This Article discusses BLAs as tools of global labor migration governance, with a specific focus on gender. Drawing on our global database of 582 bilateral labor migration agreements, we investigate the extent to which these governing instruments connect and align with relevant international normative frameworks, in particular the extent to which they represent gains, gaps or gaffs in terms of gender equality and the human and labor rights protection of women migrants. In the context of the Global Compact (...) for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which stresses a gender-responsive approach to migration governance as one of its guiding principles, we ask: Do the BLAs which are increasingly being used as instruments to govern labor migration contribute toward sustainable gender equality, decent work and reduced inequalities for women and gender-diverse migrants? (shrink)

Researchers who have attempted to collect and compare bilateral labor agreements have encountered varying degrees of accessibility of information on these agreements. Why is it harder to find out information on some bilateral labor agreements than others? In this Article, we argue that it is more difficult to find information and agreements tend to be more informal when governments want to obscure what they are doing. Building on insights from the study of optimal obfuscation (...) in trade policy and research on informal institutions in international politics, we argue that policymakers use more informal agreements and make it more difficult to find information on BLAs when they think they will be politically unpopular and are unlikely to be ratified. In contrast, leaders will be more likely to use formal agreements when they want to lock in a policy. Drawing on original quantitative data on the accessibility of information on bilateral labor agreements and Peters’ 2019 database on BLAs, the Article analyzes the accessibility of information on bilateral labor agreements and finds some support for our argument. (shrink)

Countries increasingly have been entering bilateral labor agreements as a tool for the regulation and governance of short-term temporary labor migration worldwide. However, these are often confidential legal instruments, and consequently we know relatively little about their actual content and impact, and why countries choose to enter them. This Article complements existing explanations in the literature regarding the reasons why countries enter BLAs and their potential to create and improve migrant workers’ rights. Based on a detailed content analysis (...) of 81 recent BLAs signed largely over the last 20 years, and on a wide literature review and interest analysis, we introduce a “control thesis.” According to the control thesis, the popularity, confidentiality and unenforceability of BLAs can be explained, at least partially, by their ability to promote a key shared interest of sending and receiving countries in controlling and policing the mobility and actions of migrant workers and also, at times, aspects of the illicit migration industry that develops around labor migration. We reach this conclusion, and elaborate on its meaning and the potential it may hold for migrant workers and their advocates, in strategically seeking to use BLAs to improve temporary migrant workers’ rights and protections. (shrink)

Bilateral trade agreements are the preferred mode of transnational regulation for the People’s Republic of China. China has made promises on labor rights in draft bilateral agreements that it has not previously made in any other venue. The future of transnational labor regulation requires Chinese participation. Bilateral agreements should therefore become a normal part of transnational labor law. Model labor rights provisions for bilateral agreements should be promulgated. Consultative and informal enforcement will (...) be necessary. (shrink)

In the seventy-five years since the end of World War II, pairs of countries have entered into over a thousand bilateral labor agreements to regulate the cross-border flow of workers. These agreements have received little public or academic attention. This is likely, in part, because there is limited data or easily available information on BLAs. This Article hopes to change that by introducing three new resources: a dataset documenting the formation of over 1,200 BLAs; a corpus including (...) the texts of over 800 BLAs; and a dataset coding whether over 500 BLAs mention twenty topics that the ILO has identified as best practices for these agreements. Using this data, we show that, unlike some other forms of bilateral agreements, the rate of BLAs being signed has remained relatively high during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Additionally, we also show evidence that, although many BLAs were formed during this period, relatively few agreements include various worker protections advocated for by activists, scholars, and NGOs. (shrink)

The United States (U.S.) and Jordan launched negotiations for a free trade agreement in 2000.The US-JO FTA includes a preamble, nineteen articles, three annexes, joint statements, memorandums of understanding, and side letters. In addition to the interesting articles on labor and environment, the US-JO FTA provides the opportunity for Jordanian nationals to come to the U.S. to make investments and participate in trade. Under certain conditions, Jordanian nationals can enter the U.S. to render professional services. The purpose of this article (...) is to examine in detail article 8 of the US-JO FTA which relates to entry of nationals of one party into the territory of the other. The article starts by providing a brief background of the negotiation and conclusion of the US-JO FTA. Then, the article analyzes in detail the specific provision related to temporary entry of nationals. The article draws a comparison between US-JO FTA with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the more recent trade agreements between the U.S., Oman, Bahrain, and Morocco. Finally, the article observes that although the US-JO FTA, like all US FTAs, is designed to permit temporary entry, without intent to establish permanent residence, of persons, the U.S. should have provided Jordan with special and differential treatment for entry of its nationals. Taking into account the special circumstances of Jordan as a developing country with low-income status, high unemployment rate, and lack of resources, movement of business visitors, investors, intra-company transferees, and professionals should have been dealt with leniency so that the FTA could generate effective and real market access. (shrink)

This Article offers an integrated analysis of the combined effect of the presence of migration bans and the absence of BLAs in domestic work in the emigration regime of Nepal. It identifies, acknowledges, critiques, and contributes to the critical literature highlighting entrapment processes in labor relations and immigration regimes by demonstrating the presence of such in the emigration regime. Drawing on the empirical findings of a participatory action research project conducted in Nepal, the Article demonstrates how restrictive emigration policies and (...) practices entail entrapment processes constitutive of the existing historical, cultural, gendered, racialized, and classed constraints impacting the lives of Nepalese citizens. The Article contributes to the critical literature that seeks to advance migrants’ rights, arguing that experiencing, encountering and escaping entrapment processes in the emigration regime impacts their agency when navigating immigration regimes and labor relations. This contribution advances the existing efforts to establish oft-ignored emigration regimes as important epistemological sites of research, theorization, and intervention. (shrink)

The Colombian military and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) have committed systematic attacks against the Colombian people that violate international law. One such heinous incident took place in May 2003 at the Betoyes Guahibo indigenous reserve in Colombia. Unlike other acts of terror, the attack at the Reserve is well documented. Because of this, the attack on the Reserve is an excellent case for International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecution. This article exposes acts of cruelty and makes a persuasive (...) moral case for ICC prosecution. The ICC has jurisdiction over the attack on the Betoyes people by the AUC and Colombian military. The article further discusses the potential legal exposure of the Colombian government, individual Colombians and US individuals through its military support and training of the Colombian military. (shrink)

