scholarly journals The Significance of Sea-level Rise for the Continuation of States and the Identity of their People

Author(s):  
Susan Farran

This article considers the legal institutions which give people identity and may anchor them to particular places. But what happens to that identity when "place" no longer exists? The focus of this article is the question of the legal status of those whose homelands disappear under the waves. Unlike persons displaced by war or political upheaval, as experienced after the Second World War, such persons do not fall within the usual understanding of the term "refugee". The erosion of the foundations of their identity has, in some cases, been gradual and incremental, but without territory can we talk of the sovereignty of states or the citizenship of individuals? Is the latter "place bound" or does citizenship mean more than just affiliation or "rootedness" to a particular place? Does nationality depend on a nation and if so, what is it that makes a nation? These questions are pertinent to all those whose homelands may disappear as a result of natural disasters or rising sea levels. They are particularly, but not only, relevant to people in the Pacific living on low-lying atolls such as in Tuvalu, Kiribati and parts of the Solomon Islands. In the Pacific, exchanges among strangers start with the question "Where are you from?" Can a person be a Pacific islander if he or she has no island? This article considers how that will be answered by those who are from lands under the seas, and what changes may have to be made to the international legal frameworks that determine identity in these circumstances.

Author(s):  
Andrew I. Port

The ‘long 1950s’ was a decade of conspicuous contrasts: a time of dismantling and reconstruction, economic and political, as well as cultural and moral; a time of Americanization and Sovietization; a time of upheaval amid a desperate search for stability. But above all, it was a time for both forgetting and coming to terms with the recent past. This article focuses on the two forms of government that controlled Germany, democracy, and dictatorship. The Cold War was without doubt the main reason for the rapid rehabilitation and integration of the two German states, which more or less took place within a decade following the end of the Second World War. This article further elaborates upon the political conditions under dictatorship and its effect on the social life. East Germany, under the Soviet control underwent as much political upheaval. It was not until the second half of the twentieth century that Germany became a democracy.


Author(s):  
Anzor A. Murdalov ◽  
Rustam A. Tovsultanov

Emigration has been known to mankind for more than a century. We name the factors contributing to emigration, give examples from the history of emigration both abroad and Russia. We emphasize that at the present time, Russian citizens emigrate to other countries, using the right to freely leave the state, and can also have dual citizenship under Russian law, or renounce citizenship, and then get it again. We pay special attention to the settlement of the territory of North Caucasus, which began in the 8th – 7th – 6th – 5th thousand BC. We analyze the features of emigration of people from North Caucasus after the October Revolution of 1917. The specifics of the emigration of people from this region of country are emphasized. Thus, the majority of people emigrated to the Ottoman Empire, and then moved to Europe. We indicate that in fact, after the adoption of the Decrees of the Central Executive Committee, the SNK of RSFSR in 1921, “On the deprivation of the rights of citizenship of certain categories of persons who are abroad” many emigrants from Russia, including North Caucasians, have become disenfranchised. This circumstance greatly influenced the publication of the Nansen passport (it was introduced in 1922 and became widespread in 1924), according to which emigrants were granted a number of legal and social rights. In addition, it is applicable to emigrants from Russia, including from the North Caucasus, in 1922 and 1926. The Geneva definition of “Russian refugee” was given, and the International Convention on the International Status of Refugees of 1933 created an alternative to naturalization for refugees from Russia. Subsequently, before the outbreak of the Second World War, people received, as a rule, the citizenship of the countries in which they began to live.


2009 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Ian D. Rae

Geoffrey Malcolm Badger was Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Adelaide from 1955 to 1964 and, after serving briefly as a member of the CSIRO Executive, Vice-Chancellor from 1967 to 1977. Elected to Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science in 1960, he served on the Council and was President of the Academy from 1974 to 1978. He was President of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute in 1965 and Chairman of the Australian Science and Technology Council (ASTEC) from 1977 to 1982. During the Second World War, while working as a Lieutenant Instructor for the British Navy, he developed an interest in maritime navigation, and especially in Captain James Cook. Later, he edited the book Captain Cook: Navigator and Scientist and, in retirement, he wrote two books, Explorers of the Pacific (1988) and The Explorers of Australia (2001). He was admitted to the order of Australia (AO) in 1975 and knighted in 1979.


2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (04) ◽  
pp. 1278-1311
Author(s):  
JEREMY A. YELLEN

AbstractOne striking feature of the Pacific War was the extent to which Wilsonian ideals informed the war aims of both sides. By 1943, the Atlantic Charter and Japan's Pacific Charter (Greater East Asia Joint Declaration) outlined remarkably similar visions for the postwar order. This comparative study of the histories surrounding both charters highlights parallels between the foreign policies of Great Britain and Imperial Japan. Both empires engaged with Wilsonianism in similar ways, to similar ends. Driven by geopolitical desperation, both reluctantly enshrined Wilsonian values into their war aims to survive a gruelling war with empire intact. But the endorsement of national self-determination, in particular, gave elites in dependent states a means to protest the realities of both British and Japanese rule and to demand that both empires practise what they preach. This comparative analysis of Britain and Japan thus sheds light on the part Wilsonian ideology played in the global crisis of empire during the Second World War.


2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 573-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
HARUKO TAYA COOK ◽  
THEODORE F. COOK

We examine the strata of memory in Japan’s recollections of the wartime experience and explore the shaping and releasing of memory in Japan, seeking to penetrate and recover individual Japanese experience. Individual memories that seemed tightly contained, when released were told with great emotional intensity and authenticity. That there has been little public discourse does not mean that individual Japanese have forgotten that war, but that the conflict – a war with no generally accepted name or firmly fixed start or end – seems disconnected from the private memories of the wartime generation. Japan was defeated thoroughly and completely, and in the history of memory we see no well-established narrative form for telling the tale of the defeated. In Japan's public memory of the war, War itself is often the enemy, and the Japanese its victims. Such a view is ahistorical and unsatisfactory to nations and peoples throughout Asia and the Pacific. The prevailing myths during Japan's war, developed and fostered over 15 years of conflict, and the overwhelming weight of more than three million war dead on the memories of the living forged a link between a desire to honour and cherish those lost and the ways the war is recalled in the public sphere. Enforced and encouraged by government policies and private associations, protecting the dead has become a means of avoiding a full discussion of the war. The memorials and monuments to the Dead that have been created throughout Japan, Asia, and the Pacific stand silent sentry to a Legend of the war. This must be challenged by the release into the public sphere of living memories of the War in all their ambiguity, complexity, and contradiction without which Japan’s Memory can have no historical veracity. Moreover, the memories of the Second World War of other peoples can never be complete without Japan’s story.


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