Ce nouveau corpus « Éclairages » est le fruit d'une mise en réseau internationale de chercheuses en sciences sociales, autour du lieu d'échanges et de réflexions VisaGe : Violences fondées sur le genre, données, santé, jeux d'échelles. L'ouvrage donne à voir dans leurs dimensions les plus actuelles et les plus localisées certaines des opérations de reconnaissance des violences vécues par les femmes les filles, par les dissident.es de l'ordre hétéro-normé, par les défenseuses des droits humains. Il rappelle l'importance, dans un contexte où les prises de conscience récentes paraissent saturer l'espace médiatique, de préserver une approche historique et une documentation de première main. Le corpus portant sur l'Amérique latine, nous avons mêlé les langues française et espagnole dans l'économie générale de l'ouvrage.
Nous avons voulu, avec ce livre, créer un espace de connaissance autour de la thématique genre et développement, apporter des outils de réflexion aux femmes francophones, et aux hommes bien évidemment, et cela dans un esprit d'ouverture envers nos devancières - anglaises, américaines, latino-américaines - qui ont repris des concepts féministes ou en ont forgé de nouveaux pour les adapter aux situations spécifiques créées par les politiques et les projets de développement : repères intellectuels pour toutes celles et tous ceux qui cherchent, avec bonne volonté, à comprendre la formidable complexité du développement afin que leur action soit plus efficace, plus complète, et non plus source de distorsions socioéconomiques préjudiciables à tous, ou pire, source de détresses matérielles et psychologiques.
Avec la fuite du Dalaï-Lama en mars 1959, commence pour une partie du peuple tibétain un exil forcé qui se perpétue aujourd'hui. Exil où l'Inde occupe d'emblée une place singulière : terre d'accueil du Dalaï-Lama, qui y a installé le siège de son gouvernement en exil, elle est à la fois le pays qui abrite le plus grand nombre de réfugiés tibétains - un peu plus de 100'000 sur 145'000 au total - et le pays où s'est constitué le mouvement nationaliste tibétain de l'exil. Ainsi se pose la question des rapports entre le nationalisme et l'exil chez les réfugiés tibétains en Inde, partant de l'hypothèse classique que l'exil a pour effet d'accentuer le sentiment nationaliste des exilés. À quoi ressemble ce nationalisme ? Quel est l'impact de l'Inde sur le mouvement nationaliste tibétain ? Et comment les réfugiés, à commencer par le premier d'entre eux, le Dalaï-Lama, conçoivent-ils la nation tibétaine ? Celle-ci revêt-elle une forme particulière parce qu'elle se développe en exil ? En Inde ? Telles sont les principales interrogations auxquelles ce livre se propose de répondre.
La question de la démocratisation des régimes arabes est au coeur des débats théoriques depuis les années 1990. Tantôt elle met en évidence les leviers potentiels de la démocratie, tantôt elle dénonce le jeu des régimes autoritaires « améliorés ». Quelle est la spécificité du régime syrien ? Comment comprendre l'émergence de la « société civile » dans l'espace public syrien ? Quelles stratégies le pouvoir a-t-il développé par rapport aux organisations non gouvernementales ? Ces stratégies reflètent-elle une évolution du gouvernement en Syrie ? Cette étude - fruit d'un travail de terrain - contribue à éclairer la trajectoire de la Syrie dans le contexte actuel des révolutions arabes. "A l'heure où les relations entre société civile et autoritarisme sont au coeur des débats dans le monde arabe, cette publication offre à la fois une excellente synthèse théorique de ces questions, tout en révélant les résultats d'une enquête de terrain de plusieurs mois. Sur le plan scientifique, son analyse nous permet de mieux comprendre les événements en Syrie en présentant une recherche très documentée sur un aspect crucial de la politique du régime al-Assad. Toutefois, cette analyse va au-delà du cas syrien, en démontant les impasses de l'autoritarisme, largement remis en question dans cette région par le «printemps arabe»..." (lire la suite) Professeur Riccardo Bocco.
L'augmentation de 0,74o Celsius de la température moyenne depuis la fin du XIXe siècle a déjà provoqué des changements écologiques importants dans la biosphère. Une des conséquences du réchauffement climatique est l'élévation du niveau de la mer. Le point le plus haut de Tuvalu, un petit Etat polynésien formé de neuf atolls, se situe seulement à 4 mètres au-dessus du niveau de la mer et, d'ici 2050, Tuvalu pourrait disparaître des suites de la montée des océans. Cette situation pose de nombreux problèmes juridiques, dont le plus évident est la disparition du territoire d'un Etat souverain.
