Breaking Free: Local Governments’ Boundary-Defying Engagement with Human Rights and Migration

Local governments are not entities an international lawyer would usually think of as an “actor of international law”. In fact, they are considered irrelevant in classical international law, mere state organs whose actions can trigger the responsibility of the state, without any relevance of their own to boast. This thesis is a theoretical and empirical demonstration of why this is not true, even if we look from the lens of traditional, Westphalian international law. This thesis maps, in a manner grounded in empirical research in Turkey, Switzerland and the international arena, the different (both legal and socio-legal) ways in which local governments engage with human rights and migration, which are both traditionally considered fields of international law and thus outside the competence of local governments. Nonetheless, local governments (as well as the individuals within them; their local, regional, national and transnational networks; and other actors working closely with local governments) have formed a norm-generating community, participating in the multi-level processes of proposal, advocacy, contestation, dissemination and adoption of norms of human rights and migration. Perhaps most importantly for positive international law, this engagement of local governments has been seen to actually shape positive international law, for example in the process concerning the determination of the content of the right to adequate housing. This engagement of local governments in international law- and policy-making takes many forms. At times, local governments seek inclusion in traditional state-centric processes of international law- and policy-making. When this exclusion becomes too limiting however, they also take initiative and demonstrate fluency in international law by formulating their own norms and practices in local-centred fora, whether alone and with stakeholders in their localities or with peers in regional and transnational networks and conferences. Through the normative documents local governments produce, they seem to seek to influence global agenda-setting, contribute to rights-realisation and social justice at the local level, create toolkits for themselves that integrate fragmented pieces of international law into simpler singular documents, crystallise their interests and beliefs in a manner demonstrating competence and skill in international diplomacy, and find and rally allies around a common cause. Locally, in Turkey, many local governments have been found to engage in inclusive human rights and migration policies and practices even without clear obligations or competences to do so. My research found that this phenomenon was a result of the capacity of local governments (including personnel, data, budget, and level of institutionalisation); the cooperation initiated by actors such as international organisations, academia, city networks and civil society organisations; the dissemination of norms they have been exposed to; and political will. In addition, the context of high-demand, low-capacity, available foreign funds and know-how, and legal ambiguity seems to have created a fruitful environment for creative local government engagement – though it may not have been the most sustainable engagement. This contributed to a sense of agency local governments felt over their (albeit limited) competences and their activities in the fields of migration and human rights. Contrastingly, in Switzerland, the high-regulation context contributed to local governments distinguishing rigorously between different categories of rights-holders, having a lower perception of autonomy, being forced to engage in open legal battles over the limits of their competences, and taking up more formal venues of consultation, lobbying and conflict resolution. In conclusion, local governments constitute a normative community in human rights and migrations, legally and extra-legally, at the inter-personal, local, regional, national and transnational levels. Actors working towards justice and human rights should consider local governments an important partner, an invaluable forum for advocacy, creative and effective cooperation, and the cultivation of a human rights culture

Transnational city networks and their contributions to norm-generation in international law: the case of migration

Local governments and transnational city networks (‘TCNs’) have been increasingly engaging with norm-generation in the traditionally state-centric international law and migration governance. We identified two modes of this engagement: participation in mainstream state-centric processes, and norm-generation within their own networks. Through four examples, his article identifies four functions of this jurisgenerative activity. The external function is bringing local interests and expertise to influence international normative developments. The internal function is regulating local governments' behaviour towards their own citizens, creating and upholding standards. Through a horizontal function, local governments recruit peers and rally around normative documents that offer a compact, crystallised expression of their interests. The integrating function enables local governments to combine fragmented issues of international law in unified, practical toolkits for their own use. All throughout, TCNs challenge state-centric international law and their traditional exclusion from it by demonstrating competence and fluency in international norm-generation relating to migration