We examine the short-term and long-term impact of bilateral agreements on migrant workers’ vulnerability during their employment in Israel. To do so, we developed the Vulnerability Index of Migrant Workers based on five dimensions: poor working conditions, poor living conditions, poor safety conditions, low wages, and dependence on migration costs. We focus on migrant workers arriving in Israel from two different countries, employed in two different sectors of the economy. Data was gathered through a survey conducted among workers (...) arriving from both countries before and after the implementation of the bilateral agreements. The study revealed that after the implementation of bilateral agreements, the working, living and safety conditions of migrant workers remained poor or even worsened. For Thai workers, there was a slight improvement in the working and living conditions in the short term after the bilateral agreement, but they worsened in the long run. The total Index of Vulnerability of both groups showed improvement due to the dramatic decrease in dependence on migration costs, despite the deterioration in some working and living conditions and the reduction in migrant workers’ relative wages. (shrink)

France’s agreements on the joint management of migration flows figure centrally within studies of bilateral migration agreements. With their origins in friendship and navigation treaties of the late 19th century, the AJMs are successors to the postcolonial, circular mobility conventions of the 1960s, and are uniquely positioned for periodizing the evolution of bilaterally negotiated labor mobilities. Nonetheless, due to the European Union’s reluctance to embrace mass regularization and the EU Member States’ legislative powers over labor markets, they (...) have time and again scotched France’s ambition to leverage preferential labor market entries in exchange for more cooperation over irregular migration. Through documents and statistical data analysis, this Article studies the case of Senegal’s negotiation of additional pathways to France for its lower-skilled workers. At the center is France’s administrative court of appeals, which has confirmed the broad margin of discretion over Art. 42 in the AJM between France and Senegal. This jurisprudence has decoupled the automatic linkage between a job listed under duress in France under the Annex to the AJM and the entitlement to exceptional admission. We argue that France’s courts have removed a privilege of Senegalese workers, which has re-politicized France’s migration diplomacy with Senegal. At the same time, retention of the prefectorial discretionary power has levelled the playing field among West and North African countries that have concluded similar bilateral agreements with France. This Article adds to the research on bilateral migration agreements by proposing a multilevel legal analysis, which studies AJMs in the context of France’s common law, EU labor and return directives, and the multilateral of WTO/gats liberalization. (shrink)

Cancer cells seem to exploit mechanisms that evolve as part of physiological tolerance, which is a complementary and often beneficial form of defense. The study of physiological systems of tolerance can therefore provide insights into the development of a state of host tolerance of cancer, and how to break it. Analysis of these models has the potential to improve our understanding of existing immunological therapeutic targets, and help to identify future targets and rational therapeutic combinations. The treatment of cancer with (...) immune checkpoint inhibitors aims to reverse the progression to tolerance of cancer, and achieve an immunogenic, rather than tolerogenic, homeostasis. Broadening the efficacy and durability of checkpoint inhibitors focuses on reversing tolerance and stimulating immunogenicity in the cancer, host, and environment. Two examples of important physiological states of tolerance that may inform tolerance of cancer are microbial infection and placental reproduction. These states of tolerance result from bilateral shaping of host and non‐self, akin to immunoediting in cancer, and offer reliable models to study the immune tolerance paradigm. (shrink)

The past decade has seen major movements and mobilizations against the new crop of bilateral free trade and investment agreements being pursued by governments in the wake of the failure of global (World Trade Organization) and regional (e.g. Free Trade Area of the Americas) negotiations, and the defeat of an attempted Multilateral Agreement on Investment in the 1990s. However, in spite of much scholarly, non-governmental organization (NGO) and activist focus on transnational global justice activism, many of these movements, (...) such as the major multi-sectoral popular struggle over the recently-concluded US-Korea Free Trade Agreement, are hardly acknowledged in North America and Europe. With a shift in emphasis pushing liberalization and deregulation of trade and investment increasingly favouring lower-profile bilateral agreements, this article maps the resistance movements to these latest shifts in global free market capitalist relations and discusses the disconnect between these (mainly Southern) struggles and dominant scholarly and NGO conceptions of global justice and the global justice movement as well as questions of knowledge production arising from these movements. (shrink)

Although the neural systems that underlie spoken language are well-known, how they adapt to evolving social cues during natural conversations remains an unanswered question. In this work we investigate the neural correlates of face-to-face conversations between two individuals using functional near infrared spectroscopy and acoustical analyses of concurrent audio recordings. Nineteen pairs of healthy adults engaged in live discussions on two controversial topics where their opinions were either in agreement or disagreement. Participants were matched according to their a priori opinions (...) on these topics as assessed by questionnaire. Acoustic measures of the recorded speech including the fundamental frequency range, median fundamental frequency, syllable rate, and acoustic energy were elevated during disagreement relative to agreement. Consistent with both the a priori opinion ratings and the acoustic findings, neural activity associated with long-range functional networks, rather than the canonical language areas, was also differentiated by the two conditions. Specifically, the frontoparietal system including bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, left supramarginal gyrus, angular gyrus, and superior temporal gyrus showed increased activity while talking during disagreement. In contrast, talking during agreement was characterized by increased activity in a social and attention network including right supramarginal gyrus, bilateral frontal eye-fields, and left frontopolar regions. Further, these social and visual attention networks were more synchronous across brains during agreement than disagreement. Rather than localized modulation of the canonical language system, these findings are most consistent with a model of distributed and adaptive language-related processes including cross-brain neural coupling that serves dynamic verbal exchanges. (shrink)

We introduce agreement reducibility and highlight its major features. Given subsets A and B of, we write if there is a total computable function satisfying for all,.We shall discuss the central role plays in this reducibility and its connection to strong‐hyper‐hyper‐immunity. We shall also compare agreement reducibility to other well‐known reducibilities, in particular s1‐ and s‐reducibility. We came upon this reducibility while studying the computable reducibility of a class of equivalence relations on based on set‐agreement. We end by describing (...) the origin of agreement reducibility and presenting some results in that context. (shrink)

