Loomnie

At the Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law at the University of Aberdeen

Website: www.abdn.ac.uk/cisrul

The inter-disciplinary Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law (CISRUL) at the University of Aberdeen will offer two or more PhD studentships starting 2011-12. We welcome applicants from anthropology, cultural and literary studies, history, legal theory and socio-legal studies, philosophy, politics, religious studies, sociology and theology. The studentships will include full fees and may include partial maintenance.

Please note that applicants must have completed or be close to completing a postgraduate Masters degree.

Deadline for full consideration of applications for the 2010-11 studentships is 30 March.

The Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law aims to produce conversation across the social sciences and humanities on key concepts of the modern polity. Citizenship, civil society and rule of law are three such key concepts, all three of some pedigree but enjoying a new lease of life, prescribed by bodies such as IMF and United Nations, championed by social movements, and debated in the media and in academic research. We are also interested in related concepts such as democracy, human rights, multiculturalism and pluralism, as well as in the question of religion including how ‘religious’ is distinguished from ‘secular’.

Please visit www.abdn.ac.uk/cisrul for a description of the Centre’s mission, staff and activities, and for information about how to apply for the PhD studentships.

When the protagonists are black people. That is the only conclusion one can draw from the unhinged claims that the Ivory Coast is on “the brink of genocide” following the disputed presidential elections and the stand-off between the incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo and president-elect Alassane Ouattara.

Read it all here.

HT to @johnkeithhart

The region, an established transit point for Latin American cocaine to big Western markets, has also become a drug processing site amid rising addiction rates, and drug-related violence will follow, they told a drug summit over the weekend.

“A flourishing illicit trade in the hands of organised crime is obviously a threat to the rule of law, governance and, as a result, human rights,” said Alexandre Schmidt, West African head for the U.N. Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

“But we must no longer hide the indirect consequences with regard to the increase in problems linked to drug abuse.” Some 20 tonnes of cocaine passed through West Africa in 2008, worth about $1 billion, the United Nations says.

———

Although concrete figures are hard to come by, experts said there was clear evidence of a rise in local use of cocaine and crack. Citing research in Cape Verde, the region’s initial drug hot-spot, Margarete Molnar, a health specialist at UNODC, said drug use was entrenched.

“This shows that being on the route of trafficking is a disaster,” she said. “(Law enforcement) may protect West Africa and Europe but I can tell you that in this region there are people who are hard drug users who need to be rehabilitated.”

A NEXT news report.

For an academic article on the history of the drugs trade in West Africa see this article (gated) by Stephen Ellis of the African Studies Centre, Leiden. Here is the ungated version (pdf).

No, it is not 419.

The BBC reports:

Charles Taylor ‘duped’ by Nigeria: Former Liberian President Charles Taylor has said he was duped by Nigeria into being arrested there in 2006.

Speaking at his war crimes trial in The Hague, he said Nigeria’s then-leader had reneged on a promise to let him leave the country freely.

He also claimed a plot involving the UK and the US led to his indictment.

Mr Taylor is accused of backing rebels, who committed widespread atrocities throughout the 1990s in Liberia’s neighbour Sierra Leone.

He was living in exile in Nigeria in 2006 when US pressure to put him on trial for alleged war crimes increased.

Mr Taylor now says the president of Nigeria at the time, Olusegun Obasanjo – who is currently a United Nations peace envoy – told him lies that caused him to be arrested.

The full story is here.

Ever wondered about the budget of the United Nations specialised organs? The figure below is from The Economist.

Note that only six institutions on the list have budgets over one billion dollars.

In 2002, the treasury department of the UK projected that the budget of DFID would be increased to 4.6billion pounds per year, by 2005/2006. The budget estimate (pdf) of the USAID for 2008 is 22.1billion dollars.

Is anybody surprised that UN institutions under-perform?

(I probably should add that not all the institutions in the table are UN organs. Thanks, Virginie, for calling my attention to the misunderstanding this could cause.)