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Women’s protection has been largely discussed in conflict and gender scholarship and promoted as a key priority for governments, NGOs and international community. However, when critically analysed, the meaning of protection in conflict settings and the understanding of who should provide protection in emergencies, conflict and complex humanitarian crisis remain ambiguous. In long-term conflict settings for example, it is unclear whose role it is to protect civilians...
The paper introduces the socio-anthropological concept of international representations to examine the relationship between a civilizational rhetoric, the West European and the international politics of otherization and containment of Southeast Europe, and an essentialist and timeless bias in international relations theory, including both radical and constructivist trends...
Much of today’s conflicts and challenges, globally and locally, can be in part attributed to or are influenced by the hegemony of Western over non-Western cultures and politics. Long-standing and still reproduced Western dominance and power are directed at the protection of own interests, thereby re-creating power imbalances, inequalities and practices of exclusion...
Consensus modality : accommodating parties and containing overt violence in Nepal’s peace process
(2017)
Throughout this decade, most of the literatures in social sciences on Nepal contain Maoist Armed Conflict (1996-2006) in its introduction part. The country is in constant political turmoil even after the Comprehensive Peace Accord of 2006 between Government of Nepal and then rebel force. Since the peace agreement, Nepalese society has observed diverse socio-political tensions in different forms and become fragile society. Nepal is exerting a growing concern on international politics because of the complication in the peace process of ensuring sustainable peace, stability and economic progress. The implications for peace, stability and economic development in fragile countries present a challenge to the international community (In Grävingholt et al, 2013). Political culture and social structure are empirically related to political stability (Lijphart, 1969: 208). So we cannot separate our social and cultural context with the idea of stability...
Regional actors like the European Union (EU) and the African Union (AU) are increasingly seeking to conceptualize their transitional justice engagements through policy frameworks and carve out spaces for themselves in transitional justice processes. While the EU adopted its Policy Framework on Support to Transitional Justice in November 2015, the AU is still in the process of developing its African Transitional Justice Framework. It is the starting assumption of this paper that the policy discourses inevitably have an effect on the understanding, scope and institutionalization of transitional justice that these two regional bodies will support – the EU mostly as a development strategy outside and the AU within its borders...
International mediation has traditionally been understood as an instrument aimed at getting political representatives to agree on a negotiated settlement. However, in cases where referendums were required for ratification, peace agreements have been rejected bythe people. This paper uncovers how mediators can help political leaders reach agreementsthat are supported by the people they represent by comparing the Annan Plan and Good Friday Agreement (GFA) mediations and referendums in Cyprus and Northern Ireland, respectively...
Who is Ângkar? The nature of authority and responsibility under the Khmer Rouge Forme cadres of the Khmer Rouge today still speak of Ângkar, the organisation of the Khmer Rouge, with the utmost respect and subservience. Unlike in other genocidal regimes in which state actors played an important role, such as the NSDAP and SS in the Holocaust or Ittihad in the Ottoman genocide of the Armenians, Ângkar cannot be reduced merely to the name of the party organisation of the Khmer Rouge. Although Ângkar is a concept known to all in Cambodia and remains synonymous with absolute authority and the necessity for unwavering obedience, there is a broad variety of perspectives when trying to state who or what Ângkar actually is...
When is a crisis a crisis?
(2017)
The refugee and migration crisis has contributed to promote and consolidate new practices. The NGOs’ SAR Operations represent a new aspect of the humanitarian new normal phenomenon which is here analysed to deepen the existing knowledge about the response of the state, the citizens and the organised civil society to the crisis. The paper, which is based on an expert survey research conducted by researchers of the University of Catania, contends that Europeans overwhelmingly perceive irregular migrants as a threat...
In the past years a variety of papers have been presented by the European Commission and by the EU High Representative, outlining strategies of the EU in foreign-, security- and refugee policies. Many of these strategic documents reflect the ambivalence of the EU Policy. On the one hand the complementarity and coherence of approaches is emphasized; on the other hand, core elements of the foreign-, security- and refugee policy undermine aims in other policy fields...
Threat perceptions is a popular topic among scholars of international relations, yet the focus is oftentimes how two states perceive and misperceive threats (Robert Jervis, David Singer among others). Threats are generally understood as potential harm directed against the territorial integrity or the political regime of the states in question or both. Wandering on the borders of the mainstream realist theory and the rational choice theory – popular since when behavioralism entered into IR literature in the 1960s – and the constructivism of the reflectivist era (Wendt), the topic has been made a subject of study through such several different conceptual lenses but mostly on an international/state level of analysis a la Waltz...
