The Politics of Indigenous Participation Through “Free Prior Informed Consent”: Reflections from the Bolivian Case

This article explores the challenges of ethnic-based participation and its potential for creating inclusive and effective forms of decision-making for marginalized social groups. Empirically, it examines a recent attempt to establish more participative forms of resource and development governance for indigenous communities in Bolivia through Free Prior and Informed Consent/Consultation (FPIC). Rooted in international human rights law, FPIC aims at achieving more effective bottom-up participation by establishing an obligation to consult – or obtain the consent of – indigenous peoples before large development projects and legal reforms that would affect them can proceed. Interest in FPIC initiatives has been growing for reasons that range from efforts to build more equitable management of natural resources to attempts to introduce more effective local-scale practices of participation and active citizenship. We argue that the idea of prior consultation and FPIC itself are not neutral instruments; they will not automatically lead to better or more democratic governance and a more equal society. The way in which FPIC is currently being implemented and framed in Bolivia is in tension with broader ideas of representation and legitimacy, inclusiveness, and management of public and common goods because there is no real clarity as to who is entitled to participation, why they do, and whether they are doing so as a corrective to exclusion, a promotion of citizenship, or as a mechanism for redistribution. As we show here, FPIC implementation can have unintended consequences and consultation can sometimes embed existing social, cultural, and economic tensions. The paper offers some broader reflections on participatory governance and collective rights especially in relation to the tensions between inclusive participation and exclusive rights or – put differently – the challenges for building cultures of participation and inclusion in complex and ethnic diverse democracies

Scalar field instabilities in charged BTZ black holes

We investigate the charged scalar field propagating in a (2+1) charged BTZ black hole. The conditions for stability are studied unveiling, for each black hole geometry, the existence of a critical scalar charge as of the evolution is unstable. The existence of growing profiles is substantiated by the deep in the effective potential that intensifies as the scalar charge increases. The phenomenum happens in every black hole geometry even for small geometry charge. In the small scalar charge regime, the field evolution is stable and in such we calculate the quasinormal modes.Comment: 3 figures, 5 panels, 15 page

Remarks on the misunderstood use of the term biodiversity

The term diversity is intended to denote species richness understood as the number of species and individuals; it was explicitly discussed at length by Hutchinson in 1959 and by many other scientists in the following decades. The term biodiversity, certainly derived from diversity, was born in the 1980s. The difference between the two terms is substantial, diversity is a part of the whole, as biodiversity is understood as diversity of organisms at the level of species, individuals, genes, interactions and ecological processes among them and at the level of ecosystems. Thus, it is correct to write ‘plant diversity’ or ‘animal diversity’, but not ‘plant biodiversity’ or ‘animal biodiversity’. Biodiversity is unique, it includes all living things, it is equal to a fundamental law of life, the maintenance of adequate levels of biodiversity is a necessity for the very life of our Planet. An illustration of biodiversity seen in the form of mosaic tesserae is tentatively presente

Ricardo Rojas y el factor estudiantil en la Fundación de la Universidad Nacional de Cuyo

Fil: Fontana de García, María B.

Deviant and Over-Compliance: The Domestic Politics of Child Labor in Bolivia and Argentina

This article explores the reception of human rights norms on child labor in Bolivia and Argentina, countries where governments and civil societies express support for human rights. However, national responses after ratification of International Labor Organization’s conventions diverge significantly. In Bolivia, domestic interpretations of human rights have prevailed over attachment to ILO conventions (“deviant compliance”), while in Argentina national policies exceed ILO recommendations (“over-compliance”). We use the evidence presented here to call for a more nuanced understanding of what compliance with human rights principles is understood to mean and to stress the importance of domestic interpretations of international norms