Smoking bans for private vehicles: children's rights and children's voices

Smoking bans have recently expanded to private vehicles in which children are present. This study considers the place of children's rights and children's voices in this policy initiative, with respect to the Canadian context, where vehicular smoking bans have been widely adopted. First, we examine print media reports, finding children's right to health was acknowledged less frequently than an array of competing adult rights. Children's voices were largely absent from the record. Second, we report on focus groups involving 23 young people in Edmonton, Alberta, highlighting participants' strong support for bans, based on their knowledge of health harms, aversion to smoke, and awareness that children have limited ability to contest adult authority in vehicles. We conclude that vehicular smoking bans may address the situation whereby children are forced to share an unhealthy environment, in breach of their rights.     

The adult North and the young South: Reflections on the civilizing mission of children's rights

The civilization of the children of the "savages" in the colonial world was seen as a crucial issue from early on was an inherent part of the colonization project in Africa, America and Oceania in the 19th century. The idea of civilizing "the savages," today's South, through children has continued in the post-colonial era with the development of mass-schooling systems and various child-focused development projects. This has led to an export of internationally defined standards for a "good childhood" through various foreign funded development programs in South. While many NGOs, legitimizing their work on the basis of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), are genuinely working for an improvement of children's conditions, they have also taken on the role as a second guardian in order to cultivate "proper" children and parents who can live up to the supposedly universal ideals of a "good childhood." The article adopts a critical view on the child rights movement by shedding light on the crucial role, which NGOs play as civilizing institutions in the South. The article specifically draws attention to the double-sided patronization of children and parents, and "infantilization" of nations in South, which implicitly lies beneath CRC and the child rights movement.     

The children's crusade of 1212

The touching story of innocent children setting out to recover the Holy Sepulchre but suffering a tragic fate was becoming a popular legend within half a century of the actual expedition. Linguistic and social analysis, however, suggests that the crusaders of 1212 were not children, but rather were poor persons on the margins of rural society who were thoroughly imbued with the ideals of the cult of apostolic poverty. They believed that after the failure of the armed crusades, God had judged the powers of this world unworthy to rescue the holy places, and had instead made the poor a divine elect to accomplish this task.     

The future regnum Hierusalem. A chapter in medieval state planning

At the turn of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century a large number of treatises was written on an envisaged crusade. Most of those treatises, classified as De recuperatione Terrae Sanctae memoranda, also expressed ideas about the way in which society and government should be organized in the future kingdom in the Holy Land, when the crusade which they advocated had successfuly accomplished its aim. This image of the new state and society has not yet received scholarly attention. Its examination shows that it was above all based on an acute analysis of ‘Outremer’ and especially of its ills. These state planners were moved by two motives: to eliminate the weaknesses of the former kingdom of Jerusalem on the one hand, and on the other to create an ideal Christian state in the Levant.     

The future regnum Hierusalem. A chapter in medieval state planning

At the turn of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century a large number of treatises was written on an envisaged crusade. Most of those treatises, classified as De recuperatione Terrae Sanctae memoranda, also expressed ideas about the way in which society and government should be organized in the future kingdom in the Holy Land, when the crusade which they advocated had successfuly accomplished its aim. This image of the new state and society has not yet received scholarly attention. Its examination shows that it was above all based on an acute analysis of ‘Outremer’ and especially of its ills. These state planners were moved by two motives: to eliminate the weaknesses of the former kingdom of Jerusalem on the one hand, and on the other to create an ideal Christian state in the Levant.     

The development of the chapter of the diocese of Exeter 1050–1161

At the same time as Bishop Leofric (1046–1072) transferred the seat of his cathedral from Crediton to Exeter in 1050, he introduced the rule of Chrodegang as the basis for the government of his church. The rule itself, therefore, is the best guide to the way the canons lived during Leofric's episcopate. During the episcopates of Leofric's successors (Osbern 1072–1103, William Warelwast 1107–1138, Robert I 1138–1155, Robert II 1155–1160) evidence from a variety of sources allows us to perceive some changes in the administration of the rule and aspects of the development of the chapter. It is with these changes and developments that this paper is concerned.     

The dark side of human rights1

Edmund Burke argued that abstract or universal rights to food and medicine were less valuable than the aid of ‘the farmer and the physician’. His point remains unanswered. Human rights receive universal lip service, but their status and justification remain murky. From one view they are universal requirements matched by counterpart universal obligations: but if so they cannot be defined or created by international Covenants. From another view they are defined by convention and have force only when states ratify international Covenants: but if so, they are not universal. This matters particularly for rights to goods and services, such as rights to food and health care. These rights require the active collaboration of those who are to deliver needed goods and services: yet this active engagement is endangered by imposing overly complex requirements in the name of compliance with human rights. Excessive demands for compliance, and excessive emphasis on complaint, compensation and blame as remedies for non‐compliance, endanger the effective contribution of the farmer and the physician, and of others on whom the provision of needed goods and services most depends.     

The nationalisation of the human rights debate in Egypt

ABSTRACT. The study of nationalism in Egypt has often focused on Arab nationalism and its relevance to the post‐colonial state building process. The current article shifts the focus to the Egyptian state's strategic use of nationalism as a mechanism for survival and for shoring up its failing legitimacy. In particular, the case of the human rights debate is chosen to show the regime's most recent attempt to ‘nationalise’ a rising movement which promotes universalism and poses a threat to the notion of the nation's homogeneity. By misrepresenting human rights organisations as mouthpieces of Western imperialist powers, the regime has managed to create an image of these organisations as posing a threat to Egypt's national security and undermining its international ‘reputation’. More recently, however, the state has refined its discourse on human rights by promoting an image whereby it is the ‘official agent’ of a more nationalistically defined human rights movement.     

The Search for the 1871 Whaling Fleet of the Western Arctic: writing the final chapter

During 2015, the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries led a systematic seabed mapping survey along the Arctic coast of Alaska in search of whaling ships abandoned in 1871. The purpose of the expedition was to determine if wreckage from these abandoned ships was still present in the survey area, and, if so, to assess and document its location, status and condition. The project mapped approximately 50 km² of seabed using sidescan sonar and magnetometry and identified six sites that contained wreckage from at least two whaling ships. Magnetometry data also suggested that additional wreckage may be buried in the seabed.