The paper will outline a research project – its goals and methods – that focuses on what 1) makes humans flee from their home, land and country, at the risk of losing their lives, 2) seek refuge in another place, 3) what individual assessments they made before, during and after flight, and 4) how they assess the question of return to their countries/places of origin when the original causes of their flight – e.g. civil unrest, civil strife or civil war – are not any more directly present in the country or place from which they fled...
Exodus Eritrea
(2017)
The post-liberal debate on peacebuilding and reconciliation seems to have advanced. We observe efforts “bringing the local back in” (Debiel/Rink 2016) by enhancing local ownership, relational sensitivity, contextualization, culturalization, hybridity and last but not least resilience. Concepts furthermore try to integrate transnational dynamics, international power shifts and trends of regionalization. However, many questions remain: for scholars, for practitioners and last but not least for the local population...
How do coalition governments affect the risk of civil war onset in ethnically divided societies? Existing research argues that power-sharing coalitions decrease the risk of civil war because they redress grievances. Building on a formal model of coalition formation, we predict that ethnic elites are most likely to form oversized rather than minimum-winning coalitions in anticipation of future challenges to the regime. Put differently, we expect most power-sharing to occur where the risk of regime-threatening civil war is highest...
This year’s conference of the AFK (German Association for Peace and Conflict Studies) and the European Peace Research Association (EuPRA) is on "Peace and Conflict Studies from the Margins to the Centre; Rethinking Europe in an Unequal World" (16 – 18 March 2017 in Schwerte (nearby Dortmund), Germany).
The virtual realm of the internet is often seen as an egalitarian world where differences such as those between young and established researchers do not seem so significant. While we do not fully agree with this thesis, we want to use this blog to make a model attempt at providing a platform in which those participating in the conference and others can enter discussion with young students, established researchers, and peace activists.
To make this possible, we started a project in cooperation with the Bretterblog – a young team of researchers who established this blog some years ago. Here we will discuss the topics of the conference and will inform a broader audience about the newest results in peace and conflict research from different countries.
Eosinophilic cholangitis is a potentially underdiagnosed etiology in indeterminate biliary stricture
(2017)
AIM: To investigate presence and extent of eosinophilic cholangitis (EC) as well as IgG4-related disease in patients with indeterminate biliary stricture (IBS).
METHODS: All patients with diagnosis of sclerosing cholangitis (SC) and histopathological samples such as biopsies or surgical specimens at University Hospital Frankfurt from 2005-2015 were included. Histopathological diagnoses as well as further clinical course were reviewed. Tissue samples of patients without definite diagnosis after complete diagnostic work-up were reviewed regarding presence of eosinophilic infiltration and IgG4 positive plasma cells. Eosinophilic infiltration was as well assessed in a control group of liver transplant donors and patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis.
RESULTS: one hundred and thirty-five patients with SC were included. In 10/135 (13.5%) patients, no potential cause of IBS could be identified after complete diagnostic work-up and further clinical course. After histopathological review, a post-hoc diagnosis of EC was established in three patients resulting in a prevalence of 2.2% (3/135) of all patients with SC as well as 30% (3/10) of patients, where no cause of IBS was identified. 2/3 patients with post-hoc diagnosis of EC underwent surgical resection with suspicion for malignancy. Diagnosis of IgG4-related cholangitis was observed in 7/135 patients (5.1%), whereas 3 cases were discovered in post-hoc analysis. 6/7 cases with IgG4-related cholangitis (85.7%) presented with eosinophilic infiltration in addition to IgG4 positive plasma cells. There was no patient with eosinophilic infiltration in the control group of liver transplant donors (n = 27) and patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis (n = 14).
CONCLUSION: EC is an underdiagnosed benign etiology of SC and IBS, which has to be considered in differential diagnosis of IBS.
Very few people doubt that it is a fundamental demand of justice that members of legal-political normative orders ought to have legal rights that define their basic standing as subjects of such an order. But when it comes to the concrete understanding of such rights, debates abound. What is the nature of these rights – are they an expression of the sovereign will of individuals, or are they based on important human interests? How should these rights be justified – do they have a particular moral ground, and if so, only one or many?
