published_or_final_version / Comparative Asian Studies / Master / Master of Arts

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This thesis explores the relevance of international law in the multilateral protection and promotion of public health in a world sharply divided by poverty and underdevelopment. In this endeavour, the thesis predominantly uses the concept of "mutual vulnerability" to discuss the globalisation of diseases and health hazards in the emergent global neighbourhood. Because pathogens do not respect geo-political boundaries, this thesis argues that the world has become one single germ pool where there is no health sanctuary. The concept of mutual vulnerability postulates that the irrelevance or obsolescence of national boundaries to microbial threats has created the capability to immerse all of humanity in a single microbial sea. It follows, therefore, that neither protectionism nor isolationism offers any effective defences against advancing microbial forces. As a result, the thesis argues that contemporary multilateral health initiatives should be driven primarily by enlightened self-interest as opposed to parochial protectionist policy. This study is primarily situated within the discipline of international law. Nonetheless, it draws on the social sciences in its analysis of traditional medicine in Africa. It also makes overtures to medical historians in its discussion of the attitudes of societies to diseases and to the evolution of public health diplomacy, to international relations in its analysis of international regime theories, and to a number of other disciplines interested in the phenomenon of globalisation. This interdisciplinary framework for analysis offers a holistic approach to public health policy-making and scholarship to counter the segmented approaches of the present era. Thus, this thesis is concerned with four related projects. First, it explores the relevance of legal interventions in the promotion and protection of public health. If health is a public good, legal interventions are indispensable intermediate strategies to deliver the final dividends of good health to the vulnerable and the poor in all societies. Second, it explores multicultural approaches to health promotion and protection and argues for a humane health order based on multicultural inclusiveness and multi-stakeholder participation in health-policy making. Using African traditional malaria therapies as a case study, the thesis urges an animation of transnational civil society networks to evolve a humane health order, one that fulfils the desired vision of harmony and fairness. Third, it makes an argument for increased collaboration among lawyers, epidemiologists and scholars of other disciplines related to public health. Using the tenets of health promotion and primary health care, the thesis urges an inter-disciplinary dialogue to facilitate the needed "epidemiological transition" across societies, especially in the developing world. Fourth, the thesis makes modest proposals towards the reduction of unequal disease burdens within and among nation-states. The thesis articulates these proposals genetically under the rubric of communitarian globalism, a paradigm that strives to meet the lofty ideals of the "law of humanity". In sum, it projects a humane world where all of humanity is inexorably tied in a global compact, where the health of one person rises and falls with the health of every other person, and where every country sees the health problems of other countries as its own. Arduous as these tasks may be, they are achievable only if damaged trust of past decades is rebuilt. Because the Westphalian sovereign states lack the full capacity to exhaustively pursue all the dynamics of communitarian globalism, multilateral governance structures must necessarily extend to both state and non-state actors. In this quest, the thesis concludes, international law - with its bold claims to universal protection of human rights and the enhancement of human dignity - is indispensable as a mechanism for reconstructing the public health trust in the relations of nations and of peoples.

Globalization has placed a considerable strain on the current international tax structure predicated upon bilateral tax treaties. Multilateral cooperation may allow nation states to overcome many of globalization's effects. / The two prospects for multilateral cooperation are the creation of an international tax organization and a multilateral tax treaty to replace the current bilateral tax treaty network. Whereas there is currently no organization responsible for the surveillance of the international tax system, such an organization is within the realm of possibility. The perfect home for such an organization would be the OECD given its large expertise and history in taxation. However for political reasons it is difficult to foresee such scenario in the near future. / A more likely prospect is the creation of a series of multilateral tax treaties for economic regions. This is due to the fact that a multilateral tax treaty, as demonstrated by the Nordic Tax Convention, can be most successful within a group of nations that share close cooperation and highly integrated economies such as members of the EU or NAFTA already tied together through trade agreements.

Even though international cooperation traditionally is a concept encountered in public international law, it has an important role to play in the private satellite communications sector. Satellite communications being activities that intrinsically have a global outreach, mutatis mutandis they require legal rules that would not focus on purely regional or local interests. National and international space law have for the past decade encountered criticism with respect to obvious insufficiencies that in turn affected space activities. The first reaction of learned space lawyers was to call for some redrafting of international space law. A second thought about it had them take into account national legislation in this possible harmonization process, but in any case this was to primarily be of concern for States. / However, the new millennium has brought its share of intellectual renewal and in the field of space law it has been translated in the acknowledgement that the private sector would have an important role to play, on the international scene, for the improvement of space law. It is this new legal thinking that has been characterized as "international cooperation" as applied to the private sector, that is the subject of this study. Hence, what is looked at is the position of the satellite communications sector on the international scene and what expertise it has to share with public fora for the overall improvement of space law and space activities.

