War Crimes and the Protection of Peacekeeping Forces

Tonight, I want to briefly discuss three aspects of the tribunal: structure, jurisdiction and U.S. participation in its creation. Many of you are probably aware that the tribunal consists of three chambers. The judicial chamber is comprised of five appellate judges and two trial panels of three judges each. The United States has a judge - Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald - who, before she went to the Hague was a federal district court judge and a professor at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law in Houston. I had an opportunity to meet her and brief her on some tribunal issues we in the U.S. government were working on

Short v. The Kingdom of The Netherlands: Is it Time to Renegotiate the NATO Status of Forces Agreement?

Major Lepper examines an apparent irreconcilability between the NATO Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) as reflected in the recent Dutch High Court decision of Short v. The Kingdom of the Netherlands. Staff Sergeant Short, a member of the United States Air Force, was charged with the murder of his wife. Under the SOFA, the Netherlands was obligated to surrender Short to the United States. It refused, basing its actions on its adherence to the ECHR and its concerns about the possible implementation of the death penalty in the United States. The ECHR prohibits the extradition of anyone facing inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Although the original ECHR did not prohibit capital punishment, a later amendment to the ECHR, the Sixth Protocol, does prohibit capital punishment. The Dutch High Court relied heavily on the European Court on Human Rights interpretation of the ECHR in the Soering case as the basis for its decision. The Dutch High Court agreed that the NATO SOFA required surrendering SSgt Short to the United States, but determined that the perceived conflict between the SOFA and the ECHR must be resolved by applying the ECHR. The author identifies flaws in the High Court\u27s finding that the ECHR afforded protection for SSgt Short, a finding that created the conflict between the SOFA obligation to surrender the prisoner and the ECHR mandate to shield him from capital punishment. Citing European Court precedent and the Vienna Convention\u27s conflicting treating rules, the author finds that the SOFA and the ECHR can be read consistently and suggests that renegotiation of the SOFA is neither necessary nor inevitable. The author next evaluates the Dutch position in Short. Because that position is grounded in the emerging jurisprudence of human rights, the author reviews Dutch human rights law and policy and the applicable portions of the ECHR. The assertion that international human rights laws supersede other international laws is analyzed in the context of international law\u27s practice of ranking certain norms as fundamental. Finding that capital punishment does not violate a peremptory norm, the author then analyzes the claim that it violates a fundamental right. If the right not to face capital punishment is indeed fundamental, the issue becomes whether the NATO SOFA or a customary regional norm prevails. The author considers arguments supporting each position and the suggestion that international treaty law justifies a revision of the NATO SOFA. Major Lepper, however, concludes that similar cases should be decided on a case-by-case basis so that both countries\u27 policies can be maintained: strong alliance, military disciplinary control, and human rights. This case-by-case basis must include a mutual willingness to reach a compromise such as the one agreed to in Short: the United States agreed to forego the option of capital punishment in order to retain disciplinary control over its military personnel

Predicting the large-scale consequences of offshore wind turbine array development on a North Sea ecosystem