ASEAN agricultural workers represent one of the most vulnerable groups of workers regardless of citizenship. While bilateral agreements focus on general migration governance mechanisms, the specifics of agricultural workers’ rights and protections fall outside their scope. Due to the seasonal nature of cross-border agriculture, these are flexible precarious workers readily available to employers in the borderlands that often do not invest in worker health and social security. The Article reveals how foreign migrant agricultural workers with and without work (...) permits continue to fall between the gaps of national labor protection laws, due to both legal structural exclusions as well as the particular vulnerabilities of being noncitizen workers in remote, unsafe workplaces. This Article documents some of the developments during 20172019 in migrant employment in export cash crops. The next challenge for the future is developing mechanisms for bilateralism to lower migration costs, with a commitment to genuinely safe migration, as well as the establishment of long-term equitable working conditions for all migrant workers. The major findings demonstrate how the two main reasons for the discrepancies between the BLA and labor protections have to do with the noninterventionist approach of ASEAN and a series of technical exclusions in Thailand’s labor law and regulation. (shrink)

We would like to thank each of the commentators on our feature article for their thoughtful engagement with our arguments. All the commentaries raise important questions about our proposed justification for natural immunity exemptions to COVID-19 vaccine mandates. Thankfully, for some of the points raised, we can simply signal our agreement. For instance, Reiss is correct to highlight that our article did not address the important US-centric considerations she helpfully raises and fruitfully discusses. We also agree with Williams about (...) the need to provide a clear rationale for mandates, and to obtain different kinds of data in support of possible policies.Unfortunately, we lack the space to engage with every one of the more critical comments raised in this rich set of commentaries; as such, in this response, we shall focus on a discussion of hybrid immunity, which underlies a number of different arguments evident in the commentaries, before concluding with some reflections responding to Lipsitch’s concern about the appropriate standard of proof in this context. (shrink)

In the history of relations between the Argentinean government and the Holy See, two ideas are permanently intertwined: signing the Concordat and defending national patronage. The changes that occurred in the 1960s indicated that exercising the right of patronage, based on the principles outlined in the Constitution, was impossible, and the peaceful establishment of the principles of bilateral relations could only be indicated through an international agreement. The Concordat signed by Argentina in 1966 removed the national patronage, but the (...) changes to the content of the Constitution were introduced only in 1994. The aim of the study is to show the concordat agreement concluded in 1966 by Argentina with the Holy See as an example of an international agreement. The main focus is the presentation of concordat standards for the institution of patronage. Due to the subject and purpose of the study, the work uses methods typical of social sciences in the legal science discipline. The dogmatic-legal method is the basis for consideration of the Concordat as a source of Argentine law, and as an auxiliary method, the historical-legal method was used to show the historical background of the presented issue. (shrink)

The United States' pursuit of increasingly TRIPS-Plus levels of intellectual property protection for medicines in bilateral and regional trade agreements is well recognized. Less so, however, are U.S. efforts through these agreements to influence and constrain the pharmaceutical coverage programs of its trading partners. Although arguably unsuccessful in the Australia- U.S. Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA), the U.S. nevertheless succeeded in its bilateral FTA with South Korea (KORUS) in establishing prescriptive provisions pertaining to the operation of coverage (...) and reimbursement programs for medicines and medical devices, which have the potential to adversely impact future access in that country. More recently, draft texts leaked from the current Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) negotiations show that U.S. objectives include not only AUSFTA-Plus and KORUS-Plus IP provisions but also ambitious inroads into the domestic health programs of its TPPA partners. This highlights the apparent conflict between trade goals — pursued through multilateral legal instruments to promote economic “health”— and public health objectives, such as the development of treatments for neglected diseases, the pursuit of efficiency and equity in priority setting, and the procurement of medicines at prices that reflect their therapeutic value and facilitate affordable access. (shrink)

The United States’ pursuit of increasingly TRIPS-Plus levels of intellectual property protection for medicines in bilateral and regional trade agreements is well recognized. Less so, however, are U.S. efforts through these agreements, to directly influence and constrain the pharmaceutical coverage programs of its trading partners. The pursuit of increasing levels of intellectual property protection in successive bilateral and regional trade agreements has been driven, at least in part, by a U.S. desire to achieve standards of (...) protection it anticipated from the TRIPS Agreement, but failed to secure. Despite the conclusion of a global agreement on IP standards that would establish significant protections in countries that had hitherto declined them, the U.S. pharmaceutical industry viewed TRIPS as falling well short of its objectives — particularly in light of the delayed introduction of patent protection in countries that are key suppliers of generic medicines, such as India. (shrink)

This book examines the labour standards provisions in a number of Regional and Bilateral Trade Agreements, and assesses the potential of using the relevant clauses in these trade agreements as a benchmark for a multilateral approach. Based on the lessons learned from the Regional model, the book proposes a Global Labour and Trade Framework Agreement (GLTFA) combined with a joint ILO/WTO enforcement mechanism to resolve the contentious issue of the link between the CLS and international trade. The (...) history of the linkage between the Core Labour Standards (CLS) and international trade dates back roughly 150 years, and has recently become one of the most vexing issues facing policy-makers. At the heart of the debate is the question whether or not trade sanctions should be imposed on countries that do not respect the CLS as embodied in multilateral conventions administered by the International Labour Organization (ILO). Concretely, this would entail inserting a social clause in the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, and would trigger the imposition of sanctions on those countries that do not adhere to the CLS. Kofi Addo is a policy advisor to the Board of Governors of the International Baccalaureate Organisation. He holds a PhD in law from the University of Bern, Switzerland.. (shrink)

Labor migration is often regulated internationally through bilateral treaties signed between states, determining the conditions under which migrants from one state may travel to the other state and reside there in order to work. These instruments are sometimes designated as memoranda of understanding and regarded as nonbinding agreements. Many remain unpublished and undisclosed. This Article assesses these design choices critically. It considers the interaction between bilateralism, obscurity and nonbindingness. It evaluates and rejects possible justifications for obscurity and nonbindingness. (...) Finally, it argues that these design choices should be resisted. Since bilateral labor agreements do not regulate strictly the bilateral relationship between two states, but rather create rights and obligations for various third-party individuals, they should be required to meet a rule of law requirement of transparency. (shrink)

