The Human Rights Obligations of UN Peacekeepers

Abstract Over 100,000 UN peacekeeping personnel are deployed on missions with authority from the Security Council, under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, to use force to protect civilians. Nevertheless, they have repeatedly failed to do so and yet there does not appear to be a single case where the UN has taken disciplinary action against senior staff for failing to act in line with a mission mandate in this regard. This article argues that the ´positive´ and ´negative´ obligations of international human rights law, protecting the right to life and physical integrity, provide the most appropriate guidance to the tactical use of force by UN peacekeeping soldiers. Mechanisms also need to be created to improve the accountability of UN missions to those that they are responsible for protecting.Keywords International law, human rights, Protection of Civilian

What Do We Mean by Protection?

Article published in the Michigan State International Law Review

Exploring Affordability in the Irish Housing Market. ESRI WP593, June 2018

This paper examines housing affordability in Ireland by looking at the distribution of housing costs across households. Using microdata from the SILC survey over the period 2005-2015, the contribution of this paper is threefold. First, the paper considers the trends in the cost of housing in Ireland across groups of households split by age, region, household structure, and their position in the income distribution. Second, we apply selected international housing affordability definitions and explore the share, and composition, of households in Ireland that would be captured by these definitions. We do not find evidence of universal affordability difficulties in the Irish market. However, certain groups do face acute affordability challenges. Third, working towards a definition of housing cost affordability for use in Irish policy discussions, we provide some guidance as to what such a definition could look like

Quarterly Economic Commentary, Summer 2017.

2017 has seen certain countervailing trends emerge as to the overall performance of the Irish economy. On the positive side, labour market data illustrate that the pace of employment creation and subsequent reduction in unemployment increased in the present year. In the previous Commentary, we had believed the Irish economy would experience an unemployment rate of just under 5.5 per cent by the end of 2018, we now believe this will happen earlier in that year. While most sectors of the economy are experiencing employment growth, the construction sector, along with the information and communications sector, registers the largest recent increase

Investigation of stress and burnout in Irish second-level teachers: A mixed-methods approach.

This study explores the experiences of stress and burnout in Irish second level teachers and examines the contribution of a number of individual, environmental and health factors in burnout development. As no such study has previously been carried out with this sample, a mixed-methods approach was adopted in order to comprehensively investigate the subject matter. Teaching has consistently been identified as a particularly stressful occupation and research investigating its development is of great importance in developing measures to address the problem. The first phase of study involved the use of focus groups conducted with a total of 20 second-level teachers from 11 different schools in the greater Cork city area. Findings suggest that teachers experience a variety of stressors – in class, in the staff room and outside of school. The second phase of study employed a survey to examine the factors associated with burnout. Analysis of 192 responses suggested that burnout results from a combination of demographic, personality, environmental and coping factors. Burnout was also found to be associated with a number of physical symptoms, particularly trouble sleeping and fatigue. Findings suggest that interventions designed to reduce burnout must reflect the complexity of the problem and its development. Based on the research findings, interventions that combine individual and organisational approaches should provide the optimal chance of effectively tackling burnout

Outro sistema é possível: a reforma do judiciário no Brasil

Divulgação dos SUMÁRIOS das obras recentemente incorporadas ao acervo da Biblioteca Ministro Oscar Saraiva do STJ. Em respeito à Lei de Direitos Autorais, não disponibilizamos a obra na íntegra.Localização na estante: 342.56(81) O94sCoordenado por: Conor Foley