SAFE Newsletter : 2017, Q1
(2017)
Hypoxia triggers several mechanisms to adapt cells to a low oxygen environment. Mitochondria are major consumers of oxygen and a potential source of reactive oxygen species (ROS). In response to hypoxia they exchange or modify distinct subunits of the respiratory chain and adjust their metabolism, especially lowering the citric acid cycle. Intermediates of the citric acid cycle participate in regulating hypoxia inducible factors (HIF), the key mediators of adaptation to hypoxia. Here we summarize how hypoxia conditions mitochondria with consequences for ROS-production and the HIF-pathway.
This paper reexamines the current legal landscape regarding the protection of trade marks and other industrial property rights in signs on the Internet. It is based on a comparative analysis of EU and national laws, in particular, German, U.S., and U.K. law. It starts with a short restatement of the principles governing trade mark conflicts that occur within a particular jurisdiction (part 2) and proceeds to the regulation of transnational disputes (part 3). This juxtaposition yields two basic approaches. Whereas trade mark conflicts within closed legal systems are generally adjudicated according to a binary either/or logic, transnational disputes are and should indeed be solved in a way that leads to a fair coexistence of conflicting trade mark laws and rights under multiple laws. This paper explains how geolocation technologies can alleviate the implementation of the principle of fair coexistence in concrete cases.
Genetic data in studies of systematics of Amazonian amphibians frequently reveal that purportedly widespread single species in reality comprise species complexes. This means that real species richness may be significantly higher than current estimates. Here we combine genetic, morphological, and bioacoustic data to assess the phylogenetic relationships and species boundaries of two Amazonian species of the Dendropsophus leucophyllatus species group: D. leucophyllatus and D. triangulum. Our results uncovered the existence of five confirmed and four unconfirmed candidate species. Among the confirmed candidate species, three have available names: Dendropsophus leucophyllatus, Dendropsophus triangulum, and Dendropsophus reticulatus, this last being removed from the synonymy of D. triangulum. A neotype of D. leucophyllatus is designated. We describe the remaining two confirmed candidate species, one from Bolivia and another from Peru. All confirmed candidate species are morphologically distinct and have much smaller geographic ranges than those previously reported for D. leucophyllatus and D. triangulum sensu lato. Dendropsophus leucophyllatus sensu stricto occurs in the Guianan region. Dendropsophus reticulatus comb. nov. corresponds to populations in the Amazon basin of Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru previously referred to as D. triangulum. Dendropsophus triangulum sensu stricto is the most widely distributed species; it occurs in Amazonian Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, reaching the state of Pará. We provide accounts for all described species including an assessment of their conservation status.
Natural killer (NK) cells play an important role following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) exerting graft-versus-leukemia/tumor effect and mediating pathogen-specific immunity. Although NK cells are the first donor-derived lymphocytes reconstituting post-HSCT, their distribution of CD56++CD16− (CD56bright), CD56++CD16+ (CD56intermediate=int), and CD56+CD16++ (CD56dim) NK cells is explicitly divergent from healthy adults, but to some extent comparable to the NK cell development in early childhood. The proportion of CD56bright/CD56int/CD56dim changed from 15/8/78% in early childhood to 6/4/90% in adults, respectively. Within this study, we first compared the NK cell reconstitution post-HSCT to reference values of NK cell subpopulations of healthy children. Afterward, we investigated the reconstitution of NK cell subpopulations post-HSCT in correlation to acute graft versus host disease (aGvHD) and chronic graft versus host disease (cGvHD) as well as to viral infections. Interestingly, after a HSCT follow-up phase of 12 months, the distribution of NK cell subpopulations largely matched the 50th percentile of the reference range for healthy individuals. Patients suffering from aGvHD and cGvHD showed a delayed reconstitution of NK cells. Remarkably, within the first 2 months post-HSCT, patients suffering from aGvHD had significantly lower levels of CD56bright NK cells compared to patients without viral infection or without graft versus host disease (GvHD). Therefore, the amount of CD56bright NK cells might serve as an early prognostic factor for GvHD development. Furthermore, a prolonged and elevated peak in CD56int NK cells seemed to be characteristic for the chronification of GvHD. In context of viral infection, a slightly lower CD56 and CD16 receptor expression followed by a considerable reduction in the absolute CD56dim NK cell numbers combined with reoccurrence of CD56int NK cells was observed. Our results suggest that a precise analysis of the reconstitution of NK cell subpopulations post-HSCT might indicate the occurrence of undesired events post-HSCT such as severe aGvHD.values
BACKGROUND: Time-limited, early-life exposures to institutional deprivation are associated with disorders in childhood, but it is unknown whether effects persist into adulthood. We used data from the English and Romanian Adoptees study to assess whether deprivation-associated adverse neurodevelopmental and mental health outcomes persist into young adulthood.