In this Article we seek to shift the focus from the texts of bilateral labor agreements to the context of their emergence and materialization. We argue that to study BLAs and evaluate their consequences and potential relevance, they must be read from the perspective of processes of institutionalization that shape the paths of different agreements. In Israel, a cross-sectoral comparison of the agricultural and construction sectors reveals that different agreements did not follow the same path and (...) institutionalization process. The Israel-Thailand agreements for the agricultural sector and the agreements regulating migration to the construction sector did not generate similar dynamics of institutionalization. In both sectors, BLAs transformed recruitment practices and led to a sharp decrease of illicit migration costs extracted in the process. Yet due to differences in the structure of the sectors and the expected skill level of workers, significant variations remain, most notably in the effect of BLAs on the permit and quota system and in the rise of paths to import labor outside BLAs. Based on this cross-sectoral comparison, we offer in this Article a grounded analytical perspective for examining and evaluating BLAs in context. In discussing our suggestions, we will project our analysis to the more recent agreement covering the live-in care sector that is currently the largest employing sector of guest-workers in Israel. (shrink)

The concept of international strategic litigation for the defense of Venezuela is analyzed against the 2018 Guyana lawsuit before the International Court of Justice-ICJ. Evading the agreement in Article IV of the 1966 Geneva Agreement, it attempts to validate the Paris Arbitration Award of 1899, which was rejected by Guyana and Venezuela. The claim is inadmissible because the bilateral ways to resolve the territorial conflict have not been exhausted, the ICJ lacks jurisdiction and the Geneva Agreement is distorted. Scenarios (...) are analyzed for Venezuela to participate or not in the litigation, highlighting the convenience of a peaceful, practical and satisfactory settlement for the Parties. (shrink)

The coherence of general good turns out to conflict with the widely accepted Pareto principle. This chapter explains the conflict and resolves it in favour of coherence. It also presents an example of a head‐on collision between coherence and the Pareto principle. The example relies on an auxiliary assumption, but one that is very plausible. The principle of personal good is immune to the difficulty raised by the probability agreement theorem. The theorem presents welfare economics with a dilemma: it must (...) abandon either the coherence of social preferences or else the traditional Pareto principle. Either way, it will have to repudiate Harsanyi's theorem. The ex‐ante school of welfare economists abandons coherence. This is the best established school. The ex‐ante school cleaves to the traditional Pareto principle. Consequently, it has to accept incoherent social preferences. (shrink)

Wide agreement exists that self-ascriptions that one would express with the first-person pronoun differ in kind from those one would express with other self-designating expressions such as proper names and definite descriptions. At least some first-person self-ascriptions, many argue, are nonaccidental---that is, they involve no self-identification, and hence in making them one cannot accidentally misidentify the subject of the ascription. I examine the support for this claim throughout the literature, paying particular attention to Sydney Shoemaker's proposal that self-ascriptions are nonaccidental (...) in virtue of being immune to error through misidentification relative to the first-person pronoun. According to Shoemaker, such immunity results from the special way in which one is introspectively aware of the psychological property or state ascribed, a way that leaves no room for questions to arise as to whether oneself is its bearer. I contend that though it may seem from the point of view of consciousness that we are directly and immediately aware of the states of our bodies and minds as our own, both theoretical and empirical considerations strongly suggests that we have no such direct awareness. Proprioception and introspection prove in the end to be better described as types of informed, conscious self-interpretation. Taking inspiration from Dennett, Rosenthal, and Nozick, I offer the naive proposal as an alternative that explains all self-ascriptions in terms of one's relying upon a battery of commonsense self-specifying beliefs to interpret both which state or property one has and who has it. As a result, first-person self-ascriptions differ from others only in degree and not in kind, and self-misidentification always remains a possibility---even when self-ascribing properties with the first-person pronoun. (shrink)

There is widespread agreement that while on a Dummettian theory of meaning the justified logic is intuitionist, as its constants are governed by harmonious rules of inference, the situation is reversed on Huw Price's bilateralist account, where meanings are specified in terms of primitive speech acts assertion and denial. In bilateral logics, the rules for classical negation are in harmony. However, as it is possible to construct an intuitionist bilateral logic with harmonious rules, there is no formal argument (...) against intuitionism from the bilateralist perspective. Price gives an informal argument for classical negation based on a pragmatic notion of belief, characterised in terms of the differences they make to speakers' actions. The main part of this paper puts Price's argument under close scrutiny by regimenting it and isolating principles Price is committed to. It is shown that Price should draw a distinction between A or ¬A making a difference. According to Price, if A makes a difference to us, we treat it as decidable. This material allows the intuitionist to block Price's argument. Abandoning classical logic also brings advantages, as within intuitionist logic there is a precise meaning to what it might mean to treat A as decidable: it is to assume A ∨ ¬A. (shrink)

The transition economy of Vietnam enjoyed remarkable achievements in the first 20 years of economic renovation (Doi Moi) from 1986 to 2006. Notably, the economy grew at an average annual rate of 7.5% in 1991-2000 period. Vietnam’s Amended Constitution 1992 recognized the role of private sector in the economy. U.S.-Vietnam Trade Bilateral Agreement (US-BTA) was signed in 2001. The country's stock market made debut trading in 2000. Vietnam became a member of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 1995, (...) then proceeded to full membership of the World Trade Organization in 2007, following which registered foreign direct investment (FDI) reached an all-time high of US$71.7 billion in 2008. Together with the impressive economic achievements, Vietnam also saw its diplomatic and political status constantly improved in the international arena. The country has established diplomatic relations with more than 170 countries in the world, strategic partnerships with 12 important economies, both developed and emerging, namely China, Japan, Russia, India, England, France, North Korea, Italy, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. The country also successfully hosted important events including the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in 2006. (shrink)