Vale do Ribeira, the largest reserve of Atlantic Rainforest in Brazil, is home to quilombola and caiçara communities. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), in Geneva, is responsible for regulating intellectual property rights. What can possibly connect these places? In both, narratives around the meaning of indigenous knowledges and their protection are being constructed and negotiated. Aiming to produce an ethnography of global connection, this work looks at (dis)connections between these two spaces. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation, it analyzes the creation of legal categories related to indigenous peoples and local communities in the international arena, as well as at the points of articulation between the international and the local realm. The analysis demonstrates how articulation and dispossession have been key to creating the discussion in both spheres. The conclusion indicates that the narrative of protection of indigenous knowledge through intellectual property rights emerges through friction and is just one narrative among others. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the Vahabzadeh Foundation for financially supporting the publication of best works by young researchers of the Graduate Institute, giving a priority to those who have been awarded academic prizes for their master's dissertations.
This ePaper, History and Memory: lessons from the Holocaust, presents the original text of the Leçon inaugurale delivered by Professor Saul Friedländer on 23 September 2014 at the Maison de la Paix, which marked the opening of the academic year of the Graduate Institute, Geneva. The lecture highlights an original analysis of the evolution of German memory since the end of World War II and its consequences on the writing of history. Generations of historians have been particularly marked in a differentiated manner, depending on their personal proximity to the war, but also on collective representations conveyed by film and television in a globalised world. Saul Friedländer is Emeritus Professor at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for his book The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945. In 1963, he received his PhD from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, where he taught until 1988.
This paper examines the ambivalent influence of the UN Security Council's practice on the development of international refugee protection since the early 1990s. While the international refugee protection regime did not originally foresee a role for the Security Council, the increasingly complex security challenges in the post-Cold War era have led to its de facto inclusion in the institutional framework of protection. After having used its wide discretionary powers under the UN Charter to link refugee flows with its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, the Security Council thus began to strengthen different aspects of international refugee protection. Mariano Garcia Rubio Prize 2009 for the best Master's Thesis in International Law. A revised version of Part 3 of this ePaper was published as C. Ahlborn, `The Normative Erosion of International Refugee Protection through UN Security Council Practice', (2011) 24 Leiden Journal of International Law, pp 1009-1027. The views reflected in this paper are personal and do not necessarily reflect those of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies.
This work aims to shed light on the evolution of the Lebanese political arena after the withdrawal of Syrian troops in April 2005 by analyzing the perceptions of Hizballah among members of the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), as the alliance between the two groups enters its fourth year. Hizballah is generally well portrayed among FPM members although the two constituencies have very few elements in common. Different backgrounds, confessions, political views and cultural traits distinguish them.
This ePaper explores the endeavours and motivations of the leading figures of the Japanese Red Cross Society, which forms the streams of the Red Cross Movement that get overshadowed in the Eurocentric narrative of its history. Using various primary sources from archives and studying the historical context of the time, the paper highlights how the main protagonists with similar backgrounds to the founders of the International Committee of the Red Cross proactively sought to establish and develop the movement both at the national and international level from 1867 to 1919. Moreover, a close examination of their backgrounds as well as their thoughts as expressed in their writings suggests that their motivations to engage in Red Cross work were multiple and in part, if not entirely, shaped by various needs to fulfil their own desire and sense of obligation. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the Vahabzadeh Foundation for financially supporting the publication of best works by young researchers of the Graduate Institute, giving a priority to those who have been awarded academic prizes for their master's dissertations.
