The First WTO's Ruling on National Security Exception: Balancing Interests or Opening Pandora's Box?

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-136
Author(s):  
Daria Boklan ◽  
Amrita Bahri

AbstractFor a multilateral system to be sustainable, it is important to have several escape clauses which can allow countries to protect their national security concerns. However, when these escape windows are too wide or ambiguous, defining their ambit and scope becomes challenging yet crucial to ensure that they are not open to misuse. The recent Panel Ruling in Russia – Measures Concerning Traffic in Transit is the very first attempt by the WTO to clarify the scope and ambit of National Security Exception. In this paper, we argue that the Panel has employed a combination of an objective and a subjective approach to interpret this exception. This hybrid approach to interpret GATT Article XXI (b) provides a systemic balance between the sovereign rights of the members to invoke the security exception and their right to free and open trade. But has this Ruling opened Pandora's box? In this paper, we address this issue by providing an in-depth analysis of the Panel's decision.

Author(s):  
Meysam Goodarzi ◽  
Darko Cvetkovski ◽  
Nebojsa Maletic ◽  
Jesús Gutiérrez ◽  
Eckhard Grass

AbstractClock synchronization has always been a major challenge when designing wireless networks. This work focuses on tackling the time synchronization problem in 5G networks by adopting a hybrid Bayesian approach for clock offset and skew estimation. Furthermore, we provide an in-depth analysis of the impact of the proposed approach on a synchronization-sensitive service, i.e., localization. Specifically, we expose the substantial benefit of belief propagation (BP) running on factor graphs (FGs) in achieving precise network-wide synchronization. Moreover, we take advantage of Bayesian recursive filtering (BRF) to mitigate the time-stamping error in pairwise synchronization. Finally, we reveal the merit of hybrid synchronization by dividing a large-scale network into local synchronization domains and applying the most suitable synchronization algorithm (BP- or BRF-based) on each domain. The performance of the hybrid approach is then evaluated in terms of the root mean square errors (RMSEs) of the clock offset, clock skew, and the position estimation. According to the simulations, in spite of the simplifications in the hybrid approach, RMSEs of clock offset, clock skew, and position estimation remain below 10 ns, 1 ppm, and 1.5 m, respectively.


2008 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robbie Totten

An examination of U.S. immigration policy during the early Republic from a security perspective—a common analytical focus within the field of international relations—reveals the inadequacy of traditional economic and ideological interpretations. Security concerns, based on actual threats from Great Britain and Spain, permeated the arguments both for and against immigration. Those in favor of immigration hoped to strengthen the nation, primarily by providing soldiers and money for the military; those opposed to immigration feared that it would compromise national security by causing domestic unrest and exposing the new nation to espionage and terrorism. These issues are not unlike those that beset contemporary policymakers.


Refuge ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-13
Author(s):  
Emily C. Barry-Murphy ◽  
Max Stephenson Jr.

United States law charges America’s asylum officers with providing humanitarian protection for refugees while simultaneously securing the nation from external threats. This mandate requires that asylum officers balance potentially conflicting claims as they seek to ensure just treatment of claimants. This article explores how officers charged with that responsibility can develop a regime-centred subjectivity that often conditions them to view applicants with fraud and security concerns foremost in mind. This analysis also examines the potential efficacy of practical strategies linked to aesthetic, cognitive, affective, and moral imagination that may allow officials to become more aware of their statecentred subjectivity and how it influences their perceptions of threats to national security and to fraud. This analysis encourages adjudication officers to strive for a more nuanced understanding of what constitutes fraud and national security concerns and what are instead presuppositions created by the United States population-protection agenda.


2020 ◽  
pp. 089692052096181
Author(s):  
Javier Trevino-Rangel

Undocumented migrants in transit in Mexico are victims of atrocity. The subject has been largely ignored by scholars, however, until recently when a number of migration experts became interested in the matter. Most observers argue that abuses suffered by migrants are the consequence of the ‘securitization’ of Mexican immigration policy. For them, Mexican authorities perceive migrants from Central America as a threat to national security and have hardened laws and migratory practices as a result, but there is insufficient evidence to support these claims. This article looks at the political economy of undocumented migration in transit in Mexico and the violence associated with it. It investigates the abuses suffered by migrants not as the result of supposed security policies but rather as the consequence of the interplay between local and global economies that generate profits from undocumented migration. The article explores the role played by state officials, cartels and ordinary Mexicans in the migration industry.


