Integrating the UNCAC and the UNTOC for Effective Prevention and International Cooperation

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 55-59
Author(s):  
Uglješa Ugi Zvekić

Abstract The inextricable links between transnational organized crime, on the one hand, and corruption, on the other, require a more integrated approach between the international instruments aimed at preventing and tackling such phenomena, i.e., respectively, the UN Convention against Transnational Organized Crime and the UN Convention against Corruption, as well as between their review mechanisms. Moreover, the role played by civil society in the framework of the UNTOC and UNCAC review mechanisms should be furthered, thus drawing inspiration from the Universal Periodic Review.

Author(s):  
Hannah Smidt ◽  
Dominic Perera ◽  
Neil J. Mitchell ◽  
Kristin M. Bakke

Abstract International ‘naming and shaming’ campaigns rely on domestic civil society organizations (CSOs) for information on local human rights conditions. To stop this flow of information, some governments restrict CSOs, for example by limiting their access to funding. Do such restrictions reduce international naming and shaming campaigns that rely on information from domestic CSOs? This article argues that on the one hand, restrictions may reduce CSOs’ ability and motives to monitor local abuses. On the other hand, these organizations may mobilize against restrictions and find new ways of delivering information on human rights violations to international publics. Using a cross-national dataset and in-depth evidence from Egypt, the study finds that low numbers of restrictions trigger shaming by international non-governmental organizations. Yet once governments impose multiple types of restrictions, it becomes harder for CSOs to adapt, resulting in fewer international shaming campaigns.


2015 ◽  
pp. 8-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miikka Pyykkönen

This article gives an analysis of Foucault’s studies of civil society and the various liberalist critiques of government. It follows from Foucault’s genealogical approach that “civil society” does not in itself possess any form of transcendental existence; its historical reality must be seen as the result of the productive nature of the power-knowledge-matrices. Foucault emphasizes that modern governmentality—and more specifically the procedures he names “the conduct of conduct”—is not exercised through coercive power and domination, but is dependent on the freedom and activeness of individuals and groups of society. Civil society is thus analyzed as fundamentally ambivalent: on the one hand civil society is a field where different kinds of technologies of governance meet the lives and wills of groups and individuals, but on the other hand it is a potential field of what Foucault called ‘counter-conduct’ – for both collective action and individual political action.


2020 ◽  
Vol 66 (4/2019) ◽  
pp. 193-206
Author(s):  
Darko Simović

The adoption of the Act on Prevention of Domestic Violence was driven by the creation of a more effective legal framework for the protection of victims of domestic violence, and, therefore, also by the alignment of the legal system of the Republic of Serbia with international obligations. The main novelties include multi-sectoral cooperation and primarily preventive nature of the law. However, from its very adoption, it has been pointed to its noticeably repressive character, as well as to provisions with potentially harmful impacts. Hence, this paper represents a contribution to the discussion on the importance and scope of the solutions provided for in the Act on Prevention of Domestic Violence. On the one hand, it points to major novelties intended to contribute to a more effective prevention of domestic violence. On the other hand, it questions the constitutionality and appropriateness of some of the legal solutions, arguing that, in particular respects, the lawmaker had to use a wiser and more subtle approach to conceptualising the provisions of this law.


Author(s):  
Vladimir Šebek ◽  

Specialized anti-corruption institutions are not product of the new age. First specialized departments in fighting against corruption went into effect in the middle of last century, but the beginning of creation of these departments has been connected with founding of the most significant specialized institutions. Although its effects on democratic institutions and economic and social development have long been apparent, the fight against corruption has only recently been placed high on the international policy agenda. The UN Convention Against Corruption, which came into force in 2005, is the most universal in its approach; it covers a very broad range of issues including the formation of specialised bodies responsible for preventing corruption and for combating corruption through law enforcement. It is the author’s intention to present to the public the organizational solutions of the anticorruption bodies predicted in the UN Convention against Corruption and folloving standards to act effectively. On the one hand, this text represents models of specialized anti-corruption bodies in the world, and on the other hand, it contains display of institutional anti-corruption model in Republic of Serbia as well, with the focus on the Department for Corruption Suppression (OBPK) in the Ministry of Interior and special departmens of Public prosecutor's offices. In order to compare efficiency of police and prosecutorial work, a data analysis was performed for the period before and the period after the Law on organization and competence of state bodies in supression of organized crime, terrorism and corruption, entry into force.


2002 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 597-619 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Kelsall

In the 1970s politics in Tanzania was substantially a bureaucratic affair. Since the 1980s, however, economic liberalisation, multiparty democracy and governance reforms have on the one hand introduced measures conducive to building a legal-rational bureaucracy and a liberal civil society, and on the other accelerated political struggle for economic resources through personalised regional networks. Paraphrasing Emmanuel Terray, the first trend is described in this article as the manufacture of ‘air-conditioned’ politics, the second as the growth of ‘veranda’ politics. The article argues that donor reforms are not leading in a straight line to liberal governance, but neither is civil society simply being colonised by patrimonial networks. Rather, both ‘air-conditioned’ politics and ‘veranda’ politics are advancing simultaneously, inundating a previously bureaucratised political sphere. The dual character of this ‘re-politicisation’ makes the fate of governance reforms exceedingly difficult to predict.


