A global battlefield?: Drones and the geographical scope of armed conflict

The ever-increasing use of drones in the pursuit of the 'war on terror' has given rise to concerns over the emergence of a global battlefield whereby the entire planet is subject to the application of the laws of armed conflict. These concerns stem from drone strikes frequently occurring outside the 'active battlefields' of Afghanistan and into the border regions of Pakistan and expanding further afield into Yemen and Somalia. In response to emerging practice, a significant body of academic literature has emerged on the legal classification of transnational armed violence. Less attention however, has been given to the geographical scope of the concept of armed conflict itself. This article provides a detailed analysis of the geographical scope of non-international armed conflict under international humanitarian law, and in the context of drone strikes. In particular, it focuses upon the legal implications of the geographical disjunction between the location of drone strikes and primary battlefields from the point-of-view of the application of international humanitarian law

Selective Conscientious Objection in International Law: Refusing to Participate in a Specific Armed Conflict

peer-reviewe

Amicus Curiae Brief, Georgia v. Russia (II), 38263/08

Amicus Curiae Brief submitted to the European Court of Human Rights by Professor Francoise Hampson and Professor Noam Lubell of the Human Rights Centre, University of Esse

Amicus Curiae Brief, Hassan v. United Kingdom, 29750/09

Amicus Curiae Brief submitted to the European Court of Human Rights by Professor Francoise Hampson and Professor Noam Lubell of the Human Rights Centre, University of Esse

Medical Investigation and Documentation of Torture: A Handbook for Health Professionals

This Handbook is primarily aimed at raising awareness of relevant medical ethical, legal and professional standards of the many health professionals who would wish to do the most conscientious job, with a view to helping victims of torture and contributing to efforts to eliminate the practice. The key task is to establish the most scientifically valid documentation concerning possible torture of individuals, consistent with the often difficult conditions under which the work sometimes has to be undertaken. It is inspired by The Istanbul Protocol, approved by United Nations bodies, which lays down the best professional standards for physicians working in the field. Yet it recognises that not all health professionals called on to do the work will have extensive experience in this field and it presents the material in a way that aims to be accessible to all these professionals. Guidance is given in the general skills of interviewing, as well as the medical examination and documentation. In addition to the relevant ethical and legal principles, the Handbook also points to sources of advice for those who wish to further their knowledge or gain support and advice on particular situations

Policy Coordination in an Ecology of Water Management Games

Policy outcomes in all but the simplest policy systems emerge from a complex of ecology of games featuring multiple actors, policy institutions, and issues, and not just single policies operating in isolation. This paper updates Long\u27s (1958) ecology of games framework with Scharpf\u27s (1997) actor-centered institutionalism to analyze the coordinating roles of actors and institutions on the context of the ecology of water management games in the San Francisco Bay. Actors participating in multiple institutions are analyzed using exponential random graph models for bipartite networks representing different assumptions about policy behavior, including geographic constraints. We find that policy coordination is facilitated mostly by Federal and state agencies, and collaborative institutions that span across geographic boundaries. Network configurations associated with closure show the most significant departures from the predicted model values, consistent with the Berardo and Scholz (2010) risk hypothesis that closure is important for solving cooperation problems

Testing Policy Theory with Statistical Models of Networks

Abstract This paper presents a conceptual framework for clarifying the network hypotheses embedded in policy theories and how they relate to macro-level political outcomes and micro-level political behavior. We then describe the role of statistical models of networks for testing these hypotheses, including the problem of operationalizing theoretical concepts with the parameters of statistical models. Examples from existing policy research are provided and potential extensions are discussed. This paper is forthcoming as the introduction to a special issue of the Policy Studies Journal on statistical models of policy networks

Core-periphery or decentralized? Topological shifts of specialized information on Twitter

In this paper we investigate shifts in Twitter network topology resulting from the type of information being shared. We identified communities matching areas of agricultural expertise and measured the core-periphery centralization of network formations resulting from users sharing generic versus specialized information. We found that centralization increases when specialized information is shared and that the network adopts decentralized formations as conversations become more generic. The results are consistent with classical diffusion models positing that specialized information comes with greater centralization, but they also show that users favor decentralized formations, which can foster community cohesion, when spreading specialized information is secondary