Critics of international trade agreements often cast them as threats to human health, and they can point to some sobering warnings from world history. Infectious diseases have swept across political boundaries, carried by traders, colonists, and other agents of globalization. Transnational epidemics have laid economies low, undermining political stability. The spread of viruses and bacteria to peoples previously unexposed and therefore lacking immunity has decimated populations and changed the political course of continents. Trade, exploration, and warfare have repeatedly (...) produced encounters between peoples at different levels of agricultural and technological development. Often, the results have been devastating for the disadvantaged group — economic marginalization, loss of sovereignty and culture, and collapse of public health. Yet the rise of civilization — plant and animal domestication, division of labor, technology, and resulting prosperity — was powered in large part by movement of products and knowledge along routes of trade and migration. (shrink)

Critics of international trade agreements often cast them as threats to human health, and they can point to some sobering warnings from world history. Infectious diseases have swept across political boundaries, carried by traders, colonists, and other agents of globalization. Transnational epidemics have laid economies low, undermining political stability. The spread of viruses and bacteria to peoples previously unexposed and therefore lacking immunity has decimated populations and changed the political course of continents. Trade, exploration, and warfare have repeatedly (...) produced encounters between peoples at different levels of agricultural and technological development. Often, the results have been devastating for the disadvantaged group — economic marginalization, loss of sovereignty and culture, and collapse of public health. Yet the rise of civilization — plant and animal domestication, division of labor, technology, and resulting prosperity — was powered in large part by movement of products and knowledge along routes of trade and migration. (shrink)

Baptism has been a focus of significant discussion in the ecumenical movement, as the different churches seek a common understanding of Baptism, with the goal of mutual recognition. The Orthodox Church has been involved in these conversations from the beginning. The present article is an attempt to trace the participation of the Orthodox representatives in these dialogues on Baptism, both at the level of the World Council of Churches and in bilateral dialogues. It explains the Orthodox understanding of Baptism (...) as a Sacrament, how this understanding is reflected (or not) in ecumenical agreements on Baptism. It will also review official Orthodox responses to some of these agreements. The author attempts to demonstrate that the Orthodox Church’s contributions to these sometimes-difficult dialogues have shown a commitment to seeking a common understanding of Baptism. Finally, this paper will examine the present state of ecumenical dialogue on Baptism, and evaluate its prospects for the future. (shrink)

One-third of all human lives end in early death from poverty-related causes. Most of these premature deaths are avoidable through global institutional reforms that would eradicate extreme poverty. Many are also avoidable through global health-system reform that would make medical knowledge freely available as a global public good. The rules should be redesigned so that the development of any new drug is rewarded in proportion to its impact on the global disease burden (not through monopoly rents). This reform would bring (...) drug prices down worldwide close to their marginal cost of production and would powerfully stimulate pharmaceutical research into currently neglected diseases concentrated among the poor. Its feasibility shows that the existing medical-patent regime (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights—TRIPS—as supplemented by bilateral agreements) is severely unjust—and its imposition a human-rights violation on account of the avoidable mortality and morbidity it foreseeably produces. (shrink)

The 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol are the main legal documents governing the movement of refugee and asylum seekers across international borders. As the number of displaced persons seeking refuge has reached unprecedented numbers, states have resorted to measures to circumvent their obligations under the Convention. These range from bilateral agreements condemning refugees to their vessels at sea to the excision of certain territories from national jurisdiction. While socio-economic developments and the rise of the worldwide web (...) have led to deterritorialization of vast domains of the economy and the media which enable them to escape from state control, territorial presence, whether on terra firma or on vessels at sea which are functional surrogates for territorial sovereignty, continues to be the basis for the entitlement to human and citizens’ rights. We are facing a dual movement of deterritorialization and territorialization at once, both of which threaten the end of the 1951 Convention. This article is an exercise in non-ideal theory which, nonetheless, has implications for a seminal question in ideal democratic theory as to how to define and justify the boundaries of the demos. If the demos refers to the constitutional subject of a self-determining entity in whose name sovereignty is exercised, regimes of sovereignty, including those which govern the movement of peoples across borders, define the prerogatives as well as obligations of such sovereign entities under international law. The period ushered in by the 1951 Convention was such a sovereignty regime which today may be nearing its end. (shrink)

The relationship between the neurobiology of speech and music has been investigated for more than a century. There remains no widespread agreement regarding how (or to what extent) music perception utilizes the neural circuitry that is engaged in speech processing, particularly at the cortical level. Prominent models such as Patel’s Shared Syntactic Integration Resource Hypothesis (SSIRH) and Koelsch’s neurocognitive model of music perception suggest a high degree of overlap, particularly in the frontal lobe, but also perhaps more distinct representations in (...) the temporal lobe with hemispheric asymmetries. The present meta-analysis study used activation likelihood estimate analyses to identify the brain regions consistently activated for music as compared to speech across the functional neuroimaging (fMRI and PET) literature. Eighty music and 91 speech neuroimaging studies of healthy adult control subjects were analyzed. Peak activations reported in the music and speech studies were divided into four paradigm categories: passive listening, discrimination tasks, error/anomaly detection tasks and memory-related tasks. We then compared activation likelihood estimates within each category for music versus speech, and each music condition with passive listening. We found that listening to music and to speech preferentially activate distinct temporo-parietal bilateral cortical networks. We also found music and speech to have shared resources in the left pars opercularis but speech-specific resources in the left pars triangularis. The extent to which music recruited speech-activated frontal resources was modulated by task. While there are certainly limitations to meta-analysis techniques particularly regarding sensitivity, this work suggests that the extent of shared resources between speech and music may be task-dependent and highlights the need to consider how task effects may be affecting conclusions regarding the neurobiology of speech and music. (shrink)

Forgiveness and reconciliation are central to moral life; after all, everyone will be wronged by others and will then face the dual decisions of whether to forgive and whether to reconcile. It is therefore important that we have a clear analysis of each, as well as a thoroughly articulated understanding of how they relate to and differ from each other. -/- Forgiveness has received considerably more attention in the Western philosophical literature than has reconciliation. In this paper I aim to (...) give it the attention it deserves and develop an account of interpersonal reconciliation. On my view reconciliation is fundamentally bilateral (whereas forgiveness is fundamentally unilateral). It entails transparency and agreement between the wrongdoer and the victim as to the nature of a past wrong or set of wrongs. And, it requires that moral repair be made between the two parties (which entails that both parties bear proper attitudes towards each other). In making my case I contrast reconciliation with toleration and collaboration, in order to demonstrate that reconciliation also entails forgiveness (though forgiveness does not entail reconciliation). (shrink)