2010 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 431-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAMES BOHMAN

AbstractWhile there is much discussion of the need for democracy in transnational institutions, there is less discussion of the conditions for their democratisation. To address this deficit, a general account of democratisation is necessary. I propose that democratisation is dependent on the joint realisation of two conditions: communicative freedom and communicative power. Democratisation thus requires, first, publics and associations in which communicative freedom is realised on the one hand; and, second, institutions that link such freedom to the exercise of communicative power to decision making on the other. In order for these conditions to be met, civil society must be expanded into the public sphere. The transformation of communicative freedom into communicative power can be promoted only by institutions that recognise the decisional status of publics, which in turn depend on civil society to generate the deliberative benefits of the plurality of perspectives. Communicative power is not merely spontaneously generated through publics, but also through publics expressly formed through democratic institutional design.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom OBOKATA

AbstractThis paper explores the value of international law in combating transnational organized crime in the Asia-Pacific, with particular reference to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime. It begins by highlighting the definitions of organized crime under national and international law. It then analyzes the extent to which states in the Asia-Pacific have implemented the Convention, focusing on harmonization of national criminal laws and procedures, mutual recognition of law enforcement decisions and measures, as well as provision of technical assistance. The paper also touches upon the protection of the human rights of victims and perpetrators of organized crime. The main conclusion reached is that, although the implementation of international instruments pertinent to transnational organized crime has not been an easy task in the Asia-Pacific, they are slowly but surely making a difference on the ground. Therefore, their value should not be dismissed completely.


1998 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
Henning Eichberg

Contradictions of Modernity. Conflicting Configurations and Societal Thinking in Grundtvig's »The Human Being in the World«A Worm - a God. About the Human Being in the World. Ove Korsgaard (ed.). With contributions of Niels Buur Hansen, Hans Hauge, Bosse Bergstedt, Uffe Jonas and Knud Bjarne Gjesing. Odense Universitetsforlag 1997.By Henning EichbergIn 1817, Grundtvig wrote »Om Mennesket i Verden« which can be regarded as a key to the understanding of his philosophy and psychology, but which is difficult to place in relation to his later folkelig, societal engagement. A recent reedition of this text together with some actual comments by Grundtvig researchers is an occasion to quest deeper about this relation.However, it is not enough to ask - as Grundtvig research has done for a long time - what Grundtvig wanted to say, but his text can be regarded as a document of how modem orientation in the world is characterized by conflicting linguistic and metaphorical patterns, which sometimes may tell another story than intended.On the one hand, Grundtvig's text speaks of a lot of dualistic contradictions such as life vs. death, light vs. darkness, truth vs. lie, God vs. devil, human fall vs. resurrection, body vs. spirit, nature vs. history and time vs. eternity. In contrast to the author's intention to produce clarity and lucidity - whether in the spirit of Christianity or of modem rationality - the binary constructions give rather a confusing picture of systematical disorder where polarity and polemics are mixed, antagonism and gradual order, dichotomy and exclusive either-or, paradoxes and dialectical contradictions. On the other hand,Grundtvig tries again and again to build up three-pole imaginations as for instance the threefold human relation to time, space and truth and the three ages of spiritual seeing, feeling and conceptualization resp. of mythology (childhood), theology (youth) and history (adult age). The main history, Grundtvig wants to tell in his text, is built up around the trialectic relation of the human being to the body, to the spirit and to itself, to the living soul.The most difficult to understand in this relation seems to be what Grundtvig calls the spirit, Aanden. Grundtvig describes it as Aandigt Samfund mellem Menneske og Sandhed, »the spiritual community between the human being and the truth«, and this may direct our attention towards samfund, meaning at the same time association, togetherness and society. Aanden is described by threefold effects - will, conscience and faith, all of them describing social relations between human beings resp. their psychological correlate. The same social undertone is true when Grundtvig characterizes three Aande-Livets Spor (»traces of spiritual life«): the word, the history and love. If »the spirit« represents what is larger or »higher« than the single human being and what cannot be touched by his or her hand, then this definition fits exactly to society or the sociality of the human being. Social life - whether understood as culture, social identity or folk (people) - is not only a quantitative sum of human individuals, but represents another quality of natural order. Thus it has its logic that Grundtvig places the human being in between the realms of minerals, plant and animal life on the one hand and the »higher« order on the other, which can be understood as the social existence.In this respect, the societal dimension is not at all absent in his philosophy of 1817. However, it is not enough to state the implicite presence of sociality as such in the earlier Grundtvigian thinking before his folkelig break-through. What was the sociality, more concretely, which Grundtvig experienced during the early modernity? In general, highly dichotomous concepts are dominating the modem discourse as capitalism vs. feudalism, materialism vs. idealism, modernity vs. premodemity, democracy vs. absolutism or revolution vs. restoration; Grundtvig was always difficult to place into these patterns. Again, it might be helpful to try a trialectical approach, transcending the dualism of state and market by civil society as a third field of social action. Indeed, it was civil society with its farmers' anarchist undertones which became the contents of Grundtvig's later folk engagement.


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