Terrorismo y derechos humanos en la Unión Europea y en el Consejo de Europa: ¿marcos de referencia mundial?

Ponencia recogida en las actas de los Cursos de Derecho Internacional y Relaciones Internacionales de Vitoria-Gasteiz organizados por la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad del País Vasco.El objetivo de este trabajo es abordar el vínculo existente entre terrorismo y derechos humanos como términos constitutivos de un mismo binomio, o como par de conceptos jurídicos equilibrados. Para ello resulta necesario analizar, aunque sea en el marco delimitado por el título de esta contribución, es decir en el Consejo de Europa y en la Unión Europea (UE), dos cuestiones recurrentes de naturaleza bien distinta. La primera tiene que ver con las dificultades conceptuales, de definición y de uso, que plantean las nociones de terrorismo y derechos humanos, insistiendo en particular en la aportación que en este sentido ofrece el Consejo de Europa y en los desarrollos normativos e institucionales acontecidos en la UE. La segunda cuestión se refiere a las consecuencias del desplazamiento del eje conceptual del binomio terrorismo-derechos humanos desde la legalidad a la legitimidad internacional, profundizando en la reacción que este giro ha provocado en la Asamblea Parlamentaria y el Tribuna Europeo de Derechos Humanos, y en la respuesta, entre la aquiescencia y la contestación, articulada por la UE. En suma, se trataría de discernir si tanto el Consejo de Europa como la UE ofrecen marcos útiles de referencia para que, en la búsqueda del equilibrio en el binomio terrorismo-derechos humanos, Europa deje de ser parte del problema y devenga, por fin, en parte de la solución.The aim of this paper is to address the linkage between terrorism and human rights as constituent elements of the same binomial, or as a couple of legal concepts. This requires to analysis, albeit within the framework defined by the title of this contribution, i.e the Council of Europe and the European Union (EU), two issues with a quite different nature. The first has to do with the difficulties on the definition and use of the notions of terrorism and human rights, with particular emphasis on the contribution that on this regard offers the Council of Europe and the institutional and legal changes developed in the EU. The second question concerns the consequences of the displacement of the binomial terrorism-human rights since the legality towards the international legitimacy, the reaction this shift has resulted in the Parliamentary Assembly and the European Court of Human Rights, and the answer given by the EU. In short, the final purpose would be to think about whether both the Council of Europe and the EU offer useful frameworks to counterbalance, in a proper and definitive way, terrorism and human rights

The entangling side of the Unruh-Hawking effect

We show that the Unruh effect can create net quantum entanglement between inertial and accelerated observers depending on the choice of the inertial state. This striking result banishes the extended belief that the Unruh effect can only destroy entanglement and furthermore provides a new and unexpected source for finding experimental evidence of the Unruh and Hawking effects.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Added Journal referenc

Health status and retirement decisions for older European couples

In this paper we use data the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) to describe and analyse the dynamics of joint labour force behaviour of older couples for the EU12 countries. We focus on three main issues: the relevance of joint retirement across EU12 countries, the existence of complementarities in leisure and/or assortative matting and the effects of health variables. Concerning the evidence, we first find that a working spouse is more likely to retire the more recently the other spouse has retired; this effect is stronger if the wife is the working spouse. Second, there is evidence of assortative mating and/or complementarities in leisure; the effects of all relevant factors on the retirement decision of one spouse depend strongly on whether the other one is working, unemployed, or retired. Third, besides the standard evidence that poor health increases the retirement probability, we find that the husband's health affects the couple's retirement decisions much more strongly than the wife's health does. Additional asymmetric effects are detected with respect to income related variables.joint retirement decisions ; labour force transitions ; health variables ; asymmetric effects

Health status and retirement decisison for older european couples.

