Through the Rule of Law Looking Glass

Transposing rule of law principles from the national to the international level, in particular to international organizations, still raises questions and can be problematic. However, rule of law considerations play an important role when international organizations exercise a substantial amount of public authority and may directly affect states as well as individuals. The World Health Organization (WHO), unlike other international organizations, has a constitutional mandate to prevent and respond to international acute emergencies in the form of disease outbreaks and pandemics. Its main normative tool is the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR), that represent a breakthrough from past instruments but also raise questions and challenges that can be effectively analyzed from a rule of law perspective. This approach applies in particular to ambiguities in important parts of the IHR affecting their relevance and effectiveness; lack of clarity for processes leading to sensitive executive decisions; the absence of compliance assessment mechanisms resulting in lack of accountability for states parties; and an inadequate inclusion of human rights guarantees. The analysis is extended beyond WHO’s functions, to the impact of COVID-19 on the organization’s governance as well as its internal management.

Self-concept in social networks and its relation to the affect in adolescents

Social networks provide new spaces in which to explore one’s identity and how it is presented to others. To do so, it is essential to study how they affect the construction of one’s self-concept and perceived affection in adolescence. The principal objective of this study was to analyse the congruence or incongruence of self-concept within (online) and outside (offline) the social networks and their relation to affect. The participants were 350 adolescents (41% males), between 14 and 19 years of age. They completed the AF-5 to evaluate self-concept and the PANANS to evaluate affect states or personal emotions. Both questionnaires were completed twice, taking into account online and offline situations. We found differences in all the dimensions of self-concept in 24% of the participants, and only in the social dimension in 51.4% of the participants. The participants who showed differences between their online and offline self-concept obtained higher scores in wellbeing in comparison to those who maintained similar self-concept. Social media allow adolescents to experiment with a different self-concept which influences their affect.

Disentangling dynamic affect trajectories for distinct depression courses during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background. Why does adversity lead to mental health complaints in some, but not others? Individual differences in the development of depressive complaints are related to the regulation of affect states. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a prolonged period of perturbations to the daily lives of people across the globe, providing an unparalleled opportunity to investigate how fluctuations in positive and negative affect relate to the evolution of mood complaints.Methods. 228 participants from the Boston College daily sleep and well-being survey completed at least 20 assessments of positive and negative affect and depression complaints between March 20th 2020 and June 26th 2020. We explored affect trajectories throughout this period and estimated longitudinal multilevel network models. Furthermore, we investigated how individual network structures relate to changes in depression severity over time.Results. On average, positive affect was reported somewhat higher than negative affect. However, when separating affect trajectories based on the individuals’ depressive complaints, we identified that individuals consistently experiencing depressive complaints report higher levels of negative affect compared with positive affect. Contrary, individuals consistently reporting no depressive complaints show opposite results. Furthermore, we found many and strong associations in the multilevel network between the distinct affect states and depressive complaints. Lastly, we established that the higher the connectivity of an individual’s network, the larger their change in depressive complaints is.Conclusions. We conclude that affect fluctuations are directly related to the development of depressive complaints, both within- and across individuals, and both within a single measurement moment and over time.

Mainstreaming Institutional Resilience and Systems Strengthening in Donor Policies and Programming

This rapid review synthesises evidence on key aspects of mainstreaming institutional resilience and systems strengthening in donor policies and programming in FCAS (Fragile and Conflict-affect States) contexts, particularly in nutrition (food security), health, WASH and the economic sector. Institutional resilience is the ability of a social system (society, community, organisation) to absorb and recover from external shocks, while positively adapting and transforming to address long-term changes and uncertainty. Investing in strong, well-functioning and adaptable social systems, such as health, education and social protection systems, can build resilience, as this help to cushion the negative economic and social effects of crises. While development actors have established guidance on how institutions can be made more effective, inclusive and accountable, there is much less literature on institutional resilience and how development actors can help to foster it. Much of the literature notes a lack of systematic evidence on applying the concept of resilience. These gaps extend to a dearth of guidance on how development actors can mainstream institutional resilience and systems strengthening into their policies and programmes. This rapid review draws on common factors discussed in the literature that are considered important to the strengthening of resilience and particular systems. These may, in turn, provide an indication of ways in which to mainstream institutional resilience and systems strengthening into development policy and programming

Automatic Detection of a Student’s Affective States for Intelligent Teaching Systems

AutoTutor is an automated computer tutor that simulates human tutors and holds conversations with students in natural language. Using data collected from AutoTutor, the following determinations were sought: Can we automatically classify affect states from intelligent teaching systems to aid in the detection of a learner’s emotional state? Using frequency patterns of AutoTutor feedback and assigned user emotion in a series of pairs, can the next pair of feedback/emotion series be predicted? Through a priori data mining approaches, we found dominant frequent item sets that predict the next set of responses. Thirty-four participants provided 200 turns between the student and the AutoTutor. Two series of attributes and emotions were concatenated into one row to create a record of previous and next set of emotions. Feature extraction techniques, such as multilayer-perceptron and naive Bayes, were performed on the dataset to perform classification for affective state labeling. The emotions ‘Flow’ and ‘Frustration’ had the highest classification of all the other emotions when measured against other emotions and their respective attributes. The most common frequent item sets were ‘Flow’ and ‘Confusion’.

Network dynamics of momentary affect states and future course of psychopathology in adolescents

Background Recent theories argue that an interplay between (i.e., network of) experiences, thoughts and affect in daily life may underlie the development of psychopathology. Objective To prospectively examine whether network dynamics of everyday affect states are associated with a future course of psychopathology in adolescents at an increased risk of mental disorders. Methods 159 adolescents from the East-Flanders Prospective Twin Study cohort participated in the study. At baseline, their momentary affect states were assessed using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM). The course of psychopathology was operationalized as the change in the Symptom Checklist-90 sum score after 1 year. Two groups were defined: one with a stable level (n = 81) and one with an increasing level (n = 78) of SCL-symptom severity. Group-level network dynamics of momentary positive and negative affect states were compared between groups. Results The group with increasing symptoms showed a stronger connections between negative affect states and their higher influence on positive states, as well as higher proneness to form ‘vicious cycles’, compared to the stable group. Based on permutation tests, these differences were not statistically significant. Conclusion Although not statistically significant, some qualitative differences were observed between the networks of the two groups. More studies are needed to determine the value of momentary affect networks for predicting the course of psychopathology.

Host States’ Monetary Sovereignty Within the Construct of Bilateral Investment Treaties

This article considers assertions of the diminution of the monetary sovereignty of host states when they sign bilateral investment treaties. It discusses monetary transfer provisions in the model BITs of South Africa and Egypt and how their construction can affect states’ rights to regulatory autonomy in mitigating financial crises. This has become imperative in light of recent discussions on the possibilities for a systemic overhaul of BIT provisions, by pushing back against the diminution of host states’ sovereignty in order to respond to the force of globalization. Achieving this would require reform of existing model BITs to introduce appropriate exceptions in order to ensure policy space to protect the public interest.