The responsibility to protect and Australian foreign policy

It is widely recognised that the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP), adopted by heads of state and government in 2005, is an important new international principle. Australia has been one of the principle's most significant contributors, with prominent Australians and governments from both sides of politics contributing to its development, emergence, and implementation. This article traces and explains Australia's contribution to RtoP and asks what more it might do to assist in its implementation. It argues that Australia's commitment to RtoP is informed by a synergy of values and interests and has been strengthened by the Rudd government's reengagement with multilateralism. It concludes by calling for the development of a whole-of-government strategy for implementation and by suggesting some policy avenues that might be considered.     

A special responsibility to protect: the UK,Australia and the rise of Islamic State

In the summer of 2014 Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) emerged as a threat to the Iraqi people. This article asks whether the UK and Australia had a ‘special’ responsibility to protect (R2P) those being threatened. It focuses on two middle‐ranking powers (as opposed to the US) in order to highlight the significance of special responsibilities that flow only from the principle of reparation rather than capability. The article contends that despite casting their response in terms of a general responsibility, the UK and Australia did indeed bear a special responsibility based on this principle. Rather than making the argument that the 2003 coalition that invaded Iraq created ISIS, it is argued that it is the vulnerable position in which Iraqis were placed as a consequence of the invasion that grounds the UK and Australia's special responsibility to protect. The article addresses the claim that the UK and Australia were not culpable because they did not act negligently or recklessly in 2003 by drawing on Tony Honoré's concept of ‘outcome responsibility’. The finding of a special responsibility is significant because it is often thought of as being more demanding than a general responsibility. In this context, the article further argues that the response of these two states falls short of reasonable moral expectations. This does not mean the UK and Australia should be doing more militarily. R2P does not begin and end with military action. Rather the article argues that the special responsibility to protect can be discharged through humanitarian aid and a more generous asylum policy.     

Geopolitics and visuality: Sighting the Darfur conflict

In the many considerations of visual culture in geography, there are few works concerned with the visual culture of contemporary geopolitics. In seeking to rectify this lacuna, this paper outlines elements of a research project to consider the way visuality is a pivotal assemblage in the production of contemporary geopolitics. Signalling the need for a conceptual exploration of the importance of vision and visuality to all forms of knowledge (rather than just those associated with or manifested in specific visual artefacts like pictures), the paper argues that understanding the significance of visuality for geopolitics involves recasting visual culture as visual economy. This enables the constitutive relations of geopolitics and visuality to shift from the social construction of the visual field to the visual performance of the social field. This argument is illustrated through an examination of some of the documentary photography and photojournalism covering the most recent outbreak of war in Darfur, Sudan, beginning in the summer of 2003. Exploring the tension in these pictures between the established disaster iconography of ‘Africa’ and the desire to image genocidal violence and war crimes, considering in particular the way photography captures identity, the argument concludes with reflections on the way the visual performance of the social field that is Darfur structures our encounters with others.     

考古资料所见简帛时代书籍装具

为了收存和保护书籍,中国古代发明了各式各样的装具。简帛时代经常使用箧(竹笥)作为装具,讲究一些的用漆奁。传世文献中对简帛时代的书籍装具记载不多,自二十世纪以来,战国秦汉墓葬出土了很多简帛书籍,其中有不少在出土时伴随装具遗存或包裹织物的残迹。由于这些书籍装具遗存大都腐朽过甚,有的甚至属于盗掘品,原来的装具仅存残片,而且相关信息分散于诸多整理简报中,不易寻踪,除了个别发现曾引起书籍装具研究者的注意外,大多数材料则未能进入书籍史研究者的视野。本文收集历年发现的简帛书籍装具资料,按照竹笥、漆奁和帙三类分别梳理,结合传世文献记载,分析、总结简帛时代书籍装具的特点及其对书籍保护的意义,同时希望引起书籍史和古籍保护研究者对这部分资料的关注。     

Land Rights under Stress in Darfur: A Volatile Dynamic of the Conflict

Abstract

The aggravation of land rights over time in Darfur was a primary factor in the initiation of the conflict, and has emerged as a particularly dif?cult set of issues in the search for viable peace. While the prospect of being able to keep land acquired in course of the conflict was a primary factor in recruitment for the Janjaweed, it came on the heels of a set of changes in the environment, land use and population patterns, institutions, law and governance that produced a highly unwieldy and volatile land rights scenario. This article explores the role of land tenure in the Darfur conflict, examining the aggravation of rights, custom, and law over time, and then focusing on two of the primary war-related tenure problems currently facing Darfur — use of land rights as tools of belligerence, and the land dispossession — secondary occupation problem.     