The protection of civilians by UN peacekeeping missions under international law

This thesis considers the nature and extent of the United Nations’ obligations to protect the lives and physical integrity of civilians. Over 100,000 UN peacekeeping personnel are currently deployed on missions with authority from the Security Council to protect civilians at risk . Chapter VII of the UN Charter provides a UN mission with the jus ad bellum authority to use force, but is silent on the rules that would govern the resulting actions, which must either be found in the jus in bello provisions of international humanitarian law (IHL) or the regulations on the use of force contained in international human rights law. Most existing UN guidance stresses the applicability of IHL . This thesis argues that the positive and negative obligations of international human rights law will usually be more appropriate. Chapter VII contains no references to international human rights law and nor was this initially considered a concern of the Security Council. This has changed considerably in recent decades. It is increasingly accepted that humanitarian crises can justify the Security Council’s use of its Chapter VII powers, although this has been accompanied by growing concern about the lack of accountability with which they are sometimes used. The UN Charter specifies that its provisions take precedence over all other international treaties. There is no mechanism to judicially review the Security Council’s actions and the legal immunities that cover UN missions, makes it difficult to scrutinise their records. UN missions mandated to protect civilians have repeatedly failed to do so. Yet there does not appear to be a single case where the UN has taken disciplinary action against senior staff for failing to protect civilians in line with a mission mandate. Mechanisms need to be created to improve the accountability of UN missions to those that they are responsible for protecting

Patient experience of different regional models of urgent and emergency care: a cross-sectional survey study

Objectives: To compare user experiences of 8 regional urgent and emergency care systems in the Republic of Ireland, and explore potential avenues for improvement. Design: A cross-sectional survey. Setting: Several distinct models of urgent and emergency care operate in Ireland, as system reconfiguration has been implemented in some regions but not others. The Urgent Care System Questionnaire was used to explore service users' experiences with urgent and emergency care. Linear regression and logistic regression were used to detect regional variation in each of the 3 domains and overall ratings of care. Participants: A nationally representative sample (N=8002) of the general population was contacted by telephone, yielding 1205 participants who self-identified as having used urgent and emergency care services in the previous 3?months. Main outcome measures Patient experience was assessed across 3 domains: entry into the system, progress through the system and patient convenience of the system. Participants were also asked to provide an overall rating of the care they received. Results: Service users in Dublin North East gave lower ratings on the entry into the system scale than those in Dublin South (adjusted mean difference=?0.18; 95% CI ?0.35 to ?0.10; p=0.038). For overall ratings of care, service users in the Mid-West were less likely than those in Dublin North East to give an excellent rating (adjusted OR 0.57; 95% CI 0.35 to 0.92; p=0.022). Survey items relating to communication, and consideration of patients' needs were comparatively poorly rated. The use of public emergency departments and out-of-hours general practice care was associated with poorer patient experiences. Conclusions: No consistent relationship was found between the type of urgent and emergency care model in different regions and patient experience. Scale-level data may not offer a useful metric for exploring the impact of system-level service change

Understanding perspectives on major system change: A comparative case study of public engagement and the implementation of urgent and emergency care system reconfiguration.

OBJECTIVES: Major changes have been made to how emergency care services are configured in several regions in the Republic of Ireland. This study investigated the hypothesis that engagement activities undertaken prior to these changes influenced stakeholder perspectives on the proposed changes and impacted on the success of implementation. METHODS: A comparative case-study approach was used to explore the changes in three regions. These regions were chosen for the case study as the nature of the proposals to reconfigure care provision were broadly similar but implementation outcomes varied considerably. Documentary analysis of reconfiguration planning reports was used to identify planned public engagement activities. Semi-structured interviews with 74 purposively-sampled stakeholders explored their perspectives on reconfiguration, engagement activities and public responses to reconfiguration. Framework analysis was used, integrating inductive and deductive approaches. RESULTS: Approaches to public engagement and success of implementation differed considerably across the three cases. Regions that presented the public with the reconfiguration plan alone reported greater public opposition and difficulty in implementing changes. Engagement activities that included a range of stakeholders and continued throughout the reconfiguration process appeared to largely address public concerns, contributing to smoother implementation. CONCLUSIONS: The presentation of reconfiguration reports alone is not enough to convince communities of the case for change. Genuine, ongoing and inclusive engagement offers the best opportunity to address community concerns about reconfiguration

Experiência europeia na proteção de civis

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio