scholarly journals Conflict Management, International Parliamentary Assemblies and Small States: The Cases of Georgia and Moldova

Author(s):  
Andrea Gawrich

AbstractThe parliamentary assemblies of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Council of Europe have reputations as bridge-building institutions between western and post-socialist countries. However, territorial disputes between member states pose a challenge to the parliamentary diplomacy of these international parliamentary institutions (IPIs). This article examines how IPIs address conflicts in the cases of two small states facing “frozen” secessionist conflicts, where Russia’s hegemony is involved, namely Georgia with its territorial disputes in South Ossetia and Abkhazia along with Moldova and its secessionist dispute with Transnistria. This contribution unpacks IPI strategies by applying conceptual approaches from parliamentary diplomacy, conflict management and small-states literature, as well as the respective arguments on hegemonic strategies.

2021 ◽  
pp. 100053
Author(s):  
Marie Claire Van Hout ◽  
Charlotte Bigland ◽  
Nina Murray

CADMO ◽  
2009 ◽  
pp. 47-54
Author(s):  
Yulia Pererva

- Since 1997, the Council of Europe has supported a Project on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights (EDC/HRE) with the aim of complimenting its treaty related activities in the fields of Human and Social Rights. The article presents the programmes and the initiatives supported and developed by the Council of Europe both at an international and at the national levels as well as the most important adopted texts and publications. It outlines the principles on which partnership and networking are built by the Council of Europe in close cooperation with member states and other regional and international institutions.Keywords human rights education, education for democratic citizenship, international cooperation.


2003 ◽  
Vol 75 (9-10) ◽  
pp. 409-422
Author(s):  
Nikola Mihailović

A breach of any right or freedom under the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, leads to but is not limited to liability of the State for damages. That liability is much stricter than the State liability for damage provided according to the domestic law provisions currently in force. The current provisions on State liability for the work of its judiciary do not include the damage caused by improper interpretation and application of the relevant legal provisions. In contrast, the liability of the Council of Europe Member States for the damage caused by their judicial and other authorities, through the breach of the human rights and fundamental freedoms guaranteed by the Convention includes their liability for improper interpretation and application of the relevant provisions of the Convention. That liability is so strict that it in fact comes equal to no-fault liability, from the point of view of its legal consequences. This is so, although it is regulated only as a presumed liability for which there are no grounds of limitation. As a result, two systems of liability for damage caused by judicial authorities will exist in our State Union and in its member states, after the ratification of the aforementioned Convention: liability pursuant to the domestic legal provisions and liability pursuant to the Convention. For that reason, a reform of the provisions on liability is necessary, which will lead to tightening of liability for damage caused by judiciary pursuant to the domestic rules. How to achieve this is a separate issue, which will not be discussed on this occasion.


Author(s):  
Salvatore Caserta

This chapter deals with the trajectory of gaining de facto authority of the Central American Court of Justice (CACJ), showing how, different from the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), this Court has thus far failed to leave a significant mark in its operational context. In its early years, the Court fared rather well, especially in terms of its capacity to build a system of community law and to address some institutional difficulties of the Central American Integration System (SICA). However, when the Court became involved with several highly political disputes (i.e. a political clash between two former Nicaraguan Presidents and some territorial disputes among its Member States) in the early 2000s, it encountered strong resistance from several actors in its context of operation. As in the analysis of the CCJ, this chapter explains the fluctuation of the CACJ’s authority by looking at the role played by various contextual factors such as the institutional conflicts between the various organs of Central American integration, the highly polarised national politics of some of the Court’s Member States, and the divergent professional interests of the Central American legal elites.


Author(s):  
Simon Bulmer ◽  
Christian Lequesne

This chapter examines recurrent themes in the experiences of the countries discussed earlier in terms of European Union membership. It first considers the contribution of Europeanization as an analytical tool for understanding EU member state relations on a country-by-country basis before discussing emergent themes and issues. In particular, it assesses the significance of timing of accession for the member states’ Europeanization experience, showing how timing has often interacted with a geographical focus to each enlargement wave. It also asks whether the Europeanization experience is different for large states rather than small states, or whether the embeddedness of member states’ political systems plays a role. The chapter concludes by identifying different impacts of Europeanization along the dimensions of politics, polity, and policy, including the politicization of the 2010s.


2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
pp. 757-772 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birgit Peters

Within the Council of Europe, the relationship between the ECtHR and the member states is crucial for the survival and effective functioning of the Court. The ECtHR is currently overwhelmed by applications, the bulk of which emanate from a relatively small number of states, notably Russia, Rumania, Turkey, and the Ukraine. The backlog of cases will soon be toppling the vertiginous mark of 160,000, the adjudication of which alone would take the Court more than six years. The sheer number of cases exemplifies the system's urgent need for reform. Lately, discussions have been heavily influenced by considerations of subsidiarity, which the earlier Interlaken Declaration-as well as the recent Brighton Conference-emphasized as the key for the future relationship between the ECtHR and member states. Discussions about the principle's proper role in the relationship between member states and the ECHR, however, are far from over. This is due to questions regarding the principle itself, as well as to the factual realities dominating in the ECtHR-national court relationship. The principle often focuses on a strict separation of competences at two different levels, the national and the international, and many understandings of that principle require that the two levels stand in a more or less hierarchical relationship. This is difficult to assume in the Council of Europe context, where, compared to the EU, neither the doctrine of direct effect nor the principle of primacy in application reigns. Moreover, Strasbourg's emphasis on subsidiarity appears to focus on the responsibility of the member states to remedy human rights violations. In line with that argument, scholars have opined that the ECHR system should focus on an approach in which the ECtHR would be involved only if there are good reasons to depart from interpretation at the national level. Nonetheless, others recently doubted the overall usefulness of such an understanding of subsidiarity, since those member states responsible for the lion's share of new applications to the ECHR often neither possess a functioning judiciary nor functioning judicial or executive institutions, in general.


2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 35-61
Author(s):  
Nicole Jenne

The conflicts in the South China Sea have come to dominate debates on Southeast Asian security and specifically on how boundary disputes have been managed within the region. Yet, the case is not necessarily exemplary for the way Southeast Asian countries have dealt with territorial disputes generally. The article gathers three common perceptions about conflict management that are strongly informed by the South China Sea case, but have lesser relevance when looking at other territorial conflicts in the region. I offer a critical reading of the who, why, and how of territorial conflict management and provide tentative guidelines on what to expect in the future.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document