Since the mid-19th century military powers and various writers have tried to define the notion of belligerent occupation and, in particular, the beginning thereof. There are many situations in which a state of occupation is controversial or even denied. When is control so effective that an invasion turns into a state of belligerent occupation? What is the minimum area of a territory that can be occupied; a town, a hamlet, a house or what about a hill taken by the armed forces? This paper examines what seems to be an important gap of the Fourth Geneva Convention: contrary to the Hague Regulations of 1907 it does not provide a definition of belligerent occupation. It is argued that the Fourth Geneva Convention follows its own rules of applicability and that therefore the provisions relative to occupied territories apply in accordance with the "functional beginning" of belligerent occupation approach from the moment that a protected person finds him or herself in the hands of the enemy. Henry Dunant Prize 2010 from the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights (ADH Geneva)
Rédigée pendant l'enquête de la Commission et alors que se dessinaient les contours du Tribunal spécial pour le Liban, cette étude retrace d'abord l'évolution du mandat de l'UNIIIC ainsi que les aléas de son enquête entre le 14 février 2005 et la fin du mandat de la Commission le 28 février 2009. Plus prospective, la deuxième partie de l'analyse est consacrée au Tribunal spécial pour le Liban et explore les principales questions d'ordre juridique que soulèvent le Statut du Tribunal et le mode de mise en oeuvre pour le moins surprenant de cette nouvelle juridiction. Le présent travail a obtenu le Prix de l'Association des fonctionnaires internationaux suisses (AFIS) 2008.
Autrefois décidées dans la seule sphère étatique, les politiques d'immigration et d'asile connaissent depuis la fin des années 1980 un processus d'européanisation. Bien qu'incomplet, celui-ci devient néanmoins une réalité observable dans les législations, les pratiques et les discours. Parmi les acteurs concernés par ces changements figurent les associations nationales de défense des étrangers. Dans cette nouvelle « gouvernance multiniveaux », comment ces associations s'adaptent-elles ? Ce eCahier envisage les évolutions stratégiques, idéologiques et structurelles des associations françaises. Celles-ci intègrent les dispositions de l'européanisation, soit pour les contester, soit pour les utiliser face à l'Etat. Ce dernier demeure en effet la cible et le référent principal des mobilisations. Léa Breton montre également que ces questions peuvent être reliées d'une manière plus large à certains aspects évolutifs de la notion de politique et d'espace public européen.
This ePaper investigates the Straits Chinese community and their positioning relative to the British Empire and the Chinese Empire around 1900. It studies their responses to and interactions with the transition from a world of empires to a world of nation-states. The Straits Chinese are framed as a cosmopolitan community in a cosmopolitan city who played an important role in the reconfiguration of imperial citizenship and the deterritorialisation of China. Through their own and others' adoption of racial discourses, they found themselves in a double bind, not quite Chinese and not quite British. This shaped their encounter with early Chinese nationalism. Consequently, this paper disrupts the teleology of decolonisation and demonstrates how the transformations taking place in the international system in the early twentieth century relegated certain communities to the margins by virtue of their `in-between' position. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the Vahabzadeh Foundation for financially supporting the publication of best works by young researchers of the Graduate Institute, giving a priority to those who have been awarded academic prizes for their master's dissertations.
The story broke in 2006: Since 9/11, US intelligence services have had access to practically any international money transfer data by infiltrating the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) network. Banks worldwide transfer money orders and personal customer data through this network. While the surveillance was all-embracing in 2001, it was gradually limited over the course of the last few years. Revealed by the New York Times, the SWIFT affair has had global as well as national implications. While this dissertation first examines the international dimension of the SWIFT surveillance, the analysis mainly focuses on the national repercussions for Switzerland. Arditi Prize 2010 in International Affairs.
South Sudan is undergoing a process of internationally-supported state building of which decentralisation forms part. For the people, decentralisation is understood as a right to self-rule based on native-stranger dichotomies and as a means of appropriating and incorporating an abstract and distant state into the local context. The South Sudanese government, in contrast, sees decentralisation primarily as a tool for service delivery and development. Conversely, the international community, in its desire to guarantee international stability through the creation of Western-style states all over the world, sees decentralisation as one tool in the state-building toolbox. These different interpretations of decentralization may not only lead to misunderstandings, but different groups and different ways of understanding decentralisation have interacted throughout history, and attempts to impose a particular understanding on other actors continue. Annina Aeberli examines this hybridisation of state `decentralisation' and argues that the international community and the government cannot and should not try to ignore people's understandings and expectations: a state - in whatever form - always depends on the acceptance of the people.