New York Times best-selling author offers a groundbreaking approach to activate the subconscious brain to set yourself free from your past and create a terrific future. Can you remember a time in your life when you felt absolutely confident, happy, and free? Imagine what your life would be like if you could live in that space... In this book, Dr. Mike Dow shares a groundbreaking, life-changing program he created: Subconscious Visualization Technique (SVT). Now, if you think the subconscious brain is (...) some woo-woo pseudoscience, prepare to have your mind blown. The cutting-edge research, protocol, and audio tracks Mike offers will help you speak directly to your subconscious brain and tap into your greatest strengths, gifts, and resources. His program, the first of its kind, starts with cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), then incorporates various types of subconscious tools: mindfulness, guided visualization, audio-visual entrainment, and bilateral stimulation of the brain and body. Your subconscious can change the way you digest food, help you access memories and repressed feelings, boost your immune system, and activate mindbody healing so that you don't have to constantly treat your symptoms. Some examples of syndromes that SVT can treat include chronic pain, fibromyalgia, leaky gut, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), migraines, anxiety disorders, and more! SVT helps you access the best parts of yourself and move into your true self. In short, your subconscious brain can change your life!" -- ONIX annotation. (shrink)

Indonesia is recognized as a nurse exporting country, with policies that encourage nursing professionals to emigrate abroad. This includes the country’s adoption of international principles attempting to protect Indonesian nurses that emigrate as well as the country’s own participation in a bilateral trade and investment agreement, known as the Indonesia–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement that facilitates Indonesian nurse migration to Japan. Despite the potential trade and employment benefits from sending nurses abroad under the Indonesia–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement, Indonesia itself is (...) suffering from a crisis in nursing capacity and ensuring adequate healthcare access for its own populations. This represents a distinct challenge for Indonesia in appropriately balancing domestic health workforce needs, employment, and training opportunities for Indonesian nurses, and the need to acknowledge the rights of nurses to freely migrate abroad. Hence, this article reviews the complex operational and ethical issues associated with Indonesian health worker migration under the Indonesia–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement. It also introduces a policy proposal to improve performance of the Indonesia–Japan Economic Partnership Agreement and better align it with international principles focused on equitable health worker migration. (shrink)

Modern public-health initiatives in industrialized countries revolve around immunization against contagious diseases. The practice of engendering immunity against disease through disease first emerged in Western European social and medical landscapes in the eighteenth century as inoculation, based on the imported Middle Eastern practice of ‘engrafting’. By the nineteenth century, this practice had evolved into the procedure of vaccination, in the first instance directed against smallpox. Popular and academic narratives thus often categorize inoculation as a procedure from the Middle East (...) which was transformed into the truly scientific procedure of vaccination by English and French knowledge. This characterization has obscured the complex traditions of intellectual exchange between English and French networks and Middle Eastern societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article examines these networks in order to show how knowledge was transformed as it circulated between communities during this period. Both Western Europeans and Egyptians across different social hierarchies translated foreign or new medical practices according to the needs of their knowledge and goals, creating cycles of adoption and adaptation. This exploration of inoculation and vaccination furthers our understanding of the bilateral translation processes ingrained in the global circulation of knowledge. (shrink)

According to the cluster of theories in the metaphysics of properties known as ‘trope’ theories, properties are collections of particular qualitative instances. Though increasingly influential, the cluster is sufficiently diverse for there to be little agreement as to the prospects of its members. The present essay articulates and defends a conception of tropes as primitively qualitatively complex, somewhat in the vein of Quinean nominalist objects. After clarifying the relationships among tropes, properties, property exemplification, and property conferral, the essay discusses the (...) benefits of this new ‘ostrich’ trope theory. Specifically, the theory explains better than prior trope theories both the spatiotemporal status of tropes and the capacity tropes have to confer properties onto objects. Moreover, the theory is immune to many of the concerns that threaten more orthodox trope ontologies. (shrink)

Begining from the Paleolithic Period cultures, the Danube has hosted a society and a state. The Danube river, which is the source of life for the states living in the Danube basin, has become more strategic with the growth and spread of the states and has become the key to existence in these lands. The Danube, which was used only for drinking water and agricultural irrigation in the Middle Ages, has become the main tool of trade in time. It has (...) been replaced by modern boats, starting with the transportation made by backing up from the shore with horse-drawn carriages over the Danube. The process of sharing dominance in the waterway has been the main target in the management of the Danube. It is possible to evaluate the process of managing the navigation in the Danube in four periods. The first period is the period of bilateral agreements between 1792 and before; the second term, the commission period, which started with the Paris Peace Conference of 1856 and continued between the 1920s and the First World War, which was planned for a short time but whose mandate was extended several times; the third period, efforts to internationalize the Danube from 1920 to the Second World War; the fourth period is the internationalization process of the Danube. However, there is no legal document in which the Danube states, which have agreed for the management of navigation for centuries, have made an agreement on the prevention, control and disposal of ship-borne pollution. (shrink)

Some disagreements seem to be persistent: they are, pretty much, immune to persuasive argumentation. If that is the case, how can they be overcome? Can argumentation help us? I propose that to overcome persistent disagreements through argumentation, we need a dynamic and pluralistic version of argumentation. Therefore, I propose that argumentation, more than a tool that uses persuasion to change the mind of the counterpart, is a toolbox that contains persuasion, deliberation, negotiation, and other dialogical strategies that can be used (...) to reach an agreement. (shrink)

