Aircraft leasing is a method of fleet acquisition. It was known to none at the outset of the air traffic era; as a result, international air law treaties were not formulated upon the concept that realized the practices as such. The moment international aircraft leasing materialized, many regimes of international air law became unsuited to the situation. / On the one hand, public international air law treaties have faced the problems ranging from safety oversight responsibilities and aircraft accident investigation to airport charges and criminal jurisdiction. / On the other hand, private international air law treaties have faced the problems ranging from applicability of the 1952 Rome Convention and preferential rights under the 1948 Geneva Convention to aircraft engine leasing and the idiosyncrasy of leasing transactions. / This study is not aimed at scrutinizing leasing transactions but at examining the aforementioned difficulties, especially the issues of public international air law.

The United Nations Security Council has recently imposed economic sanctions against several states with the aim to protect human rights. Before the Second World War economic sanctions had been imposed under the Covenant of the League of Nations. It was, however, only with the creation of the United Nations and the evolution of international human rights law that economic sanctions have been imposed explicitly in the name of human rights. While the Security Council has ordered economic sanctions against Iraq, Haiti and the former Yugoslavia for their human rights violations, the thesis explores the reasons why the Council has not taken similar measures against other countries with comparable human rights records and concludes that, there exists a double standard. Another important issue examined concerns the collateral consequences of economic sanctions. More often than not, it is the civilian population that ends up enduring the harsh conditions that result from the sanctions. The thesis suggests that the economic sanctions imposed for human rights purposes may in fact result in the infringement of the basic human rights of the very population that they are intended to protect.

Publicists, scholars, and practitioners of international law have yet to produce a sustained analysis of the law of war as applied to armed conflict in outer space. Though no reported cases of armed conflict in space exist, the principal spacefaring nations have contemplated space warfare for decades. Concluding that the general legal regime regulating means and methods of warfare will apply to space combat, should it occur, this thesis attempts a preliminary examination. Chapter One presents a hypothetical space warfare scenario, followed by a chapter on the history of space militarization with a review of existing (and foreseeable) technology useful for space combat. Chapter Three analyzes the international legal regime governing armed conflict, drawing conclusions for space warfare where possible. Chapters Four and Five analyze the legal regime governing the corpus juris spatialis (space law proper), as well as related treaties and instruments supplementing the legal norms for human activity in space, respectively. Chapter Six lays a foundational legal analysis for the application of the law of war to space combat, concluding with a section that addresses specific issues raised by such application.

The purpose of this thesis is to record the development of international criminal law by means of an analysis of the subject-matter jurisdiction of the few established international criminal tribunals. The first chapter will illustrate by a historical survey the evolution of the law and its impairment by an incoherent international realpolitik. Subsequently, the second chapter will analyze the present state of the law as reflected by the Statute of the ICC as well as the Statutes and jurisdiction of the ad hoc Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. It will thereby concentrate on the common elements of those crimes which form part of the jurisdiction of all the international criminal tribunals, i.e., "genocide", "crimes against humanity" and "war crimes." This thesis' intention is to examine both the originality and the imperfections of the present state of law.

<p> The study of institutions (i.e., "the rules of the game" in a society) has grown from a small fringe subject in the late 1980s to a massive pillar in the current study of International Political Economy. Two thing has become clear during the course of this growth and the involved research it entails: (1) institutional Quality (especially quality of governance and rule of law) has a determinant effect on the GDP development of a given countries economy and (2) institutional quality has a determinant effect on whether a country is either "cursed" or "blessed" with natural resource abundance (i.e., whether they are growth "winners" or "losers" in terms of GDP development. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the presence of abundant natural resources amplifies this determinant effect when controlled for nonresource abundant states, and if so to what extent. The study ultimately finds amplification of the effect of institutional quality on GDP per capita when controlling for natural resource abundance, ultimately suggesting that resource abundance can be either a "blessing" or a "curse" depending on preexisting institutional quality. Secondary findings indicate the existence of a "slippage" effect in institutional quality once natural resources are introduced to a given state's economy.</p>