Urban Politics of Human Rights

Increasingly, urban actors invoke human rights to address inequalities, combat privatisation, and underline common aspirations, or to protect vested (private) interests. The potential and the pitfalls of these processes are conditioned by the urban, and deeply political. These urban politics of human rights are at the heart of this book. An international line-up of contributors with long-term engagement in this field shed light on these politics in cities on four continents and eight cities, presenting a wealth of empirical detail and disciplinary theoreticalisation perspectives. They analyse the ‘city society’, the urban actors involved, and the mechanisms of human rights mobilisation. In doing so, they show the commonalities in rights engagement in today’s globalised and often deeply unequal cities characterised by urban law, private capital but also communities that rally around concepts as the ‘right to the city’. Most importantly, the chapters highlight the conditions under which this mobilisation truly contributes to social justice, be it concerning the simple right to presence, cultural rights, accessible housing or – in times of COVID – health care. Urban Politics of Human Rights provides indispensable reading for anyone with a practical or theoretical interest in the complex, deeply political, and at times also truly promising interrelationship between human rights and the urban

General introduction: Urban politics of human rights

Human rights and the urban – two concepts that both seem to quiver with hope, promise and potential. Songs, selfies and cinematography praising city life conjure images of growth, freedom and emancipation. The slums behind the shiny facades, the people begging next to high rise banks, the divergent life-worlds and opportunities of children in a single city. The different contributions highlight the involvement of a myriad of actors who use human rights, for instance, to respond to urbanisation processes. At the same time, this volume is mindful of critics who argue, for instance, that human rights city initiatives may preserve the state-centric human rights framework, by emphasising local ‘state actors’ and by only indirectly recognising the role of other local actors, such as community-based groups and social movements. The urban condition is often argued to define future life on the planet

Impact of opioid-free analgesia on pain severity and patient satisfaction after discharge from surgery: multispecialty, prospective cohort study in 25 countries

Background: Balancing opioid stewardship and the need for adequate analgesia following discharge after surgery is challenging. This study aimed to compare the outcomes for patients discharged with opioid versus opioid-free analgesia after common surgical procedures.Methods: This international, multicentre, prospective cohort study collected data from patients undergoing common acute and elective general surgical, urological, gynaecological, and orthopaedic procedures. The primary outcomes were patient-reported time in severe pain measured on a numerical analogue scale from 0 to 100% and patient-reported satisfaction with pain relief during the first week following discharge. Data were collected by in-hospital chart review and patient telephone interview 1 week after discharge.Results: The study recruited 4273 patients from 144 centres in 25 countries; 1311 patients (30.7%) were prescribed opioid analgesia at discharge. Patients reported being in severe pain for 10 (i.q.r. 1-30)% of the first week after discharge and rated satisfaction with analgesia as 90 (i.q.r. 80-100) of 100. After adjustment for confounders, opioid analgesia on discharge was independently associated with increased pain severity (risk ratio 1.52, 95% c.i. 1.31 to 1.76; P < 0.001) and re-presentation to healthcare providers owing to side-effects of medication (OR 2.38, 95% c.i. 1.36 to 4.17; P = 0.004), but not with satisfaction with analgesia (beta coefficient 0.92, 95% c.i. -1.52 to 3.36; P = 0.468) compared with opioid-free analgesia. Although opioid prescribing varied greatly between high-income and low- and middle-income countries, patient-reported outcomes did not.Conclusion: Opioid analgesia prescription on surgical discharge is associated with a higher risk of re-presentation owing to side-effects of medication and increased patient-reported pain, but not with changes in patient-reported satisfaction. Opioid-free discharge analgesia should be adopted routinely

Discutindo a educação ambiental no cotidiano escolar: desenvolvimento de projetos na escola formação inicial e continuada de professores

A presente pesquisa buscou discutir como a Educação Ambiental (EA) vem sendo trabalhada, no Ensino Fundamental e como os docentes desta escola compreendem e vem inserindo a EA no cotidiano escolar., em uma escola estadual do município de Tangará da Serra/MT, Brasil. Para tanto, realizou-se entrevistas com os professores que fazem parte de um projeto interdisciplinar de EA na escola pesquisada. Verificou-se que o projeto da escola não vem conseguindo alcançar os objetivos propostos por: desconhecimento do mesmo, pelos professores; formação deficiente dos professores, não entendimento da EA como processo de ensino-aprendizagem, falta de recursos didáticos, planejamento inadequado das atividades. A partir dessa constatação, procurou-se debater a impossibilidade de tratar do tema fora do trabalho interdisciplinar, bem como, e principalmente, a importância de um estudo mais aprofundado de EA, vinculando teoria e prática, tanto na formação docente, como em projetos escolares, a fim de fugir do tradicional vínculo “EA e ecologia, lixo e horta”.Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Breaking Free: Local Governments’ Boundary-Defying Engagement with Human Rights and Migration

