The Limits of Observation for Understanding Mass Violence

Author(s):  
Megan Price ◽  
Patrick Ball

Abstract Quantitative analyses have the potential to contribute to transitional justice mechanisms, via empirical evidence supporting the memory of victims, allocating proportional responsibility among perpetrators, determining legal responsibility, and supporting historical memory and clarity. However, most data available in transitional justice settings are incomplete. Conducting quantitative analyses relying solely on what is observable and knowable leads to not only incomplete but often incorrect analytical results. This can harm rather than contribute to transitional justice mechanisms. This article outlines different types of data, the ways in which observable data, on their own, are insufficient for most quantitative analyses of interest, presents these limitations via a case study from Syria, and introduces statistical methods to overcome these limitations.

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Killean

Procedural justice advocates argue that fair procedures in decision making processes can increase participant satisfaction with legal institutions. Little critical work has been done however to explore the power of such claims in the context of mass violence and international criminal justice. This article critically examines some of the key claims of procedural justice by exploring the perceptions of justice held by victims participating as Civil Parties in the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (eccc). The eccc has created one of the most inclusive and extensive victim participation regimes within international criminal law. It therefore provides a unique case study to examine some of claims of ‘victim-centred’ transitional justice through a procedural justice lens. It finds that while procedural justice influenced civil parties’ overall perceptions of the Court, outcomes remained of primary importance. It concludes by analysing the possible reasons for this prioritisation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Haruo Nakagawa

Akin to the previous, 2014 event, with no data on voter ethnicity, no exit polls, and few post-election analyses, the 2018 Fiji election results remain something of a mystery despite the fact that there had been a significant swing in voting in favour of Opposition political parties. There have been several studies about the election results, but most of them have been done without much quantitative analyses. This study examines voting patterns of Fiji’s 2018 election by provinces, and rural-urban localities, as well as by candidates, and also compares the 2018 and 2014 elections by spending a substantial time classifying officially released data by polling stations and individual candidates. Some of the data are then further aggregated according to the political parties to which those candidates belonged. The current electoral system in Fiji is a version of a proportional system, but its use is rare and this study will provide an interesting case study of the Open List Proportional System. At the end of the analyses, this study considers possible reasons for the swing in favour of the Opposition.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
John Harner ◽  
Lee Cerveny ◽  
Rebecca Gronewold

Natural resource managers need up-to-date information about how people interact with public lands and the meanings these places hold for use in planning and decision-making. This case study explains the use of public participatory Geographic Information System (GIS) to generate and analyze spatial patterns of the uses and values people hold for the Browns Canyon National Monument in Colorado. Participants drew on maps and answered questions at both live community meetings and online sessions to develop a series of maps showing detailed responses to different types of resource uses and landscape values. Results can be disaggregated by interaction types, different meaningful values, respondent characteristics, seasonality, or frequency of visit. The study was a test for the Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service, who jointly manage the monument as they prepare their land management plan. If the information generated is as helpful throughout the entire planning process as initial responses seem, this protocol could become a component of the Bureau’s planning tool kit.


Author(s):  
Olga Yavorska

The article deals with violations, which are often grounds for bringing disciplinary liability of judges, as well as the enforcement of them in the form of a petition for the dismissal from position of judge. A special place in the system of legal responsibility of a judge is taken by the institute of disciplinary responsibility, the essence of which lies in the possibility of applying by a specially authorized body to an individual bearer of judicial power - judges of legal sanctions, directly provided by law, for violations in the sphere of professional activity. The institute of disciplinary responsibility is considered, the purpose of which is to solve social problems in the interests of implementing and maintaining the necessary level of efficiency of the system of judicial protection as a necessary guarantee of the protection of rights, interests and freedoms of people. The analysis of grounds for disciplinary liability of a judge and types of disciplinary punishment has been carried out. The obligatory signs of disciplinary violations that are the cause of prosecution are analyzed. It is considered about the application of the principle of proportionality to disciplinary authorities in determining the type of collection. The practice of applying the principle of proportionality of disciplinary organs in case of imposition of penalties and violation of the question of ambiguity of such practice is analyzed. The article states that with qualitatively similar offenses committed by different judges, the disciplinary bodies chose one type of collection, but in different proportions. The method of determining the principle of proportionality in differentiating the choice of terms in this type of collection for actually such mistakes seems unclear. Moreover, the use of the same principle in choosing different types of charges for virtually identical disciplinary offenses is unclear, in particular, when the repeat offense is a feature. Key words: disciplinary responsibility of a judge, principle of proportionality, disciplinary offenses, penalties, dismissal from position of judge.


