Search Results

This work is an attempt to capture the changing role of green spaces and structure of cities they lead through the soil, taken here in both its horizontal, land component, and in its verticality, living entity. The soil is the support for parks, a major land tenure issue, but also a social and environmental investment. The study focuses on an average size town, Tours, characterized as a green city and more precisely on Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, a leafy and wealthy suburb, filled with green spaces, most of them privately owned. Based on interviews with associations, residents and city officials, this research shows that individual gardens are the mediators between soil, users and municipality. The spatial practices of residents in the gardens are at the heart of their relationship to the soil as a living entity. Representations of nature that motivate them are mostly that of a recreational area where the soil is seen as a constraint leading to a variety of adapted strategies.

Keywords: sol, banlieue, nature, paysage, jardins, parcs, trame verte, biodiversité, représentations, pratiques, soil, suburb, nature, landscape, parks, gardens, green structure, biodiversity, perception, practices

Ecological solidarity is one of the fundamental principles of the 2006 law reforming French national parks and the 2016 law on biodiversity, nature and landscapes. In order to make an assessment of the appropriation of this principle in protected areas in France, we explore the use of the term solidarity by national parks and regional nature parks by a textual analysis of their charters. We question the relationship between the use of the three registers of solidarity (ecological, social and economic), with the socio-environmental context of the parks and the representations of human-nature relationships conveyed in the charters. The notion of solidarity appears to be mobilized by both park networks, but the types of solidarity as well as the objects on which these solidarities focus differ. Thus, the references to ecological solidarity and to nature are based either on a formalism of conventional, fictional and motivational beliefs or on a principle of integrated territorial management whose putative character of the public and nature participates in the legitimization of the existence of protected areas and their action. We conclude this exploration by questioning the place of the principle of ecological solidarity in the construction of "capable territories" that participate in the ecological, social, economic and energy transition within and beyond the boundaries of protected areas.

Keywords: analyse textuelle, chartes, parcs nationaux, parcs naturels régionaux, solidarité, solidarité écologique, textual analysis, charters, national parks, regional nature parks, solidarity, ecological solidarity

This article analyses the apartment boom in Montreal and adjacent suburbs between 1921 and 1951. It documents the magnitude and geography of the boom, showing the size of apartment buildings, the average value of units, and the occupational and ethnic character of the occupants.In the period of study, two occupation categories are proportionally more present in Montreal apartment buildings, as well as those not employed. At first the majority of apartments were occupied by English Canadians and Eastern Europeans but in some neighbourhoods where apartments were concentrated, such as Outremont, they also attracted the new French Canadian middle class.

Contracts between Indigenous Peoples and Europeans produced legal effects. A question emanates from this conclusion: in what legal category should we classify such contracts? The treaty signed on July 12th, 1884, between two German commercial firms and two Indigenous chiefs of the coast of Cameroon keeps this curiosity alive. At the very least, it serves as a pendant to international public law as well as constitutional law in Cameroon. On the one hand, it establishes, through the correlation between the “ability to act and international personality”, the international law subject classification of the aforementioned actors and, therefore, allows for a reconsideration of the Indigenous Peoples question proclaimed in Cameroon's constitutional order in 1996. On the other hand, the 1884 treaty puts into perspective the notions of sovereignty and territory that were mobilized by the “colonial legality”, during the international administration of the country and later by “constitutional decolonization law”. This dual aspect, subjective and objective, demonstrates the power relations that have presided over the formation of contracts in the timeless legal order and, starting from our research topic, presents relational international law as indebted towards the egalitarian ethic that it is intended to promote.

In times of armed conflict, when self-defence is the act of individuals, it may prove difficult to circumscribe or even distinguish between other neighbouring concepts, namely direct participation in hostilities. While direct participation in hostilities is not expressly prohibited by international humanitarian law, it also isn't a right of civilians, while self-defence can be considered under certain conditions as such a right. Therefore, distinguishing direct participation in hostilities from self-defence of civilians and/or other concepts isn't an easy task, especially on the battlefield. This is due to the fact that self-defence generally, and in principle, operates in a context of illegal violence, whereas direct participation in hostilities, an international humanitarian law (IHL) concept, takes place in a context of authorized, if not legal, violence, at least in compliance with IHL, in most cases. So how can we make the distinction between self-defence of civilians and their direct participation in hostilities? On the basis of the notion of direct participation in hostilities as defined by the International Committee of the Red Cross in its Interpretative Guidance on the Notion of Direct Participation in Hostilities and of the notion of self-defence as defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, we propose a number of criteria as well as a new classification for the acts of civilians during a conflict, after pointing out the difficulties of the distinction, which are exacerbated by the controversies associated with the two main notions of our analysis.

In October 2015, the European Union (EU) launched its Trade for All strategy, which specified that the European Commission would from then on include in its modernized trade agreements a “public investment court system” consisting of a Tribunal of First Instance and an Appeals Tribunal that would operate like traditional courts. An Investment Court System (ICS) has since been integrated into the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement, the EU-Singapore Free Trade Agreement and the EU-Mexico Global Agreement. Is the ICS really a court, as the signatory parties contend? Based on legal and political theory arguments, it appears that the ICS represents a hybrid between arbitration and judicial settlement in international law. More precisely, it represents a further-institutionalized form of investment arbitration. The ICS is based on the bilateral and narrow consent of the disputing parties, adopts the idea of having a neutral representative on the bench (albeit one more distant from the parties in the specific dispute at hand), and is constituted in a way primarily to do justice as between the parties rather than to ensure the consistent development of investment law broadly. It departs from typical arbitral proceedings by incorporating more robust and detailed procedural rules and ethical safeguards for decision-makers, but it falls short of being a full-fledged court.

To diagnose the recent wave of industrial unrest in Canada, it is first of all necessary to indentify its characteristics. The two major dimensions of this phenomenon concern the source of union militancy and its illegal manifestations.

The focus of this paper is on the information disclosed by companies in the private sector to trade unions in North America, with particular reference to Canada.

On the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, this paper analyzes the African contribution to the development of the international legal regime for the protection of children affected by armed conflict. It is argued that the African regional rules aimed at providing protection to children in situations of armed conflict enrich the equivalent rules of international humanitarian law (IHL) and thus provide Africa with an effective legal framework for improving the plight of children affected by armed conflict. In this regard, after noting the absence of an unequivocal definition of the term “child” in IHL, it is demonstrated that the African conventional and customary rules have the advantage of establishing a precise and uniform definition of the term “child”, not without highlighting the positive consequences of this definition for the strengthening of the legal protection of children in armed conflict. Subsequently, a comparison is made between the universal and regional rules of humanitarian law relating to the protection of children and, through a systematic and evolving interpretation, it is demonstrated that the regional rules reaffirm the protections enshrined in the universal rules, while safeguarding their coherence and integrity. Finally, by using a comparative and analytical approach, it is demonstrated that conventional and customary regional rules governing the prohibition of the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict have the merit of being more protective than the equivalent rules of IHL. It is further concluded that the full respect and implementation of these rules could contribute to put an end to the phenomenon of child soldiers in Africa.