Documents found
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1101.More information
This article aims to demonstrate that despite the international community's best efforts to eradicate slavery and slavery-like practices, such as forced labour, these phenomenons are still on the rise today. It will be shown that sweatshop conditions, in the worst of cases, fit the definition of modern forms of slavery and slavery-like practices. Moreover, it will be demonstrated that voluntary measures adopted by multinational corporations are insufficient and more coercive measures need to be taken. Indeed, as submitting workers to sweatshop conditions can amount to the committing of an international crime, corporations and Corporate Executive Officers engaging in these practices should be prosecuted for doing so. This article seeks to demonstrate that the eradication of sweatshops could be achieved by using concepts developed by international criminal law. Additionally, other countries could adopt national measures (like the U.S.A.'s ATCA and RICO) in order to avoid problems raised by corporate structure, as well as adequately compensate the victims of sweatshop labour.
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1102.More information
The choice of international bioprospecting agreements and free market based solution, as means of implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) goals relating to the conservation of biodiversity and access and benefit sharing, may reveal in many respects harmful to southern players, specially indigenous communities. In practice, because of the unequal bargaining strength of the parties, these bilateral agreements may be easily exploited by the most powerful part to become a tool of biopiracy. This is the case when the conditions of the CBD regarding prior informed consent and fair and equitable benefit sharing are not complied with. In all cases, these agreements cannot protect traditional knowledge from biopiracy in a satisfactory way nor be a reliable alternative to a multilateral compulsory system as that advocated today by the countries of the South within the framework of the Council for the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) working group relating to the review of the provisions of TRIPs Agreement.
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1103.More information
States members of the international community can exercise universal jurisdiction over serious crimes under international law. However, we can imagine that a State cannot exercise universal jurisdiction if it violates immunities enjoyed by senior State officials. It seems to us that the principle of immunity of senior State officials cannot prevent a national court to prosecute the suspect who committed serious crimes under international law. Jus cogens crimes cannot be considered as acts jure imperii. To this end, jus cogens crimes such as crimes against humanity and war crimes, cannot be considered as the functions of a head of State or a head of government. It seems that a conflict between the superior peremptory norms and the ordinary rules of immunity would result in the prevailing of the former over the latter. In cases of jus cogens crimes, States are not bound by the ordinary rules of immunity of senior State officials. In this context, the immunity of senior State officials in office cannot prevent the Forum State to exercise universal jurisdiction in order to protect the general interests of the international community as a whole.
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1104.More information
When the British took possession of Canada in 1759, they introduced fly fishing, a practice that was then unknown in the St. Lawrence Valley. Military officers stationed at Québec City began by frequenting nearby salmon rivers, before exploring the fabulous waterways of the North Shore, and later the Bay of Chaleur. The advent of industrialization and intensive forestry activities put the health of the rivers at risk and threatened the very survival of fish stocks. That is when the governments of Canada and Québec put in place various legislative measures with the goal of safeguarding what had become a paradise for line fishing. This is how highly elitist rod and gun clubs became institutionalized in 1885. The system created then was only abolished in 1978. Since that time, the fishing territory has been adequately and responsibly administered through the creation of reserves and national parks, as well as controlled operating areas managed by local residents.
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1106.More information
Writing without writing: from language to the digital age is a patchwork of essays by the conceptual poet Kenneth Goldsmith dealing with artistic and literary creation in a digital world. The thirteen chapters of this French translation by François Bon attempts to illustrate such concepts as non-original genius, re-appropriation and recycling through examples drawn from art and literature : Lawrence Weiner, Henri Chopin, Tan Lin, the Flarf Collective, Christian Bök, Cervantes and Walter Benjamin, among others. In the following lines, we will put forward Goldsmith’s central question : the impermanence of language, or of any form of identification of the symbol to its meaning. In the digital age, if words appear as undifferentiated garbage meant to be reused again and again in other contexts, then we can assert that this recycling processus is necessary for the emergence of the unpremeditated beauty of the “protocol literature” as advocated by Goldsmith.