Features
Feature articles in the November 2008 and August 2009 editions of The Sydney Globalist.
The Refugee: Contravening State Sovereignty
Zvjezdana Kragic asks whether the existing state-centric international system can be sustained under the influx of climate change refugees.
In Hannah Arendt’s highly influential philosophical work, On Totalitarianism, the legacy of the twentieth century – that is, the establishment of human rights – is systematically critiqued. The challenge to this system only became apparent after World War II, with the failure to accommodate the “people forced to live outside the scope of all tangible law”. The expulsion of minorities from political society – such as the Jewish community, among others – provided refugees with no recourse other than to claim protection under any human rights law. [...]
Can Money Grow on Trees?
Marguerite Pettit explores Papua New Guinea’s contentious logging industry and its impact on the nation’s statehood.
Papua New Guinea declared its sovereign independence from Australia in 1975, marking the nation’s first step towards self-determination. Its constitution enshrines the rights of all citizens to participate in the nation’s social and economic development and to benefit from the commercial revenues generated by the country’s natural resources. Theoretically, Papua New Guinea was freed from colonial rule in 1975. In practice, the Government has permitted foreign companies to exploit the nation’s natural resources, often leaving lasting detrimental consequences in their wake. [...]
Legally Obliging Filial Piety
Alice Chen Yan examines a legally peculiar and globally unique Singaporean law that empowers parents to sue their adult children for cash and care.
In a state where it is a crime to sell chewing gum, feed birds in the park, and not flush a public toilet, I was still surprised to discover, during my first class at Singapore’s National Law School, the extent of the state’s intrusion into the family home. Under Singapore’s Maintenance of Parents Act, parents may sue their grown-up children for a monthly allowance. Since the Act’s implementation in 1999, more than 400 applications have been made, and – in a clear indication of the court’s attitude – four in five applicants have successfully obtained an order compelling their children to support them. [...]
A New Breath for ASEAN
Ilana Idrus reports on the ASEAN International Relations Student Conference.
ASEAN, Southeast Asia’s regional association, has for much of its 42-year history been described as having failed to generate anything near satisfactory results. From its beginnings in 1967 with just five states, the association has grown to 10 with the controversial membership of countries such as Burma and Cambodia. A major criticism that ASEAN has faced is that it is an elitist association, meaning little to the people in the countries that make up its membership. [...]
Human Trafficking: A Crisis of Representation and Law Enforcement
Neroli Austin and Misa Han explore the bondage, deception and migration of sex workers.
At King’s Cross, Sydney’s red light district, sandwiched between strip clubs and all-night kebab shops are brothels and ‘massage parlours’, where female migrants are kept for sexual servitude. Without a passport or a means to fight the constant threats of rape and beating, the migrant women represent part of the global slave trade movement that exists beyond Ben Hur and the Atlantic Slave Trade. [...]
The Khmer Rouge Tribunal: Judgment Without Justice?
Diana Tjoeng looks at the legal challenges faced by the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.
When discussing the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, this ancient proverb is particularly fitting. Led by Pol Pot, the Democratic Kampuchean regime envisioned a Cambodia unaffected by the past; they brought the nation back to Year Zero and instigated what they considered to be a communist, agrarian utopia. In truth, the Khmer Rouge killed more than 1.7 million of their own people through execution, starvation and overwork. [...]
The Fight for the Coca Leaf
Alexandra Dzero explores the history and changing role of the coca leaf.
The coca leaf – small, dark green and relatively unremarkable – would probably not be noticed by an untrained eye. Tourists arriving in La Paz eagerly take photos of Indigenous women selling the plant, while bewildered locals look on. As you chew the coca leaf your mouth numbs, your headache clears and breathing becomes easier at the extreme altitude. Apart from these humble side effects, the leaf is used for another purpose: as the base ingredient in the manufacture of cocaine. It is this fact that has caused an international legal, political and economic war for over 48 years. [...]
The Ethics of International Relations
Rebecca Beard offers clarification on the supposed clash between the ‘practical’ and the ‘moral’.
According to Aristotle, politics is ethics: both in terms of the ends it attempts to serve, and the means by which this should be achieved. Because politics deals with the fundamental question of what we ‘ought’ to do, it is intimately intertwined with the ethical conception of the ‘good’ and the behaviours that must be attributed to its achievement. Misunderstandings of the nature of ethics and politics attempt to construct a clear line between issues deemed to be ‘practical’ and therefore external, and those considered ‘moral’ and therefore belonging to the ethical realm. [...]
The Biggest Loser
Robert Knight argues free trade is not always win-win.
Marcos Gonzalez barely ekes out a living on his 16-acre farm in the mountains of Cedral. Each square-inch is worked year round to generate the produce that has sustained his subsistent level lifestyle year after year. It is a life typical of rural Costa Rica. But his biggest worry these days is Costa Rica’s free trade agreement with the U.S., which will only encourage the stiff market competition he already has with some of America’s biggest corporations. [...]
Law and Order: Executive Intent
Suzannah Morris explores the role of the judiciary in protecting human rights and restraining executive power in the fight against terrorism.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is the world’s most translated document. And rightly so. The Declaration represents the first global expression of rights to which all human beings, regardless of their circumstances, are entitled. With the Declaration celebrating its 60th anniversary in 2008, it is easy to profess the importance of human rights. [...]