The atmosphere transcends boundaries. So does the politics of the global atmosphere. This study focuses on Japan, discourse, and knowledge in the politics of the global atmosphere, including ozone layer depletion and climate change. In this study, I show how Japan's policy changed as its knowledge on the global atmosphere progressed from severely limited and distorted, to comprehensive and advanced. The change, I contend, had little to do with availability of or access to knowledge, and instead, was dependent upon the context with which existing scientific knowledge was interpreted. The major determinant of the environmental policy context in Japan, I argue, is the dominant discourse. Discourses, in other words, have a crucial impact on how scientific knowledge is interpreted, which, in turn, has a crucial impact on the policy choices that are made at both the international and domestic levels. This is not to say that an analysis of discourse explains everything. It does not. But, along with an analysis of transnational knowledge, power, and interests, it is a necessary part of the explanation of Japan's policy toward the global atmosphere. To achieve the objectives of my research, this dissertation uses a two-level (international/domestic) case study of the politics of ozone layer depletion and climate change in Japan. First, I found that what I call a "marriage of convenience" between science and policy was a critical aspect of the process of knowledge and policy construction. Second, my analysis shows that Japan's policy toward global atmospheric issues was manifestly impacted by the discursive power of global environmentalism and the precautionary principle. In this regard, I argue that, in challenging Japan's hitherto dominant kogai discourse and dominant policy making discourse based on "pollution-response," the discourses of global environmentalism and the precautionary principle resulted in a reorganization of institutional arrangements within Japan. Third, my analysis traces the transnationalization of domestic actors in Japan, and shows how these actors-NGOs, industry and industry organizations, and scientists-in linking up with counterparts across borders (I) enhanced their knowledge, (2) reinforced their interests and power, and (3) materially influenced the policy making process. / Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 360-396). / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / Also available by subscription via World Wide Web / xiv, 396 leaves, bound 29 cm

<p>This paper sought to discuss the questions whether refugees have the right to return to their country of origin and whether their participation in the political life of that country may be used as a means to realise their right to return.</p>

<p>The underlying rational behind the protection of intellectual property rights is to strike a balance between the interests of intellectual property rights holders on the one hand and users of protected knowledge on the other hand. This thesis sought to achieve the following objectives: to create a good understanding of the historical development of the primary and secondary legal instruments related to the intellectual property rights/public health debate / to determine to what extent a balance is struck by the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights with reference to the flexibilities provided for in the Treaty, read together with the subsequent World Trade Organization Ministerial Declarations and TRIPS Council Decisions / to evaluate the extent to which selected developing and least developed country members of the World Trade Organization have taken measures to implement the said flexibilities, taking cognizance of their relevant strengths and weaknesses / to suggest ways in which select countries in the developing world specifically India and Zambia can take greater advantage of the flexibilities to promote better access to medicines which taking into consideration various opportunities and threats that are foreseeable / to identify public health aspects of TRIPS that the developing country and least developed countries World Trade Organization members would do well to address in further negotiations.</p>

This thesis seeks to better conceptualise how and why there is an absence of international protection for ???environmental refugees???, and to place these findings in the critical geopolitics literature. A poststructuralist framework, drawing on Foucault???s ideas of discourse, subjectivity, power and governance, was deemed most appropriate for this thesis, and provided a means of differentiation from previous literature on ???environmental refugees???. This thesis develops a genealogy of the subject category of ???environmental refugees??? since the 1970s, to better understand how the United Nations, Inter-Governmental Organisations (IGOs), Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and the media have constructed environmental issues and refugees in texts. Fieldwork undertaken in 2004 enabled me to conduct 45 semistructured interviews with United Nations diplomats and representatives from IGOs and NGOs. Critical scrutiny of these interview texts revealed the constructions of ???environmental refugees??? as various subject identities, particularly in relation to climate change. Pacific ambassadors to the United Nations were also interviewed in 2004 to explore how they negotiated discourses on climate change and ???environmental refugees???, and attempted to articulate their concerns at the United Nations. This thesis contends that an absence of policy at the United Nations to protect ???environmental refugees??? has been produced by a combination of discursive and institutional politics. Unequal power structures at the United Nations have limited the capacity of small island states to lobby and articulate concerns, while subject categories of ???environmental refugees??? have been constructed in ways that alter the terms of debate, evade legal response, or deflect blame away from the perpetrators of environmental damage. Reasons for this policy absence have been the shifting attitudes towards environmental issues and the role of multilateral political institutions. The overall contribution of this thesis is to critical geopolitics, through its examination of the role of multilateralism, representations of environmental issues causing population displacement, and how and why policy absences are created within multilateral institutions such as the United Nations.