<p> Central Asia has been a hotspot of terrorist activities and the drug trade for at least a decade. There are reasons for the prolonged unrest in this region. First, Afghanistan, as the lair for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, is a seedbed of a terrorist threat, whilst also the world's biggest cultivation of opium. Given the opportunity that drug trafficking provides for financing terrorism it is unsurprising that the two, terrorism and narcotics trafficking, are combined. In the US Government's War on Drugs, the term 'Narco-Terrorism' is adopted to explain the known terrorist organizations engaging in drug trafficking to fund their activities. Countering the illicit drug trade is therefore vital to the overall struggle against international terrorism. Second, given the fragile status of the Central Asian states after obtaining independence following the disintegration of the former Soviet Union, they were vulnerable to both transnational organized crime and extremism. Third, the deviant globalization, which enabled the local illicit drugs connect with the international trafficking groups, and the illegal service providers like money launderers, so that the drugs can reach the international markets like Europe.</p><p> The situation in Central Asia is described by Mary Kaldor, in her <i> New and Old Wars</i>, as a new type of war, which is characterized with the identity politics, predatory economy, diasporas networks and globalization. The main actors of the new wars are non-state actors, which can be tackled only by a cosmopolitan approach with integration of international and national resources under greater institutionalized international cooperation. However, geopolitical disputes may undermine the prospects for cooperation. The competing interests of dominant state and organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization make it difficult to conceive the type of cooperation needed to deal with the increasingly transnational narco-terrorist threat. The paper will argue that realism is not the answer to narco-terrorism in Central Asia; a greater and institutionalized liberalist cooperation framework asserted by Mary Kaldor's new wars theory is needed to eliminate the roots of drug trafficking and terrorism.</p>

<p> This study sets out to review a comparison of membership within the United Nations Security Council and the Human Rights Council and how sexual orientation and gender (SOGI) rights are protected or promoted within a state's foreign policy. These states were selected due to the need of having a set within the 193 UN member states and by choosing the UNSC there is elimination of selection bias. Multilateralism carries many difficulties, and chief amongst this is the concept of human rights. Human rights in general are often contentious, and especially in the area of SOGI. Because SOGI rights are not explicitly guaranteed within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or any of the major Human Rights Conventions many states contend that they cannot be recognized as they are new rights. However, advocates for SOGI rights call for the principle of equality pointing out that these are not new rights, simply recognizing the importance of equal rights for all.</p><p> There is little work done already to emphasize how foreign policy engages with sexual orientation. Instead there is plenty of research supporting the marginalization and discrimination against people because of their SOGI. Most studies deal with domestic situations. This study as an interdisciplinary approach blends quantitative, qualitative and legal focuses within expressed foreign policy and attempts to determine if there is any relationship between states that are involved within the United Nations Security Council, the Human Rights Council, and SOGI foreign policy. After a thorough review of the backgrounds related to SOGI of each selected state, each state is then measured across 2 indices each comprised of 4 factors to attempt to begin a valuation of the two subjects. The results appear to reflect that those states that are more involved within the UNSC and the Human Rights Council do tend to have a better record on SOGI within their foreign policy. However, these results can only be preliminary as more research is needed to fully understand how these two variables can interact with each other.</p>

<p> There are many theories linking natural resource rents to violent conflict; few theories link rents to domestic political instability. Extending these theories to assess rents' relationship to political stability or instability yields thirty-three mechanisms by which rents affect political stability. I conduct case studies of the oil industries and political, economic, and societal factors present in C&ocirc;te d'Ivoire and South Africa and examine how the production and export of oil affects the political stability of these countries. I find that although these countries are not dependent on rents for their defense and welfare spending, rents contribute to both stability and instability in both countries.</p>

Present mechanisms to expand global initiatives in the frontier of space have intrinsic limitations. The dominant powers limit access to space technology by other nations on strategic grounds, thus preventing the emergence of international cooperation. / If existing patterns of space activities are maintained, the future of East-West and North-South relations in space will be one of growing tension. Four measures to bring about peaceful coexistence and growth in space, however, can be adopted by the international community. These are: (1) creation of an international satellite agency for the monitoring of arms movements and international crises; (2) establishment of measures to prevent deployment of weapons in space; (3) promotion of privatization of space technologies; (4) establishment of regional space agencies among developing countries.

No description available.