In November 2020 Constitutional Tribunal announced that it will start working on stricter abortion law in Poland. Poland has already one of the strictest abortion laws in the wholeEurope and this information and Constitutional’s Tribunal announcement created confusionamong the society. Later on, the Constitutional Tribunal decided that abortion will be considered unconstitutional, illegal if fetus is severely damaged or will die shortly after birth. This decision forced may women and men to show their objection by protesting during COVID-19. The participants of the protests claimed that the government is violating human rights and not respecting women by limiting their access to legal, safe abortion. The access to abortion is extremely limited in Poland and can be done only if pregnancy is an outcome of a rape (which is extremely hard to prove) or if it can affect woman’s health. Women that simply do not want to be pregnant and who are not ready to have a child are not able to simply terminate their abortion. Proper sex education including information about rape, the importance of clear consent, birth control and pregnancy could lower the number of unwanted pregnancies which as an outcome would lower the amount of abortions.Unfortunately, the accessibility to proper sex education and contraceptives are hampered by ruling The Law and Justice political party and by the Catholic church in Poland. This research aims to investigate the connection between the abortion ban in Poland and sex education in Polish schools. I have the assumption that leading political party in Poland and Catholic church are limiting an access to proper sex education in Poland thinking that this will reduce the number of abortion sympathizers. This research concludes that the government and the Catholic Church in Poland are against both sex education and abortion. It also finds out that sex education is linked to abortion. More sex educated society would most likely avoid unwanted pregnancy which as an outcome would lower the amount of abortions.

This thesis historicizes the conceptualisations of large-scale farms, smallholder farmers, and the role of the state in the Ethiopian national development plans from 1957 to 2015. It engages with the food regime framework in discussing the role of the state in contemporary agrarian change and places itself within the debate of the corporate food regime. In providing a meso-level analysis of the Ethiopian state, this thesis works to nuance the role of the state in a research field that increasingly argues that the state has become redundant as global agri-food corporations are controlling food production. This thesis also problematises how researchers writing about Ethiopia focus either on changes in agricultural policies or recent development trends, lacking the longer historical understanding and not using continuities to contrast the changes with. Using tools from Critical Discourse Analysis and the Discourse-Historical Approach in combination with a theoretical understanding of how multiple temporal layers interacts in the meaning-making process of conceptualisations within the discourse, the empirical material which constitutes of Ethiopia’s Five Year Development Plans is analysed to understand how the orders of discourse giving meaning to the concepts of large-scale farms, smallholder farmers, and the role of the state is reacting to discourses in new development plans and the long-term goals of agricultural development. This thesis concludes that although the state’s conceptualisations of the three concepts has endured changes throughout the years, orders of discourses from earlier plans are still relevant to give meaning to the concepts, thus revealing how changes, continuities, and changes within the continuities and multiple temporal layersare interacting in the meaning-making process of the development plans.

This paper aims to investigate attitudes amongst Swedish municipalities toward the Commission on Democracy’s (SOU 2016:5) proposal regarding implementing a pilot project where the voting age would be lowered to 16 in local elections. In addition to this, the paper intends to categorise the arguments highlighted by municipalities. Using content analysis, referrals made by 135 municipalities concerning the Commission on Democracy’s report are analysed. Analysing the results, the study shows that 46 percent of the municipalities were negative about the proposal while 24 percent were positive. The remaining municipalities were either neutral or did not give an answer. Examining the arguments, positive municipalities mostly emphasised arguments that are categorised as democracy enhancing and negative municipalities referred to arguments which concern the current constitutional order. Few arguments underlined competence or recognised the connection between the voting age and other rights and duties. In other words, most municipalities did not refer to the principle of inclusion or to the principle of competence, both of which, historically and currently, have been important principles to consider when discussing the voting age. Something to note is that these principles may have been unstated in some referrals and could thereby still have been influencing how municipalities viewed the proposal.

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This thesis examines the Chinese investment programme; the Belt and Road Initiative, through a post-colonial lens, to categorise whether it fits the postcolonial draining of emerging economies. The purpose of this research is to broaden the way we see post-colonial relationships and contribute to the notion that all advanced economies can have a draining relationship with emerging ones. This is done by examining the geographical and economical aspects of the BRI-projects in two states; Kenya and Sri Lanka, to detect draining. The thesis comes to the conclusion that China, through the Belt and Road Initiative, fits the post-colonial description of draining the examined states. The results hopefully mean a humble contribution to the broadening of what is included in the post-colonial theory.

This study examines a chosen set of prominent actors within family planning initiatives aimed toward the global South to find out if there are traces of “smart economics” within the framings of the initiatives. The smart economic framework has received critique for instrumentalising women and using gender equality as a tool rather than a goal. Researchers have found similar arguments within the family planning discourse and emphasised the potential harm these arguments lead to. By looking at the websites of six family planning actors, a content analysis is the chosen method. By examining the texts from the websites through categories invented from key elements of the smart economic framework, certain themes or the lack of these themes can be used to find traces of smart economics within the framings of family planning initiatives. The material from the chosen organisations is argued to influence the family planning discourse and is relevant to review. The results show that there are traces of a smart economic narrative within the framings of family planning initiatives. As previous research has pointed out, there is a lack of focus on men’s role in family planning. By using a smart economic narrative, the organisations working with family planning contribute to the discourse as well as the overall development discourse. By addressing the problems of using the smart economic framework, hopefully, the discourse can transform into being rights-based and not instrumental.

The ambition of this thesis is to fulfill two aims. The first aim is theory development, by presenting a theoretical framework where climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) are combined. The second aim is empirical, where the theoretical framework is used to analyze an example of DRR with an ambition to include CCA. An integrated approach is beneficial for the achievement of sustainable development and for strengthening resilience to hazards (Schipper 2009; Mitchell et al 2010). However, the two fields largely operate in separate which can cause reversed development outcomes and hamper the overall objectives of both DRR and CCA. The ambition of this thesis is hence to investigate to what extent the approach is used within humanitarian aid organizations today, with a specific focus on the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). The method used is a qualitative content analysis of the “Integrated Flood Resilience Programme” in Bangladesh (IFRP) conducted by the IFRC. The main finding of the study suggests a surprising progress of including CCA and climate change as components within DRR. However, there are still core aspects of an integrated approach missing in the project. For instance, there is no inclusion of an environmental risk assessment or alignment with climate frameworks, except for parts of the Sustainable Development Goals. Moreover, the efforts associated with CCA are perceived unspecific in comparison to other parts of the project. This thesis therefore reaffirms some of the conclusions made by other scholars (e.g. Mitchell et al 2010; Schipper 2009: Thomalla et al 2006; Hammond 2017), implying that DRR and CCA still mostly operate separately.

The UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS), held in September 2021, brought great expectations of a sustainable food systems transition in accordance with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It was, however, almost instantly criticised for failing to be transparent, implementing a Human Rights Based Approach (HRBA) and agroecological principles, and for not including the UN Committee of Food Security (CFS). The CFS has reached high credibility over the last decade due to its inclusive and transparent structure. The UNs partnership with the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the appointment of Agnes Kalibata as Secretary General Guterres’ Special Envoy to the UNFSS has further been the basis for arguing that corporate actors has gained power and influence over the UNFSS. Following Friedmann and McMichael’s Food Regime Theory (FRT), the aim of this thesis is to use Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to explore the UNFSSs contributions to the food security discourse of the contemporary food regime within the frameworks of human rights and agroecology. The conceptualisation of food security bears political and economic implications and the UNFSSs contributions to its discourse could potentially influence global food governance and the future role of the CFS.

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No description available.