The effective altruism movement consists of a growing global community of people who organize significant parts of their lives around two key ideas, represented in its name. Altruism: If we use a significant portion of the resources in our possession—whether money, time, or talents—with a view to helping others, we can improve the world considerably. Effectiveness: When we do put such resources to altruistic use, it is crucial to focus on how much good this or that intervention is reasonably expected to do per unit of resource expended (for example, per dollar donated). While global poverty is a widely used case study in introducing and motivating effective altruism, if the ultimate aim is to do the most good one can with the resources expended, it is far from obvious that global poverty alleviation is highest priority cause area. In addition to ranking possible poverty-alleviation interventions against one another, we can also try to rank interventions aimed at very different types of outcome against one another. This includes, for example, interventions focusing on animal welfare or future generations. The scale and organization of the effective altruism movement encourage careful dialogue on questions that have perhaps long been there, throwing them into new and sharper relief, and giving rise to previously unnoticed questions. In the present volume, the first of its kind, a group of internationally recognized philosophers, economists, and political theorists contribute in-depth explorations of issues that arise once one takes seriously the twin ideas of altruistic commitment and effectiveness.


Author(s):  
Andrea B. Temkin ◽  
Mina Yadegar ◽  
Christine Cho ◽  
Brian C. Chu

In recent years, the field of clinical psychology has seen a growing movement toward the research and development of transdiagnostic treatments. Transdiagnostic approaches have the potential to address numerous issues related to the development and treatment of mental disorders. Among these are the high rates of comorbidity across disorders, the increasing need for efficient protocols, and the call for treatments that can be more easily disseminated. This chapter provides a review of the current transdiagnostic treatment approaches for the treatment of youth mental disorders. Three different types of transdiagnostic protocols are examined: mechanism-based protocols, common elements treatments, and general treatment models that originated from single-disorder approaches to have broader reach. A case study illuminates how a mechanism-based approach would inform case conceptualization for a client presenting with internalizing and externalizing symptoms and how a transdiagnostic framework translates into practice.


Geosciences ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 150
Author(s):  
Nilgün Güdük ◽  
Miguel de la Varga ◽  
Janne Kaukolinna ◽  
Florian Wellmann

Structural geological models are widely used to represent relevant geological interfaces and property distributions in the subsurface. Considering the inherent uncertainty of these models, the non-uniqueness of geophysical inverse problems, and the growing availability of data, there is a need for methods that integrate different types of data consistently and consider the uncertainties quantitatively. Probabilistic inference provides a suitable tool for this purpose. Using a Bayesian framework, geological modeling can be considered as an integral part of the inversion and thereby naturally constrain geophysical inversion procedures. This integration prevents geologically unrealistic results and provides the opportunity to include geological and geophysical information in the inversion. This information can be from different sources and is added to the framework through likelihood functions. We applied this methodology to the structurally complex Kevitsa deposit in Finland. We started with an interpretation-based 3D geological model and defined the uncertainties in our geological model through probability density functions. Airborne magnetic data and geological interpretations of borehole data were used to define geophysical and geological likelihoods, respectively. The geophysical data were linked to the uncertain structural parameters through the rock properties. The result of the inverse problem was an ensemble of realized models. These structural models and their uncertainties are visualized using information entropy, which allows for quantitative analysis. Our results show that with our methodology, we can use well-defined likelihood functions to add meaningful information to our initial model without requiring a computationally-heavy full grid inversion, discrepancies between model and data are spotted more easily, and the complementary strength of different types of data can be integrated into one framework.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (16) ◽  
pp. 5300
Author(s):  
Antonia Nisioti ◽  
George Loukas ◽  
Stefan Rass ◽  
Emmanouil Panaousis

The use of anti-forensic techniques is a very common practice that stealthy adversaries may deploy to minimise their traces and make the investigation of an incident harder by evading detection and attribution. In this paper, we study the interaction between a cyber forensic Investigator and a strategic Attacker using a game-theoretic framework. This is based on a Bayesian game of incomplete information played on a multi-host cyber forensics investigation graph of actions traversed by both players. The edges of the graph represent players’ actions across different hosts in a network. In alignment with the concept of Bayesian games, we define two Attacker types to represent their ability of deploying anti-forensic techniques to conceal their activities. In this way, our model allows the Investigator to identify the optimal investigating policy taking into consideration the cost and impact of the available actions, while coping with the uncertainty of the Attacker’s type and strategic decisions. To evaluate our model, we construct a realistic case study based on threat reports and data extracted from the MITRE ATT&CK STIX repository, Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS), and interviews with cyber-security practitioners. We use the case study to compare the performance of the proposed method against two other investigative methods and three different types of Attackers.


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