In this paper we use data the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) to describe and analyse the dynamics of joint labour force behaviour of older couples for the EUI2 countries. We focus on three main issues: the relanvance of joint retirement across EUI2 countries, the existence of complementarities in leisure and/or assortative matting and the effects of health variables. Concerning the evidence, we first find that a working spouse is more likely to retire the more recently the other spouse has retired; this effect is stronger if the wife is the working spouse. Second, there is evidence of assortative mating and/or complementarities in leisure; the effects of all relevant factors on the retirement decision of one spouse depend strongly on whether the other one is working, unemployed, or retired. Third, besides the standard evidence that poor health increases the retirement probabiliby, we find that the husband's health affects the couple's retirement decisions much more strongly than the wife's health does. Additional asymmetric effects are detected with respect to income related variables.Joint retirement decisions; Labour force transitions; Health variables; Asymmetric effects;

An Empirical Analysis of the Demand for Physician Services Across the European Union

This paper presents parameter estimates for physician services equations using the European Community Household Panel for 12 countries covering the period 1994-1996. The focus is on two specific points: i) the identification of behavioural similarities and differences in the demand for health across the countries; ii) the variability of the demand for health captured through a joint model for all the countries. We find that there are significant differences across countries, although there are also similarities in the effect of variables such as the health stock, labour situation or family structure. An important fraction of the variability of the demand of health services across countries could be explained from differences in age, income, and the role of General Practitioners (GP) as a gatekeepers in the public health system. We also find some evidence of induced demand effects in both the decision to visit and the number of visits to specialists.count data; demand; physician services; latent class model; two-part model

Global controllability tests for geometric hybrid control systems

Hybrid systems are characterized by having an interaction between continuous dynamics and discrete events. The contribution of this paper is to provide hybrid systems with a novel geometric formulation so that controls can be added. Using this framework we describe some new global controllability tests for hybrid control systems exploiting the geometry and the topology of the set of jump points, where the instantaneous change of dynamics take place. Controllability is understood as the existence of a feasible trajectory for the system joining any two given points. As a result we describe examples where none of the continuous control systems are controllable, but the associated hybrid system is controllable because of the characteristics of the jump set.Comment: 27 pages, 5 figure

Mechanical systems subjected to generalized nonholonomic constraints

We study mechanical systems subject to constraint functions that can be dependent at some points and independent at the rest. Such systems are modelled by means of generalized codistributions. We discuss how the constraint force can transmit an impulse to the motion at the points of dependence and derive an explicit formula to obtain the ``post-impact'' momentum in terms of the ``pre-impact'' momentum.Comment: 24 pages, no figure

Enhanced people detection combining appearance and motion information

This paper is a postprint of a paper submitted to and accepted for publication in Electronics Letters and is subject to Institution of Engineering and Technology Copyright. The copy of record is available at IET Digital LibraryThe combination of two of the most recent people detectors from the state of the art is proposed. It is already known that the combination of independent information sources is useful for any detection task. In relation with people detection, there are two main discriminative information sources that characterize a person: appearance and motion. We propose the combination of two recent approaches based on both information sources. Experimental results over an extensive dataset show that the proposed combination significantly improves the results.This work was partially supported by the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (“FPI-UAM”) and by the Spanish Goverment (“TEC2011-25995 EventVideo”)

Incorporating Wheelchair Users in People Detection

A wheelchair users detector is presented to extend people detection, providing a more general solution to detect people in environments such as houses adapted for independent and assisted living, hospitals, healthcare centers and senior residences. A wheelchair user model is incorporated in a detector whose detections are afterwards combined with the ones obtained using traditional people detectors (we define these as standing people detectors). We have trained a model for classical (DPM) and for modern (Faster-RCNN) detection algorithms, to compare their performance. Besides the extensibility proposed with respect to people detection, a dataset of video sequences has been recorded in a real in-door senior residence environment containing wheelchairs users and standing people and it has been released together with the associated groundtruthThis work has been partially supported by the Spanish government under the project TEC2014-53176-R (HAVideo) and by the Spanish Government FPU grant programme (Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte

People detection in surveillance: Classification and evaluation

This paper is a postprint of a paper submitted to and accepted for publication in IET Computer Vision and is subject to Institution of Engineering and Technology Copyright. The copy of record is available at IET Digital Library and at IEEE Xplore.Nowadays, people detection in video surveillance environments is a task that has been generating great interest. There are many approaches trying to solve the problem either in controlled scenarios or in very specific surveillance applications. The main objective of this study is to give a comprehensive and extensive evaluation of the state of the art of people detection regardless of the final surveillance application. For this reason, first, the different processing tasks involved in the automatic people detection in video sequences have been defined, then a proper classification of the state of the art of people detection has been made according to the two most critical tasks, object detection and person model, that are needed in every detection approach. Finally, experiments have been performed on an extensive dataset with different approaches that completely cover the proposed classification and support the conclusions drawn from the state of the art.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Government (TEC2011-25995 EventVideo)