L'étude des risques est aujourd'hui en plein essor. Un regard nouveau est porté sur des problématiques anciennes, notamment celles liées à l'ordre social, au pouvoir, aux inégalités, à la pauvreté, ou encore aux rapports Nord/Sud. Cette évolution est par ailleurs concomitante avec l'augmentation de la vulnérabilité aux aléas et conséquemment des catastrophes, désormais considérée comme un problème de développement au Sud comme au Nord. S'inscrivant dans ce renouveau des études sur les risques et les catastrophes, Fabien Nathan s'est intéressé aux communautés pauvres et indigènes des quartiers périphériques de La Paz. Pourquoi une grande partie de leurs habitants sont-ils exposés aux aléas naturels (glissements de terrain, coulées de boue...) ? Comment ces aléas se transforment-ils en catastrophes (non naturelles) ? Il interroge également la manière dont les habitants vivent avec le risque et construisent leur résilience pour vivre mieux, dans des situations que les observateurs extérieurs pourraient souvent qualifier d'insoutenables ou d'irrationnelles. Pour comprendre ces « faits sociaux totaux » que sont les risques, l'auteur remonte à leurs causes et dévoile le processus de leur construction à travers le temps et l'espace. Son livre ne se limite pas à une ethnographie détaillée de quartiers vulnérables ; il contribue également à repenser les relations mutuelles entre aléas naturels et systèmes sociaux, notamment à travers des concepts tels que la régulation sociale des risques, l'apprivoisement des peurs ou encore les stratégies de perception. Studies on Risk and Vulnerability are increasing at a rapid rate. This field of research sheds new light on old paradigms such as social order, power, inequality and poverty as well as on North-South relations. Its expansion is linked to increased vulnerability to hazards and the subsequent rise in disasters, now considered as development problems in both the North and South. This book forms part of the new stream of risk and disaster studies by focusing on poor indigenous communities in the suburbs of La Paz. It seeks to understand and explain why so many of the local inhabitants are exposed to natural hazards (landslides, mudslides), which sometimes transform into "unnatural" disasters. It also examines how they learn to live with risk, building resilience to live better lives, even in situations that external observers would qualify as unsustainable or irrational. By seeking to understand risks as "total social facts", the author returns to their origins, revealing the way in which they have formed over time and place. The book does not restrict itself to a detailed ethnography of vulnerable neighborhoods. It also contributes to rethinking the mutual relationship between natural hazards and social systems. Concepts such as social regulation of risks, taming of fear, perception strategy as well as many more are explored.
"It's not so much what you agree upon, what you write on paper, but something intangible that in the end determines the success of political cooperation," stated the leader of the Uganda People's Congress Dr. Olara Otunnu. Hoping to put an end to the dominant-party system of Uganda - where President Yoweri Museveni and his National Resistance Movement had ruled since 1986 - in 2008, four parties of the opposition gathered under the banner of the Inter-Party Cooperation (IPC). Their intention was to field a single candidate for the 2011 general election, but the IPC collapsed five months before the election day. Through an analysis of official documents, media reports and primary data obtained from interviews with party leaders, this ePaper examines the dynamics of the negotiations which led to the formation and collapse of this coalition. It argues that the claims by party leaders that the coalition fell because of disagreements over whether or not to participate in the elections are but a veil to cover the much deeper relationship issues between coalition members, in which the real explanation for the IPC's demise lies. Through identifying common grounds between former coalition members, this ePaper proposes new avenues for further cooperation between opposition parties. Among the several lessons to be drawn from the IPC's downfall, the author emphasises the need for confidence building measures, in order to deal with the underlying feelings of mistrust among members.
Ce livre porte sur les pratiques discursives relatives à l'identité européenne dans la décennie précédant l'adoption de la Déclaration sur l'identité européenne de décembre 1973. Sophie Huber démontre que le discours sur l'identité européenne ne naît pas avec la Déclaration de 1973, mais s'ancre, dès 1962, dans un effort des responsables nationaux et communautaires européens pour redéfinir l'image de l'Europe communautaire face aux interrogations des pays tiers. Cet effort de redéfinition, non coordonné, s'articule alors en grande partie autour d'une dynamique de différentiation entre l'Europe communautaire et l'Europe des nations qui la précède, l'Europe et l'Amérique, l'Europe et l'Est et l'Europe et le Tiers Monde. De cet effort naissent des - et non un seul - discours d'auto-identification que la recherche interroge par le biais d'une analyse discursive. "It adds an important new piece to the puzzle of (and academic debate on) EU identity." Frank Schimmelfennig, Professor of European Politics.