2020 ◽  
pp. 096100062096456
Author(s):  
Margaret K. Merga

Building students’ literacy skills is a key educative purpose of contemporary schooling. While libraries can play a key role in fostering literacy and related reading engagement in schools, more needs to be known about school librarians’ role in promoting these goals. To this end, this article seeks to identify the nature and scope of the literacy supportive role required of the school librarian in the United Kingdom. It also investigates how this aspect is situated within the broader competing role requirements of the profession. Using a hybrid approach to content analysis including both qualitative and quantitative methods, this article presents in-depth analysis of 40 recent job description documents recruiting school librarians in the United Kingdom to investigate these research aims. The vast majority of documents (92.5%) included literacy supportive roles or characteristics of a school librarian, and recurring salient components included supporting literature selection, having a broad and current knowledge of literature, promoting and modelling reading for pleasure, devising and supporting reading and literature events, promoting a whole-school reading culture, working closely with students to support reading and literacy skill development, and implementing and supporting reading programmes. This literacy supportive role was found to sit within a potentially highly complex and diverse work role which may compete with the literacy supportive role for time and resourcing in school libraries. This research suggests that the role of school librarians in the United Kingdom is both complex and evolving, and that school librarians in the United Kingdom have a valuable literacy supportive role to play in their school libraries.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 695-712
Author(s):  
Chao Wang

Abstract The invocation of national security exceptions under Article XXI of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 1994 has long been viewed as “self-judging”. In the landmark case of Russia—Measures Concerning Traffic in Transit, the panel of the WTO’s dispute settlement body (DSB) addressed two important but previously considered ambiguous issues. First, the Panel confirmed its jurisdiction to review its members’ invocation of Article XXI of GATT 1994. Second, offering a detailed interpretation of Article XXI, especially paragraph (b) and its subparagraph (iii), the panel distinguished the objective requirements from the self-judging features, and held that it has the jurisdiction to determine whether the objective requirements of Article XXI have been satisfied when a member invokes the national security exception, and the member’s discretion is also expected to be limited by its good faith obligation, which, as an established principle of international law, shall apply to both the member’s definition of the essential security interests and its connection to the measures being taken.


2015 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-404 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hitoshi Nasu

AbstractWith the increased awareness of national security concerns associated with unauthorized disclosure of State secrets, the legal protection of State secrets on national security grounds has assumed renewed significance, while raising ever growing concerns about its impact on freedom of information. Between these competing policy concerns lies a discrete area of law that defines and protects State secrets from unauthorized communication or disclosure. This article aims to ascertain the actual State practice concerning State secrets protection on national security grounds across different countries, and examines common challenges to the delimitation of national security grounds for State secrets protection in light of the changing national security environment.


Author(s):  
Iryna Sopilko

The study gives definitions of information security and related terms, such as cybersecurity, national security, and others, indicates the goals, objects, subjects of the concepts under consideration. The author also considers the features of the foundation and development of the information society in Ukraine, the components of its state information policy for ensuring information security, and identifies the key operations of activity of state bodies in the information sphere. The approaches of scientists who studied certain aspects of national and information security were analyzed, based on their work valuable conclusions were drawn and the conceptual basis of the article was formed. Independently, the definition and characteristics of external and internal threats to the information security of the country are given, methods for solving the problems arising in this connection are introduced, ways of ensuring the information security of the state are indicated. Information security in this study is considered as the central element of the national security of Ukraine, as well as a problematic issue in the field of information protection and ensuring the high-quality functioning of the information space. The author made an in-depth analysis of the existing regulatory and legal instruments for ensuring information security, pointed out their shortcomings, and gave recommendations for their further advancement. Also, recommendations are given to improve the current situation with the regulation of information security in the country, the directions of the state information policy are suggested and ways to ensure the continuity of the functioning of the information security system of Ukraine are indicated.


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