Constituencies of conflict and opportunity: Land rights,narratives and collective action in Darfur

Grievance-based narratives are a primary component of civil wars. While present among the general population affected by conflict, the variants held by the segment of the population most proximate to the armed factions – constituencies – play a primary role in the development and conduct of a conflict. Such narratives can coalesce around specific volatile issues and enable non-combatant constituencies to participate in the conflict through the use of specific 'legalities' or legal precepts. These legalities facilitate the engagement of sets of collective action that are opposed to those derived by constituencies of the opposing side. However such constituencies and their narratives are also where potential opportunity resides for peace-building, both during and subsequent to hostilities. This article looks at the case of Darfur to examine these ingredients, with a focus on land rights as the volatile set of issues around which narratives have developed. In Darfur, opposed narratives which maintain how and why groups claim and deserve access to land and territory, and how groups were unjustly displaced or excluded from lands (and hence power), became solidified and acted upon prior to the conflict to become a primary driver in the current war. In certain cases however narrative change has led to interaction between members of opposed constituencies for the purpose of exploring cooperative arrangements.     

谈东京城、东京陵的开发与保护

本就辽阳东京城、东京陵两处后金物的问题,提出“开发旅游资源、带动经济发晨、促进物保护”观点。一、概述了两处物的基本情况和重要的历史价值;二、从开发旅游资源角度分析了开发两处物的有利条件;三、提出在坚持保护物的前提下,深入提示历史化内涵,科学合理地增设旅游服务项目,做到物保护与旅游开发协调发展的规划设想和几个原则。     

呵护我们的过去就是保护我们的未来

天灾和人祸,如影子一样一直伴随着人类短暂的明史。劫后余存不多的化遗产,作为人类之所以为人的历史印迹,我们应该珍之、宝之、爱之,永远爱惜它、保护它。然而,现实中不时发生的损毁、糟蹋物古迹的事件,总让我们这些明的后代羞愧难当,无颜再见列祖列宗。     

Cultural identity and political responsibility

Abstract

The Cultural Industries Quarter (CIQ) in Sheffield was set up in 1981 as a local government initiative. At the time this was regarded as an extraordinary, either brave or foolish, use of public money. This paper argues that the development of the CIQ over 20 years has been adversely affected by early decisions made before cultural quarters were commonplace. Left-wing politics focusing on job creation and a climate of reliance of public funding encouraged the CIQ to develop according to a particularly narrow model of cultural regeneration. Later, a lack of leadership among the public funders discouraged diversification from this model, while elsewhere cultural quarters embraced a broader mix of social and economic activity, leaving the Sheffield experiment as something of a dinosaur. The paper seeks to analyse what mistakes were made, their effects, and what now can be done to update and enliven the Sheffield Quarter.     

我的可可西里我用所有守护你--可可西里国家级自然保护区巡护工作缩写

“把你们的证件都交出来!”和藏族小伙子闹布东周相处1个多月来,这是我第一次听到他嗓门这么大。在他面前并排站着的,是非法闯入可可西里无人区的27名游客。平时满脸笑容的他,此刻已经愤怒到青筋暴露。为了抓捕这27人,他头一天晚上在车里待了整整一个通宵。和他一起守在车里的,还有另外两名巡山队员--尼玛扎西、巴义尔。     

论制度问责与提升政府执行力

行政问责制在我国正从权力问责向制度问责转变。进一步革除权力问责的诸多弊端,努力完善现代政府的行政问责制度,则是破解我国政府执行力低效的重要举措。