The importance of prescription drugs to modern medical practice, coupled with their increasing costs, has strengthened imperatives for national health policies that ensure safety and quality, facilitate affordable access, and promote rational use. Australia has made universal and affordable prescription drug coverage a priority for decades, within a policy framework that emphasizes equity and increasing transparency in coverage design and payment decisions. By contrast, the U.S. lacks such a national policy. Furthermore, federal Medicare reforms aimed at making appropriate drug coverage (...) affordable and accessible employs two icons of the U.S. perception of fairness - the right to choose and the right to challenge coverage design limits - that mask the limited nature of the assistance. As the U.S. seeks to impose its values and priorities on other nations through the negotiation of bilateral and regional trade agreements, it becomes important to consider the two national experiences, in order to avoid trading illusory notions of fairness for true population equity. (shrink)

As a rising power, China has become actively involved in regional bilateral/multilateral arrangements in the post-Cold War, especially post-crisis (1997– 98 financial crises) era, and this has attracted much attention from within and outside East Asia. Diverse understandings of China's regional ambition have appeared, especially since the launch of the China-ASEAN free trade agreement (FTA). Aiming at deciphering the ideas behind China's regional thinking, this paper argues that China's perspective on regionalism is a broadened economic regionalism, which is basically (...) economic-centered, because economic performance is vital both to its long-term strategic target and to its internal social stability. This economic regionalism will last for some time because China will be a developing country at least in the mid-term, which means China will have to focus more on its economic performance. In practice, China will engage bilaterally or multilaterally with others through its FTA strategy. Thus, China cannot be a main contributor to East Asian integration as expected, owing to the inward-looking nature of its economic regionalism. Also, the institutional integration of East Asia needs the effort of all the players in the region. (shrink)

Besides classical issues of parliamentary control and pressure groups' influence, coordination between ministers and administrations involved in foreign policy making and harmonization of national foreign policy with external cultural relations led by the french, flemish and german Communities are the major problems belgian foreign policy making has to cope with.Divergences on options or heterogeneity of functional missions require arbitration and cooperative procedures provided by foreign affairs ministerial comitee at the governmental level. Competition for leading role and confrontation of functional paradigms (...) foster «bureaucratic politics» between services. European affairs constitues a major issue for bureaucratic coordination.Attribution to the Communities of assessment power to cultural agreements and reservation to national government of the treaty making power let arise a kind of illogism and a conflict of competences that pragmatic concertation tends to get round.As to parliamentary control, it consists in a greater influence of majority's deputies than in an effective opposition's countervailing power to amend coalition foreign policy. So play pressure groups a role in influencing bilateral much more than multilateral affairs. (shrink)

BackgroundThe global interest in developing therapies for Ebola infection management and its prevention is laudable. However the plan to conduct an emergency immunization program specifically for healthcare workers using experimental vaccines raises some ethical concerns. This paper shares perspectives on these concerns and suggests how some of them may best be addressed.DiscussionThe recruitment of healthcare workers for Ebola vaccine research has challenges. It could result in coercion of initially dissenting healthcare workers to assist in the management of EVD infected persons (...) due to mistaken beliefs that the vaccine offers protection. It could also affect equity and justice. For example, where people who are not skilled health care professionals but who provide care to patients infected with Ebola are not prioritized for vaccination. The possibility of study participants contracting Ebola infection despite the use of experimental vaccine, and the standard of care they would receive, needs to be addressed clearly, transparently and formalized as part of the ethics review process. Future access to study products in view of current status of the TRIPS agreement needs to be addressed. Finally, broad stakeholder engagement at local, regional and international levels needs to be promoted using available communication channels to engage local, regional and international support. These same concerns are applicable for current and future epidemics.SummarySuccessful Ebola vaccine development research requires concerted efforts at public dialogue to address misconceptions, equity and justice in participant selection, and honest discussions about risks, benefits and future access. Public dialogue about Ebola vaccine research plans is crucial and should be conducted by trusted locals and negotiated between communities, researchers and ethics committees in research study sites. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Justice, Language and Hume: A Reply to Matthew Kramer James Allan How much reliance, in David Hume's convention-based picture ofthe origins ofjustice, needstobe placed on apre-existingcommon language amongst the various participants? Matthew Kramer has argued that Hume's story of the passage "from the hostilities of nature to the serenity of civilized Ufe"1 is, in effect, incoherent. It is incoherent, Kramer asserts, because "language must be in place already" (Kramer, (...) 148) in order for family groups tojoin together into larger social units by means of Humean convention. In other words, Kramer takes the view that a commonlanguage is needed amongst all the players for thé gradual establishment ofjustice by human conventions to be possible. But it is just this very thing, a relatively sophisticated common language, that can only be achieved after the establishment of the larger societal unit. Kramer therefore sees Hume's account of the origins of justice as, at best, paradoxical because "the founding of a societal unit can take place only if such a unit has already been founded" (Kramer, 149). This article shall be concerned to defend, against the thrust of Kramer's attack, the broad outlines2 of Hume's story of the origins of justice in book 3 of the Treatise. At any rate, I will argue that Hume's explicitlyahistorical accountis coherent? Butinmakingthis argument I shall be careful to place Hume's account of justice in its proper perspective. It must be recalled that Hume was attempting to explain all ofhuman morals, aesthetics and virtues in a scientific way. In this scheme,justice—for him, the stability ofpossessions or the basic rules of property—was the pre-eminent "artificial" virtue. As we shall see, no interpretation ofHume's account ofthe escape tojustice can ignore his wider concern, to explain empirically human nature and conduct. Let us start, however, with a bare summary of Kramer's thesis. Firstly, Kramer sets out Hume's core position. Justice (basic rules of property) and thus society result from the re-directing ofself-love. The process does not rely on agreement and is thus immune from one ofthe main criticisms of social contract theories (that is, how to explain the bindingness of a first ever contract).4 Rather, Hume's account is of justice emerging ever so gradually from reciprocal conventions. Where small family living is "natural"—some original or inherent Volume XVII Number 2 81 JAMES ALLAN principle—life in society is created by convention. In this sensejustice is "artificial." Secondly, two critiques of Hume's position are considered and found, by Kramer, ultimately to be unsuccessful. The first is the weakness noted above and common toall social contract analyses: from where does the bindingness of a first contract come? But Hume explicitly rejected contractarian theories as Kramer allows. Hume's conventional theory "is not of the nature of a promise:... it arises gradually, and acquires force by a slow progression, and by our repeated experience of the inconveniences of transgressing it."5 The second critique which Kramer finds abortive, and to which I shall return below, involves the role of reason in the creation of justice. Primitive reflection based on already experienced events, impressions or ideas would not be sufficient to overcome avid self-interest.6 But in response to this attack Kramer retorts that it is at most inconclusive whether the experiences of family life combined with reason could overcome self-interest on Hume's model. Thirdly, Krameroffers his own critique in the hope ofshowing that "Hume's story disrupts itself when it narrates certain events that cannot possiblymaterialize until theyhave already occurred" (Kramer, 143). Kramer's attack on the Humean conventional move tojustice, as indicated above, concentrates on language. But it is well to note carefully Kramer's interpretation of Hume's account of the building of stable, society-wide property rules. Kramer takes this to be that, "[a]s a result ofcrude reflection and the restraints offamily life, most people come to realize that a persistent demand for goods can be better filled within society than without it" (Kramer, 147; emphasis mine). Thus, says Kramer, the first step, temporally, is a rational deduction. After reason has alerted us to... (shrink)