High levels of crime and violence in Central America's northern triangle are a major preoccupation of politicians, policy-makers and citizens. Public authorities in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala have sought repressive measures to increase public safety and to contain such violence, for which youth gangs (maras) are principally held responsible. Substantiated by interviews with key stakeholders in Geneva, Switzerland, this desk review offers a comprehensive understanding of the motivations and the intended effects behind the suppressive strategies of the respective governments. Viewing the gang phenomenon through the lens of securitization theory allows for a new understanding of how the maras are dealt with. This paper also traces how the concerned states have shaped a certain construction of these gangs and reveals a blurred line between the political and the security sectors. The analysis finds that interests other than combatting a security threat, as well as the particular historical and societal contexts of the three countries, decisively influence how the maras issue is addressed.
Cross-cultural interactions take place every day in contemporary Afghanistan between locals and the thousands of foreigners working in the country as diplomats, officials from international organisations and humanitarian aid workers. As their work requires them to interact with Afghans in manifold ways, all foreigners are, at least indirectly, required to negotiate. Karrer's ePaper sheds light on the cross-cultural issues likely to contribute to the difficulties encountered by the international community in negotiating with Afghans, as well as for Afghans negotiating with foreigners. Through an analysis of academic literature, Karrer broadly outlines selected elements of Pashtun, in contrast to Western, negotiation culture, discusses the extent to which this negotiation culture may be attributed to Pashtun tradition, and attempts to highlight the complexity of Afghan negotiation behaviour against the binary indexing predominant in the preconceived cluster of Western cross-cultural negotiation and communication theories. Karrer's research yields some significant insights into the impacts of cross-cultural issues on negotiation. Largely, he finds that current cross-cultural theories fail to provide a solid basis upon which to interpret the reality that exists on the ground in Afghanistan. This Paper draws on a final research work submitted to fulfil the requirements of the Executive Master in International Negotiation and Policy-Making (INP). The views and opinions expressed in this ePaper are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position position of Switzerland's Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA).
Northern Sri Lanka has been at the heart of the country's 30-year civil war, a bloody conflict which has given rise to an estimated 40,000 households headed by women in this region. Based on fieldwork conducted in 10 villages and towns, this ePaper aims to identify and describe the most pervasive economic, physical and psycho-social vulnerabilities that female heads of households (FHHs) in the north face in the post-war context. It also traces how the state has shaped these vulnerabilities through its pursuit of a national security agenda under the guise of "reconstruction." The response strategies that FHHs have deployed in response to these vulnerabilities range from the creation of innovative livelihood opportunities to acts of "everyday politics" that contest the structures of patriarchy and state-led domination which attempt to marginalize the diversity of FHHs' stories, hardships and responses. These findings suggest that, rather than being passive victims of socio-political manipulation and oppression, FHHs are highly vulnerable but active agents in their own lives. Though inevitably influenced by unequal power relations and gendered norms, through their response strategies, they also contest the narrow identities constructed for Tamil women and their simplistic portrayal as either "powerless victims" or "empowered warriors".
After six decades of protracted refugeehood, patterns of social identification are changing among the young people of the fourth refugee generation in the Palestinian refugee camp Burj al-Shamali in Southern Lebanon. Though their identity as Palestinian refugees remains the same compared to older refugee generations, there is an important shift in the young refugees' relationship towards the homeland, their status as refugees, Islam, the camp society, as well as in their relationship towards religious or ethnic "others" in and outside Lebanon. This ePaper examines how technology, globalisation and outside influences have impacted the young Palestinians' interpretation of their identity and their understanding of Palestinianness. The author concludes with reflections on the young refugees' attitudes towards their Palestinian identity in the diaspora, which, as she argues, can only survive when the young refugees see their identity as a virtue rather than as a hindrance.
How did two radically different legal cultures, those of the Ottomans and the Chinese, gradually acquire a legal architecture analogous to that of Europe? This Paper attempts to answer this question by providing a comparative study in legal history of the rise and demise of extraterritorial consular jurisdiction, utilizing a post-colonial and inter-disciplinary approach to international law. The study reveals that the establishment of consular jurisdiction during the nineteenth century was closely linked to the process of legal `modernization' that affected many Asian and Arab societies. As such, this study contributes to the explanation of the gradual convergence of many non-Western traditional legal cultures with typically continental legal structures. This ePaper provides an in-depth analysis of the origin, further development and termination of this controversial institution of public international law as applied to the Ottoman Empire and China. Mariano Garcia Rubio Prize 2013 in International Law.
