Magister Philosophiae - MPhil / The purpose of this mini-thesis is to address International Humanitarian Law (IHL) violations occurring within the Occupied Palestinian Territories relative to the protection of civilian persons in time of war. Importantly, various IHL violations that occur within the Green Line will be expanded upon. The mini-thesis will shed light on the lack of international action, specifically the inaction of the UN and the ICRC, in ending the decades of IHL violations by both the Israeli and Palestinian forces. As a means to an end, further destruction of property and loss of life that inhibits the quality of life of Palestinians and Israeli citizens trapped within the ongoing conflict, this mini-thesis will endeavour to provide solutions to ending the occupation. These solutions include: a UN Resolution directed toward the demolition of the wall; establishing permanent means of access to all basic needs; and lastly, addressing the influence of the United States of America (USA) and Egypt, respectively.

This thesis examines the rise and fall of a coconut-based enclave economy in the administrative post of Micaúne in the district of Chinde, Zambézia Province. Residents of Micaúne derived their livelihoods from the coconut economy for over a century. My research is based on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken between 2010 and 2014 over a period of eight months in this administrative post. Although coconut had been a familiar crop to people in the Micaúne area for centuries, it became central to the local economy only after the advent of colonial settler capitalism in the 1880s. I argue that the longevity of the coconut economy, and the stability and predictability that it brought to Micaúne residents, were the outcome of its embeddedness in the local social organisation and mode of production. From the last decades of the 19th century, Micaúne's economy was dominated by Société du Madal, initially a French-owned company that established coconut plantations in the area and produced commodities derived from the coconut palm for sale on international markets. Madal became a 'total institution' in Micaúne because it was the major landholder, employer of local labour, supplier of goods through its shops and the main purchaser of coconut from growers in the area. This study suggests that a 'customary' law relating to inheritance in Micaúne reinforced the centrality of the coconut economy in local society for much of the 20th century by making specific reference to the inheritance of trees. The implication of this law was that control and ownership of trees rather than land was the major determinant of local livelihoods. But as in any enclave economy, when the resource on which it is based is depleted, the collapse of the whole system is inevitable. In the case of Micaúne, an ecological crisis in the 1990s, in the form of a plant disease known as Coconut Lethal Yellowing Disease (CLYD, infected and killed most of the palm trees, both on Madal's and local families' land, which were the backbone of the local economy. As a result, the company-based welfare system that Micaúne residents enjoyed for more than a hundred years disappeared overnight, a catastrophe that caused unprecedented uncertainty and despair in the area. The local people's main sources of income and employment shrank and there have been many confirmed reports of hunger and starvation amongst the Micaúne population in the 2000s and after. In sum, the majority of Micaúne residents are now 'food insecure', except for a few who are local businessmen and people employed by or getting stipends from the state. It is evident from my research that attempts by the government and NGOs to promote food security initiatives failed to solve the problem. On the contrary, these initiatives have fuelled a growing demand for land, which has led to its increasing commodification (including the emergence of an illegal land market). This development has also triggered emergent claims of land ownership based on a new notion of autochthony. A clear distinction between 'natives' and non-'natives' (newcomers) is now being drawn in Micaúne. Claiming to belong to the category of autochthons is seen as a basis for entitlement to prior rights over resources such as minerals recently discovered in the district. I argue that the promise of minerals resources might explain why, despite the extremely harsh living conditions that local residents have faced since the demise of the coconut economy, they have decided to remain in this area while scouting in the interim for alternative livelihoods options, which are limited to subsistence farming and fishing, and petty trade. They seem to be waiting for the materialisation of big investments in mineral resources or in other development initiatives often touted by the central government in Mozambique. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Anthropology and Archaeology / DPhil / Unrestricted

