Restorative Justice and Gendered Violence? From Vaguely Hostile Skeptic to Cautious Convert: Why Feminists Should Critically Engage with Restorative Approaches to Law

Legalremedies for crimes ofgendered violence that are more effective, expansive, creative, victim-centred, and victim-sensitive are urgently needed. The author argues that restorative justice is one promising approach -which warrants critical engagement and, more importantly, requires input from feminists in their efforts to end violence against women. The paper concludes with some key principles and recommended directions for further engagement between feminists and proponets of restorative justice in the development of approaches to the harms of gendered violence

The Right to No: The Crime of Marital Rape, Women\u27s Human Rights, and International Law

More than half of the world’s countries do not explicitly criminalize sexual assault in marriage. While sexual assault in general is criminalized in these countries, sexual assault perpetrated by a spouse is entirely legal. The human rights violations inhere in acts of violence against women are now well recognized. Yet somehow marital rape is a particular form of gendered violence that has escaped both criminal law sanctions and human rights approbation in a great number of the world’s nations. This silence in the law creates legal impunity for men who sexually assault or rape the women who are their wives or intimate partners, thereby legitimizing this particular form of violence against women. This is a human rights problem that cries out for redress, both legally and socially. An examination of international law and human rights norms demonstrates that state failures to criminalize sexual assault in marriage breach the due diligence standard and fail to comply with international human rights norms. The fact that there remain significant gaps in laws around the world ensuring legal impunity for men who sexually violate their intimate partners, indicates the scale of the human rights law work still to be done in this area

The Right to No: The Crime of Marital Rape, Women\u27s Human Rights, and International Law

More than half of the world’s countries do not explicitly criminalize sexual assault in marriage. While sexual assault in general is criminalized in these countries, sexual assault perpetrated by a spouse is entirely legal. The human rights violations inhere in acts of violence against women are now well recognized. Yet somehow marital rape is a particular form of gendered violence that has escaped both criminal law sanctions and human rights approbation in a great number of the world’s nations. This silence in the law creates legal impunity for men who sexually assault or rape the women who are their wives or intimate partners, thereby legitimizing this particular form of violence against women. This is a human rights problem that cries out for redress, both legally and socially. An examination of international law and human rights norms demonstrates that state failures to criminalize sexual assault in marriage breach the due diligence standard and fail to comply with international human rights norms. The fact that there remain significant gaps in laws around the world ensuring legal impunity for men who sexually violate their intimate partners, indicates the scale of the human rights law work still to be done in this area

Ethnic Fragmentation, Conflict, Displaced Persons and Human Trafficking: An Empirical Analysis

Ethnic conflicts and their links to international human trafficking have recently received a surge in international attention. It appears that ethnic conflicts exacerbate the internal displacement of individuals from networks of family and community, and their access to economic and social safety nets. These same individuals are then vulnerable to being trafficked by the hopes of better economic prospects elsewhere. In this paper, we empirically examine this link between ethnic fragmentation, conflicts, internally displaced persons (IDPs), refugees and international trafficking, making use of a novel dataset of international trafficking. We conduct a direct estimation, which highlights the ultimate impact of ethnic fragmentation and conflict on international trafficking through internal and international displacements.ethnic fragmentation, conflict, displaced persons, human trafficking

Research my world: crowdfunding research pilot project evaluation

Report evaluating the pilot project Research My World: a collaboration between pozible.com and Deakin University to crowdfund Australian research<br /

MOLECULAR BASIS AND MODIFICATION OF A NEURAL CREST DEFICIT IN A DOWN SYNDROME MOUSE MODEL

poster abstractTrisomy 21 occurs in 1/700 live births and leads to phenotypes associat-ed with Down syndrome (DS), including craniofacial dysmorphology and a small mandible. Ts65Dn mice are trisomic for approximately half the genes on human chromosome 21 and display DS-like craniofacial anomalies. Cells cultured from Ts65Dn and euploid 1st pharyngeal arch (PA1) and neural tube (NT) tissues were used to analyze the effects of genetic dysregulation on cell proliferation and migration. In vitro studies revealed a proliferation deficit in trisomic PA1 and migration deficits from trisomic NT originating at embryonic day 9.5 (E9.5). DYRK1A is a gene thought to be involved in DS craniofacial development and we hypothesized that dysregulation of Dyrk1a contributes to altered craniofacial development in Ts65Dn mice. We also hypothesized that Dyrk1a agonists could be used to ameliorate this phenotype. To test our hypotheses, we quantified expression of Dyrk1a using qPCR. At E9.5, Dyrk1a is upregulated in Ts65Dn as relative to euploid PA1. We also showed that cell proliferation and migration could be returned to near euploid levels with the green tea polyphenol epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and harmine (known Dyrk1a inhibitors) in vitro. To further test our hypothesis, pregnant Ts65Dn and euploid mothers were treated with EGCG on E7 and E8 and E9.5 trisomic and euploid embryos were assessed for embryonic volume, PA1 vol-ume, and NCC number. Preliminary evidence suggests in vivo treatment leads to an increase in embryonic volume, PA1 volume, and NCC number in both euploid and trisomic embryos. Trisomic EGCG-treated embryos had similar PA1 volumes and NCC numbers to euploid embryos treated with PBS. Gene expression analysis of EGCG-treated NCCs is currently underway to better understand the effects of EGCG in these studies. Our results provide information about the molecular basis of DS craniofacial abnormalities and may lead to evidenced-based therapeutic options