On 25 January, the Global Justice Academy hosted its first event of the new year, ‘Interpretive Convergence at the European Court of Human Rights: Strength…
Comments closedCategory: Europe
Dr Dimitrios Kagiaros (Edinburgh Law School) reports on a recent workshop, ‘Specifying and Securing a Social Minimum’, held at the International Institute for the Sociology…
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This post by GJA Director, Professor Christine Bell, was first published on the Centre on Constitutional Change blog on 26 March 2016, co-published with European Futures.
Amid pronouncements about the UK as an island nation, scant media or political attention has been paid to its only land border with the EU – between Northern Ireland and the Republic. However, says Professor Christine Bell in this extended analysis, the impact of Brexit on the institutions built up as part of the Peace Process would be considerable.
The EU referendum and the possibility of ‘Brexit’ raise distinct questions for Northern Ireland as a devolved region within the UK as part of the peace process. In the referendum debate, more attention needs to be given in the rest of the UK to Northern Ireland, the one part of the UK which has a land border with another EU country.
Political Divisions and the EU Referendum Campaign
The first key question as regards the EU referendum’s impact in Northern Ireland relates to the distinctiveness of its political settlement: how will the Brexit campaign affect political relationships – ever fragile – within Northern Ireland?
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This post was first published on the author’s Remotely Balkan blog, and is re-blogged here with permission.
This post is by Laura Wise. Laura is an Analyst on the Global Justice Academy’s Political Settlements Research Programme. Her research interests include minority mobilisation, state-society relations, and conflict management in South-Eastern Europe.
Képen: Szögesdrót a röszkei határátkelőnél.
fotó: Segesvári Csaba
The Balkan Express is no more.
Replaced by luxury international coaches from Vienna to Sarajevo, with on-board toilets that work, Wi-Fi, and conductors who serve drinks, gone are the potholed, unreliable minibus journeys that make classic travellers’ tales for the Western backpacker. Last month I made a fleeting visit back to the Balkans; the kind of trip where you spend hours on the aforementioned buses just to meet friends for coffee. It was also a chance to reunite with rakia, and revisit bars where the pop-folk of Dado Polumenta is an acceptable choice of music. However, most of my conversations and experiences kept returning to a more sobering topic: Europe.
Comments closedThis was the question Professor David Miller from Oxford University addressed on 4 February 2016 in a well-attended lecture hosted by Edinburgh University’s Global Justice Academy and Just World Institute.
In this blog report from the lecture, Yukinori Iwaki reflects on the day’s discussion and points raised. Yukinori Iwaki is a PhD student in Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. Click here to read more about his research.
Professor Miller began his talk by noting the 2014 UK government decision not to support Triton, a search-and-rescue operation proposed by the EU that could have potentially saved the lives of sea-crossing migrants, or “boat people”. The main reasoning behind this decision was the claim that search-and-rescue encourages people to attempt dangerous sea crossings in the greater expectation of being rescued, and therefore, in the long term, will bring about more deaths. This seems to be a consequentialist argument that considers effects of alternative ways of using resources in order to minimise the loss of lives overall. Meanwhile, critics argue that European states have stringent obligations to protect rights of migrants. But is it true that the critics’ argument occupies the moral high ground while the UK government’s argument is morally defective? The answer Professor Miller gave us was: ‘Not necessarily’.