Age of information (AoI) captures the freshness of information and has been used broadly for scheduling data transmission in the Internet of Things (IoT). We consider a general scenario where a meaningful piece of information consists of multiple packets and the information would not be considered complete until all related packets have been correctly received. This general scenario, seemingly a trivial extension of exiting work where information update is in terms of single packet, is actually challenging in both scheduling algorithm design and theoretical analysis, because we need to track the history of received packets before a complete piece of information can be updated. We first analyse the necessary condition for optimal scheduling based on which we present an optimal scheduling method. The optimal solution, however, has high time complexity. To address the problem, we investigate the problem in the framework of restless multi-armed bandit (RMAB) and propose an index-based scheduling policy by applying Whittle index. We also propose a new transmission strategy based on erasure codes to improve the performance of scheduling policies in lossy networks. Performance evaluation results demonstrate that our solution outperforms other baseline policies such as greedy policy and naive Whittle index policy in both lossless and lossy networks. / Graduate

No description available.

The research problem of this study has been to compare armed organizations in the Swedish inter war period in a systematic way through the theoretical framework of the monopoly of violence. This has been done in the effort to demonstrate how the Swedish state viewed the level of threat that these organizations proposed based on certain criterias. This is something that hasn’t previously been done and it’s important analyze since it demonstrates how the state works under enormous amounts of stress and what the state deems to be of highest risk during these special times. The purpose of the study has been to answer how the state viewed the different armed organization's threat levels. Was it based on ideological views or was it based on something different? To answer this the study used three different research questions: What did the armed organizations have as their motive? What resources did the organizations have? And how did the state view the threat levels of the different organizations? As already noted the study was conducted within the framework of Max Weber's theory on the monopoly of violence. This theory implies that in order to have a successful state you need to be able to have the exclusive right to use violence within a specific area. Hence the state needs a monopoly of violence and therefore violence becomes a form of politics and the pursuit of power and influence. This theory should help demonstrate both why these organizations choose to take to arms but also how their different aspects affect their levels of threat perceived by the state. This study has been done primarily through a qualitative text analysis with a hermeneutic approach and comparative elements applied to it. This study has found that the organization's ideology seems to be the major aspect that increases the perceived threat levels but that there also are two other aspects that do this. The second is the motive behind why the organization has chosen to become armed. If the motive is to be able to conduct revolution this greatly increases the perceived levels of threat. The third aspect is the amount of resources that these organizations have, the more resources that they are in control of, the greater their potential threat and hence perceived threat levels.

No description available.

Yes / This report on Sierra Leone is one of 13 case studies (all of the case studies are available at www.bradford.ac.uk/cics). This research draws upon secondary data sources including existing research studies, reports and evaluations commissioned by operational agencies, and early warning and survey data where this has been available. These secondary sources have been complemented by primary research interviews with government officers, aid policymakers and practitioners, researchers and members of the local population. The author would like to thank Tunde Zack-Williams for comments made on an earlier draft. The analysis and opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policy of DFID or the UK government. 1

Yes / This report on Somalia is one of 13 case studies. This research draws upon secondary data sources including existing research studies, reports and evaluations commissioned by operational agencies, and early warning and survey data where this has been available. These secondary sources have been complemented by interviews with government officers, aid policymakers and practitioners, researchers and members of the local population. This work was carried out in Nairobi in February and September 2004. The author would like to thank the many Somali, international NGOs, UN and donor bodies based there. The report has also benefited greatly from inputs from Dr June Rock. The author would also like to thank Mark Bradbury and Reg Green for comments on an earlier draft; however, they are not responsible for any shortcomings in this final version. The analysis and opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policy of DFID or the UK government.

Yes / This report on Southern Sudan is one of 13 case studies (all of which can be found at www.bradford.ac.uk/cics). This research draws upon secondary data sources, including existing research studies, reports and evaluations commissioned by operational agencies, and early warning and survey data where this has been available. These secondary sources have been complemented by interviews with government officers, aid policymakers and practitioners, researchers and members of the local population. The analysis and opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policy of DFID or the UK government.

Yes / This report on Algeria is one of 13 case studies (all of the case studies are available at www.bradford.ac.uk/cics). This research draws upon secondary data sources including existing research studies, reports and evaluations. The author would like to thank David Seddon and Tim Heath for comments made on an earlier draft. The analysis and opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views or policy of DFID or the UK government.