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via the DOI in this record.Three models were applied to obtaina first assessment of some of the potential impacts of large-scale operational wind turbine arrays on the marine ecosystem in a well-mixed area in a shelf sea: a biogeochemical model,a wave propagation model and an a coustic energy flux model.The results of the models are discussed separately and together to elucidate the combined effects. Overall,all three models suggested relatively weak environmental changes for the mechanisms included in this study, however these are only a subset of all the potential impacts,and a number of assumptions had to be made. Further work is required to address these assumptions and additional mechanisms. All three models suggested most of the changes with in the wind turbine array,and small changes up to several tens of km outside the array. Within the array, the acoustic model indicated the most concentrated, spatially repetitive changes to the environment,followed by the SWAN wave model,and the biogeochemical model being the most diffuse. Because of the different spatial scales of the response of the three models,the combined results suggested a spectrum of combinations of environmental changes with in the wind turbine array that marine organism smight respond to. The SWAN wave model and the acoustic model suggested a reduction in changes with increasing distance between turbines. The SWAN wave model suggested that the biogeochemical model, because of the in ability of its simple wave model to simulate wave propagation,over-estimated the biogeochemical changes by a factor of 2 or more. The biogeochemical model suggested that the benthic system was more sensitive to the environmental changes than the pelagic system. © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.The work was carried out as part of the EBAO project (Optimising Array Form for Energy Extraction and Environmental Benefit, No. NE/J004227/1), and was jointly funded by NERC and Defra (Cefas contract C5325). Sonja van Leeuwen constructed the daily riverine loads database from which the runoff data were used in the GETM-ERSEM model. French water quality data were supplied by the Agence de l’eau Loire-Bretagne, Agence de l’eau Seine-Normandie and IFREMER. UK water quality data were processed from raw data provided by the Environment Agency, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and the National River Flow Archive. The German river loads are based on data from the ARGE Elbe, the Niedersächsisches Landesamt für Ökologie and the Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde. The river load data for the Netherlands were supplied by the DONAR database. The authors gratefully acknowledge the ECMWF (European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting) for allowing the use of the ERA-40 and Operational Hindcast data used as atmospheric forcing for the GETM-ERSEM model

Using water-landing, fixed-wing UAVs and computer vision to assess seabird nutrient subsidy effects on sharks and rays

Bird colonies on islands sustain elevated productivity and biomass on adjacent reefs, through nutrient subsidies. However, the implications of this localized enhancement on higher and often more mobile trophic levels (such as sharks and rays) are unclear, as spatial trends in mobile fauna are often poorly captured by traditional underwater visual surveys. Here, we explore whether the presence of seabird colonies is associated with enhanced abundances of sharks and rays on adjacent coral reefs. We used a novel long-range water-landing fixed-wing unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) to survey the distribution and density of sharks, rays and any additional megafauna, on and around tropical coral islands (n = 14) in the Chagos Archipelago Marine Protected Area. We developed a computer-vision algorithm to distinguish greenery (trees and shrubs), sand and sea glitter from visible ocean to yield accurate marine megafauna density estimation. We detected elevated seabird densities over rat-free islands, with the commonest species, sooty tern, reaching densities of 932 ± 199 per km−2 while none were observed over former coconut plantation islands. Elasmobranch density around rat-free islands with seabird colonies was 6.7 times higher than around islands without seabird colonies (1.3 ± 0.63 vs. 0.2 ± SE 0.1 per km2). Our results are evidence that shark and ray distribution is sensitive to natural and localized nutrient subsidies. Correcting for non-sampled regions of images increased estimated elasmobranch density by 14%, and our openly accessible computer vision algorithm makes this correction easy to implement to generate shark and ray and other wildlife densities from any aerial imagery. The water-landing fixed-wing long-range UAV technology used in this study may provide cost effective monitoring opportunities in remote ocean locations

Critical thinking in community nursing: Is this the 7th C?

Compassion in practice and the drive to deliver the 6Cs—care, compassion, competence, communication, courage, and commitment—has been embraced within community nursing practice since its launch in 2012 (Commissioning Board Chief Nursing Officer and Department of Health (DH) Chief Nursing Adviser, 2012). Following the shortcomings in care discovered at the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust and the findings of inquiries (e.g. Francis, 2013; Keogh, 2013), nursing as a profession has been under pressure to demonstrate to the public that nurses do care. This need comes under increasing scrutiny when working in the homes of patients, who rightly require demonstration of accountability of care. Effective therapeutic relationships with patients in the community are built on trust, and patients should feel confident that clinical care is appropriate and evidence based (Griffith, 2015). A strong focus upon the core themes of the 6Cs is both integral to and apparent in daily practice within the community setting. The terminology of the 6Cs is a frequent feature of discussions, supervision, teaching, and record keeping. However, is it possible that in this drive to improve the public image of nursing through the focus of care and compassion, the concept of critical thinking is considered secondary? Should critical thinking in community nursing practice be awarded a ‘C’ in its own right