Mitigating humanitarian crises during non-international armed conflicts:the role of human rights and ceasefire agreements

Situations of humanitarian crisis are often caused by armed conflicts. Given the prevalence of non-international armed conflicts today, ways of ameliorating these situations are at the forefront of concerns. The international humanitarian law rules governing non-international armed conflict remain much less developed than those for international armed conflicts. This is exacerbated by the lack of direct human rights obligations for non-state armed groups, which makes governing the behaviour of non-state parties to non-international armed conflicts (non-state armed groups) even more challenging. Although several initiatives have been taken to encourage non-state actors to mitigate situations of humanitarian crisis, the role of human rights law is in need of further clarification. The paper aims to assess what role human rights may have in improving humanitarian crises, suggesting one specific way: The paper will first discuss the international laws applicable to situations of non-international armed conflict, before critically analysing some of the initiatives that have already been taken to govern the behaviour of non-state armed groups. Part 3 will assess the possibility of using cease-fire agreements to impose specific human rights obligations on all parties to a non-international armed conflict. Finally, a conclusion will be drawn in Part 4 as to the role that human rights and ceasefire agreements could have during humanitarian crises

The spatial heterogeneity of factors of feminicide: The case of Antioquia-Colombia

In Latin America, homicide is a leading cause of death among women. The aim of this paper is to examine the spatial heterogeneity of factors influencing feminicide in Antioquia, Colombia. This article adds the impact of drug trafficking location on feminicide to the existing research. Classic models assume that the parameters of these factors are spatially distributed in a constant manner. However, this assumption has been frequently challenged due to the systematic differences of feminicide occurring within different geographical units, giving rise to the presence of spatial heterogeneity. In this article, geographically weighted Poisson regression (GWPR) is used to explore the spatial heterogeneity in these data relationships. Feminicide in the Department of Antioquia, Colombia, is studied using a range of classic explanatory factors. The results show that, in addition to the classic factors, coca-producing areas in Antioquia are directly related to number of feminicides. The findings also show that relationships in feminicide data are better presented by GWPR than by the classic model. © 2018 Elsevier Lt