Transitional Justice and Civil War: Exploring New Pathways, Challenging Old Guideposts

Transitional justice has shifted from its primary use in addressing past atrocities of authoritarian regimes to those acts of violence committed during civil wars. Yet the use of transitional justice mechanisms in this new context is not well understood. Drawing from the existing transitional justice literature, this article generates a set of testable hypotheses to explore which factors influence the use of particular mechanisms during and after conflict. It then tests those hypotheses in 151 cases of civil war by using a cross-national data base of all countries in the world and their adoption of transitional justice </p

May Measurement Month 2018: a pragmatic global screening campaign to raise awareness of blood pressure by the International Society of Hypertension

Aims Raised blood pressure (BP) is the biggest contributor to mortality and disease burden worldwide and fewer than half of those with hypertension are aware of it. May Measurement Month (MMM) is a global campaign set up in 2017, to raise awareness of high BP and as a pragmatic solution to a lack of formal screening worldwide. The 2018 campaign was expanded, aiming to include more participants and countries. Methods and results Eighty-nine countries participated in MMM 2018. Volunteers (≥18 years) were recruited through opportunistic sampling at a variety of screening sites. Each participant had three BP measurements and completed a questionnaire on demographic, lifestyle, and environmental factors. Hypertension was defined as a systolic BP ≥140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥90 mmHg, or taking antihypertensive medication. In total, 74.9% of screenees provided three BP readings. Multiple imputation using chained equations was used to impute missing readings. 1 504 963 individuals (mean age 45.3 years; 52.4% female) were screened. After multiple imputation, 502 079 (33.4%) individuals had hypertension, of whom 59.5% were aware of their diagnosis and 55.3% were taking antihypertensive medication. Of those on medication, 60.0% were controlled and of all hypertensives, 33.2% were controlled. We detected 224 285 individuals with untreated hypertension and 111 214 individuals with inadequately treated (systolic BP ≥ 140 mmHg or diastolic BP ≥ 90 mmHg) hypertension. Conclusion May Measurement Month expanded significantly compared with 2017, including more participants in more countries. The campaign identified over 335 000 adults with untreated or inadequately treated hypertension. In the absence of systematic screening programmes, MMM was effective at raising awareness at least among these individuals at risk

“They have good devices”: Trust, Mining, and the Microsociology of Environmental Decision-making

Since the 1990s, transnational mining firms have increasingly sought new deposits in the developing world. This shift in global patterns of mineral activity has led to contestation by mining host community residents and their activist allies. A swell of recent literature in the social sciences explores this phenomenon, largely accepting conventional wisdom about the causal forces behind individuals\u27 choices to contest mining. This article examines individual decision-making around mineral conflicts in an effort to bring the microsocial into focus. Trust is an essential and largely ignored dimension of mining conflicts. We argue that two types of trust—institutional and relational trust—help explain how individuals form preferences about mining in their territory. We further argue that individuals\u27 sense of self-efficacy underlies their decisions about whom to trust or distrust. We also seek to deepen the social theorization of trust by challenging the common binary of affective and cognitive trust. To make this argument we draw from a mixed-methods study of responses to gold mining in Guatemala

Empresas, derechos humanos y desarrollo sostenible

Corporate public affairs have transformed over the past two decades. This is no more apparent than around the issue of business and human rights. Companies today, especially trans- or multi-national corporations, are faced with the challenge of addressing a variety of stakeholder concerns and must adopt new, innovative, and at times collaborative public affairs strategies to prepare for the external, non-market environment. This chapter explores how the agenda of business and human rights has developed, how companies typically respond, and concludes by outlining how this issue has changed corporate public affairs. Why human rights? The human rights agenda has traditionally focused on states. Non-democratic states were the primary perpetrators of gross human rights violations. After the so-called ‘third wave’ of democracy (Huntington, 1991), beginning in the 1970s, in which democratic transitions spread across Latin America, Asia and the former Soviet Union, states and international regimes embraced new norms to ensure such widespread human rights abuses would not occur again. Business, however, is often implicated in human rights violations, too. In Guatemala, in 2005, Monterrico Metals allowed public and private security forces to use their facilities to torture local community members protesting company operations (Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, Monterrico Metals Lawsuit, 2015)

Allegations of Corporate Human Rights Abuse in Latin America, 2000-2014: Insights from a New Dataset

This article presents a new dataset of allegations of corporate human rights abuse in Latin America from 2000-2014. The dataset responds to growing interest in the role of businesses in human rights violations, accountability processes for corporate abuses, and possible remedies for victims. It is the first dataset of its kind that offers a tool for analyzing five types of allegations of corporate human rights abuse (physical violence, development and poverty, health, environment, and labor) and judicial or non-judicial remedy mechanisms associated with each allegation. Initial analysis of the data shows results that defy assumptions in the existing literature regarding which sectors are most likely to be targeted in allegations of abuse, who makes claims against companies, and the outcomes of those claims for victims of abuse

Special Data Feature Transitional justice in the world, 1970-2007: Insights from a new dataset

Abstract This article presents a new dataset of transitional justice mechanisms utilized worldwide from . These data complement the growing body of quantitative and comparative analyses of transitional justice. This article summarizes three important contributions made by the dataset. First, it includes five transitional justice mechanisms (trials, truth commissions, amnesties, reparations, and lustration policies), allowing scholars to avoid many of the methodological errors committed by performing single-mechanism studies. Second, it provides an expanded sample, both temporally and geographically, to facilitate greater comparative and policy impact. Third, the dataset enables scholars to analyze transitional justice across a variety of political contexts, including democratic transitions and civil wars. These data illuminate a new set of general trends and patterns in the implementation of transitional justice worldwide. The findings show that countries adopt amnesties more often than other mechanisms. They predominantly grant them in the context of civil war and to opponents of the state, rather than state agents. Courts rarely prosecute those currently in power for human rights violations. In civil war settings, rebels, rather than state actors, face trials. In post-authoritarian settings, courts try former authoritarian actors, but do not address crimes committed by the opposition to authoritarian rule. The dataset also reveals regional patterns of mechanism usage. Trials, lustration policies, and reparations occur most often in Europe. Non-European countries more frequently adopt truth commissions and amnesties than do their European counterparts, with a particularly high number of amnesties granted in Latin America