Local governments are not entities an international lawyer would usually think of as an “actor of international law”. In fact, they are considered irrelevant in classical international law, mere state organs whose actions can trigger the responsibility of the state, without any relevance of their own to boast. This thesis is a theoretical and empirical demonstration of why this is not true, even if we look from the lens of traditional, Westphalian international law. This thesis maps, in a manner grounded in empirical research in Turkey, Switzerland and the international arena, the different (both legal and socio-legal) ways in which local governments engage with human rights and migration, which are both traditionally considered fields of international law and thus outside the competence of local governments. Nonetheless, local governments (as well as the individuals within them; their local, regional, national and transnational networks; and other actors working closely with local governments) have formed a norm-generating community, participating in the multi-level processes of proposal, advocacy, contestation, dissemination and adoption of norms of human rights and migration. Perhaps most importantly for positive international law, this engagement of local governments has been seen to actually shape positive international law, for example in the process concerning the determination of the content of the right to adequate housing. This engagement of local governments in international law- and policy-making takes many forms. At times, local governments seek inclusion in traditional state-centric processes of international law- and policy-making. When this exclusion becomes too limiting however, they also take initiative and demonstrate fluency in international law by formulating their own norms and practices in local-centred fora, whether alone and with stakeholders in their localities or with peers in regional and transnational networks and conferences. Through the normative documents local governments produce, they seem to seek to influence global agenda-setting, contribute to rights-realisation and social justice at the local level, create toolkits for themselves that integrate fragmented pieces of international law into simpler singular documents, crystallise their interests and beliefs in a manner demonstrating competence and skill in international diplomacy, and find and rally allies around a common cause. Locally, in Turkey, many local governments have been found to engage in inclusive human rights and migration policies and practices even without clear obligations or competences to do so. My research found that this phenomenon was a result of the capacity of local governments (including personnel, data, budget, and level of institutionalisation); the cooperation initiated by actors such as international organisations, academia, city networks and civil society organisations; the dissemination of norms they have been exposed to; and political will. In addition, the context of high-demand, low-capacity, available foreign funds and know-how, and legal ambiguity seems to have created a fruitful environment for creative local government engagement – though it may not have been the most sustainable engagement. This contributed to a sense of agency local governments felt over their (albeit limited) competences and their activities in the fields of migration and human rights. Contrastingly, in Switzerland, the high-regulation context contributed to local governments distinguishing rigorously between different categories of rights-holders, having a lower perception of autonomy, being forced to engage in open legal battles over the limits of their competences, and taking up more formal venues of consultation, lobbying and conflict resolution. In conclusion, local governments constitute a normative community in human rights and migrations, legally and extra-legally, at the inter-personal, local, regional, national and transnational levels. Actors working towards justice and human rights should consider local governments an important partner, an invaluable forum for advocacy, creative and effective cooperation, and the cultivation of a human rights culture

Evaluation of anterior and middle cranial fossa intraosseous arachnoid granulations with 3D T2-SPACE sequence

Objectives Arachnoid granulations (AG) can be located anywhere outside the dural sinuses. Their presence is thought to be associated with idiopathic intracranial hypertension (IIH) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leaks. It was aimed to evaluate the intraosseous AGs located in the middle and anterior cranial fosses in detail with three-dimensional T2-SPACE (Sampling Perfection with Application optimized Contrasts using different flip angle Evolution-Siemens) imaging and to investigate their clinical significance. Materials and methods Sixty-five intraosseous AG of 46 patients were included in this retrospective study. The highest diameter, bone indentation degree (in the inner tabula, diploe distance, reaching and exceeding the outer tabula), content (CSF/+parenchyma) of each AG were evaluated by 2 experienced radiologists. In addition, the presence of other MRI findings supporting IIH was examined. Results Additional signs of IIH were detected in 25 patients, and they were statistically significantly more common in the middle cranial fossa. Parenchymal herniation (in four patients) was more common in the young population. Conclusions Intraosseous AGs can be evaluated in detail with T2-SPACE imaging. Determining intraosseous AG is very important both as an indicator of IIH and in terms of its content. T2-SPACE imaging is superior to CT and conventional sequences in this regard