METHODS: The English and Romanian Adoptees study is a longitudinal, natural experiment investigation into the long-term outcomes of individuals who spent from soon after birth to up to 43 months in severe deprivation in Romanian institutions before being adopted into the UK. We used developmentally appropriate standard questionnaires, interviews completed by parents and adoptees, and direct measures of IQ to measure symptoms of autism spectrum disorder, inattention and overactivity, disinhibited social engagement, conduct or emotional problems, and cognitive impairment (IQ score <80) during childhood (ages 6, 11, and 15 years) and in young adulthood (22-25 years). For analysis, Romanian adoptees were split into those who spent less than 6 months in an institution and those who spent more than 6 months in an institution. We used a comparison group of UK adoptees who did not experience deprivation. We used mixed-effects regression models for ordered-categorical outcome variables to compare symptom levels and trends between groups.
FINDINGS: Romanian adoptees who experienced less than 6 months in an institution (n=67 at ages 6 years; n=50 at young adulthood) and UK controls (n=52 at age 6 years; n=39 at young adulthood) had similarly low levels of symptoms across most ages and outcomes. By contrast, Romanian adoptees exposed to more than 6 months in an institution (n=98 at ages 6 years; n=72 at young adulthood) had persistently higher rates than UK controls of symptoms of autism spectrum disorder, disinhibited social engagement, and inattention and overactivity through to young adulthood (pooled p<0·0001 for all). Cognitive impairment in the group who spent more than 6 months in an institution remitted from markedly higher rates at ages 6 years (p=0·0001) and 11 years (p=0·0016) compared with UK controls, to normal rates at young adulthood (p=0·76). By contrast, self-rated emotional symptoms showed a late-onset pattern with minimal differences versus UK controls at ages 11 years (p=0·0449) and 15 years (p=0·17), and then marked increases by young adulthood (p=0·0005), with similar effects seen for parent ratings. The high deprivation group also had a higher proportion of people with low educational achievement (p=0·0195), unemployment (p=0·0124), and mental health service use (p=0·0120, p=0·0032, and p=0·0003 for use when aged <11 years, 11-14 years, and 15-23 years, respectively) than the UK control group. A fifth (n=15) of individuals who spent more than 6 months in an institution were problem-free at all assessments.
INTERPRETATION: Notwithstanding the resilience shown by some adoptees and the adult remission of cognitive impairment, extended early deprivation was associated with long-term deleterious effects on wellbeing that seem insusceptible to years of nurturance and support in adoptive families.
FUNDING: Economic and Social Research Council, Medical Research Council, Department of Health, Jacobs Foundation, Nuffield Foundation.
Peripheral tolerance is an important mechanism by which the immune system can guarantee a second line of defense against autoreactive T and B cells. One autoimmune disease that is related to a break of peripheral tolerance is diabetes mellitus type 1. Using the RIP-GP mouse model, we analyzed the role of the spleen and lymph nodes (LNs) in priming CD8+ T cells and breaking peripheral tolerance. We found that diabetes developed in splenectomized mice infected with the lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV), a finding showing that the spleen was not necessary in generating autoimmunity. By contrast, the absence of LNs prevented the priming of LCMV-specific CD8+ T cells, and diabetes did not develop in these mice. Additionally, we found that dendritic cells are responsible for the distribution of virus in secondary lymphoid organs, when LCMV was administered intravenously. Preventing this distribution with the sphingosine-1-phosphate receptor antagonist FTY720 inhibits the transport of antigen to peripheral LNs and consequently prevented the onset of diabetes. However, in case of subcutaneous infection, administration of FTY720 could not inhibit the onset of diabetes because the viral antigen is already presented in the peripheral LNs. These findings demonstrate the importance of preventing the presence of antigen in LNs for maintaining tolerance.