on a developed memory-protection framework which has been tailored to the special needs of a sample vehicle dynamics control system. Its usage allows the combination of. integrating additional subsystems without reducing the main application’s availability

Tracking Chart 2003 Riddell, China 230015112B

This document is part of a digital collection provided by the Martin P. Catherwood Library, ILR School, Cornell University, pertaining to the effects of globalization on the workplace worldwide. Special emphasis is placed on labor rights, working conditions, labor market changes, and union organizing.FLA_2003_Riddell_TC_China_230015112B.pdf: 7 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020