The United Nations Scientific, Education and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has commenced drafting a Universal Bioethics Declaration. Some in the relevant UNESCO drafting committee have previously desired to restrict its content to general principles concerning the application (but not necessarily the goals) of science and technology. As potentially a crucial agenda-setting statement of global bioethics, however, it is arguably important the Universal Bioethics Declaration transparently address major bioethical dilemmas in the field of public health, such as universal access to affordable, essential (...) medicines. Article 13 (Social Responsibility) of the Preliminary Draft Universal Bioethics Declaration states: ‘Any decision or practice shall ensure that progress in science and technology contributes, wherever possible, to the common good, including the achievement of goals such as: (i) access to quality health care and essential medicines, including for reproductive health and the health of children.’Cost effectiveness pricing systems, such as that most notably used in Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), arguably represent one of the most scientifically effective mechanisms whereby public monies may be utilised to assist in the provision of medicines for the common good. They contain two essential elements: first, a process of scientific evaluation of objectively demonstrated therapeutic significance, and then, a fiscal lever (the government reimbursement price) attached to that evaluation.It is now well established that the US Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers Association (Pharma), through the assistance of the US Trade Representative (USTR), saw the Australia United States Free Trade Agreement (AUSFTA) as an opportunity to fulfill a legislative mandate to ‘eliminate ’ the cost-effectiveness pricing system in Australia’s PBS. One of the most remarkable features of the arguments raised against the PBS in this context was the fact that they made almost no reference to the normative discourse of bioethics or international human rights. Provisions such as Article 13 in UNESCO’s Universal Bioethics Declaration, although they will create no immediate obligations under international law, may play an extremely valuable role in legitimising the use of bioethical and human rights concepts in access to medicines debates surrounding multilateral and bilateral international trade deals such as the AUSFTA. (shrink)

The debate whether property is a limit on or the product of sovereignty envisages a tension between “the individual owner” and “the state.” But “the state” is not more than the aggregate of individuals who define theirs and others’ property rights through the state’s political process. The underlying tension between property and sovereignty is thus the tension between the economic market and the political market. Owners and others compete simultaneously at both levels to define, protect or improve the value of (...) property. There are two ways to compete in the political marketplace: by engaging in either “high visibility politics” or “low visibility politics.” Diffuse owners rely on high visibility politics promoted by agents such as political parties or trade unions and on elections, referenda and the like, whereas smaller groups of owners prefer the low politics of capturing lawmakers and state executives. When economic markets became global at the end of the Cold War, so did the political markets: property rights increasingly became defined by international agreements, by decisions of international organizations, and by the exercise of “low politics” in foreign, weaker states. The global political markets were dominated by the executive branches of a handful of relatively strong states that, in turn, were responsive to the “low politics” of special interests. The high transaction costs of cooperation among diffuse owners inhibited the parallel rise of “high politics” at the global level. The skewed global political market for property continues to favor special interests, but there are budding attempts to reclaim the space for “high politics” by national regulators and courts. Current negotiations over the so-called “Mega Regional” agreements between the United States and its trading partners will, if successful, nip these buds as they render certain property rights almost immune to the subsequent challenges of high politics. (shrink)

The German problem dominated among the priorities of the Polish diplomacy after 1960. The stalemate was broken by the visit of the Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz in Vienna in September 1965. Józef Cyrankiewicz’s visit in Austria highlighted new possibilities in Austrian-Polish relations. The old policy of Minister Adam Rapacki had been conceived in a difficult period and had no impact on the international environment. The article aims to characterises of the conditions for developing Polish-Austrian relations in the late 60s. The (...) articles poses several questions: how far policy towards Germany stimulated relations with Austria and how Polish authorities saw the possibilities of economic cooperation with Vienna and finally how they prepared for this cooperation. The difficult economic situation in Poland required resuming cooperation with the West. The meeting in Vienna developed further bilateral relations in a very positive way. The Minister Bruno Kreisky recognized in the Polish government both a partner and a neighbour to cooperate. Cyrankiewicz’s visit launched the ratification processes of many bilateral agreements which developed trade in the Eastern Europe. (shrink)

The dominant image of courts as agencies of trial and judgment has a long history in the common law world. Yet across that region sponsorship of settlement is now widely identified as the courts’ primary responsibility, transforming them into sites where the profoundly different rationalities that ground negotiated agreement increasingly supersede those of rule-based adjudication. This study examines the work of one English court—the Mayor's and City of London Court—in sponsoring settlement and considers how that role is legitimated on both (...) propositional and symbolic levels. This evolving role raises questions about the Victorian court premises themselves. How are we to regard the now frequently empty courtrooms, designed for trial and judgment and decorated with Gothic elevations linking them symbolically with processes of medieval kingship? Should we simply see this Victorian site of contemporary settlement processes as no more than the quaint residue of a vanished era? Or can these historic features retain potency and relevance at a symbolic level, providing legitimacy for bilateral negotiation rather than the open processes of trial and judgment for which they were originally constructed? (shrink)