No description available.

Yes / This paper focuses on the dispute over river Cauvery in Southern India. Among the causes of river water disputes are contested property rights, difficulty in enforcing such rights, conflict of uses and a lack of willingness to compromise. A co-operative outcome in such cases depends on several factors: asymmetry of power in a triadic relationship between a federal government and two riparian states (one upstream and one downstream). Other factors influencing co-operation are the extent to which the claims of river waters can be elevated from those of immediate riparian peoples to those of an entire state; the dominance of a masculine paradigm towards 'taming' river waters using 'hard' investments rather than 'soft' and decentralised alternatives. On the basis of district level data, the importance of river Cauvery to the hydrology, economy and polity of the two contesting states is examined. This analysis helps us to appreciate why the two riparian state governments have limited room to manouvre. Drawing from two brief case studies of Murray Darling Basin and recent litigation in the USA, and other international experiences of river water treaties, the paper identifies various implications for the resolution of Cauvery and other river water disputes.

Yes / Transboundary Peace Parks are established along international borders surrounded by biodiversity that needs to be protected, particularly in regions that were devastated as consequence of internal or international conflicts. They are conceived as peacebuilding strategies to bring former enemies together through the joint management of the shared environment. This dissertation explores the effectiveness of Transboundary Peace Parks in promoting more cooperative and peaceful inter-State relations. In order to demonstrate such effectiveness, three initiatives will be analyzed: Cordillera del Cóndor between Ecuador and Peru, the Greater Virunga Transboundary Collaboration between Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Rwanda and Uganda and the Balkans Peace Park Project (B3P) involving Albania, Kosovo/a and Montenegro. The concepts State sovereignty, borders and territory will be analyzed in this dissertation since they are key factors to take in account when establishing a Transboundary Peace Park. Apart from States, the involvement of local communities is essential when developing these initiatives. The participation of other stakeholders such as NGOs, international organizations and private donors, is also vital for the success of these initiatives. This dissertation also aims to draw the attention to the positive effects of Peace Parks in their area of influence since they receive mostly criticism.

This dissertation presents an overview of Church- State relations in Mexico from 1924 to 1938. It examines the actions and motives of prominent national leaders, the papacy, the episcopate, and the Mexican citizenry to determine justification and culpability. This dissertation presents several conclusions. When Calles enforced the anticlerical provisions of the Constitution of 1917, the clergy withdrew from the churches in protest. The episcopate as a body bore a moral responsibility for the Cristero rebellion that resulted, but avoided implication in the movement. Because the Church's supporters were in the minority, that institution in 1929 accepted a settlement requiring clerical obedience to the constitution. Churchmen consoled their parishioners with the thought that the Church would rise again.

Five decades’ process of breaking more than four centuries of Church-State ties saw a major break-through at the stroke of the new millennium (the year 2000), with the implementation of legislative reforms aimed at giving the Church of Sweden a greater degree of liberty, while extending greater freedom to other religious communities in Sweden. Almost a decade after this historic legislation most stakeholders claim the impact of the reform has been significant. Indeed the decision to server Church-State ties for whatever purpose or reason, after such a long standing relation between the two, will by all means have implications for the Church that is separated, the State and the so called free churches and other religions in Sweden. Thus, this field study seeks to investigate the resultant impact of delimiting governmental power in the religious domain on the now autonomous church and the implications the separation has had for other “non-state churches” as well as the secularized state government in Sweden almost ten years after the reforms.

Les humains et les robots travaillant en toute sécurité et en parfaite harmonie dans un environnement est l'un des objectifs futurs de la communauté robotique. Quand les humains et les robots peuvent travailler ensemble dans le même espace, toute une catégorie de tâches devient prête à l'automatisation, allant de la collaboration pour l'assemblage de pièces, à la manutention de pièces et de materiels ainsi qu'à leur livraison. Garantir la sûreté des humains nécessite que le robot puisse être capable de surveiller la zone de travail, déduire l'intention humaine, et être conscient suffisamment tôt des dangers potentiels afin de les éviter.Des normes existent sur la collaboration entre robots et humains, cependant elles se focalisent à limiter les distances d'approche et les forces de contact entre l'humain et le robot. Ces approches s'appuient sur des processus qui se basent uniquement sur la lecture des capteurs, et ne tiennent pas compte des états futurs ou des informations sur les tâches en question. Un outil clé pour la sécurité entre des robots et des humains travaillant dans un environnement inclut la reconnaissance de l'intention dans lequel le robot tente de comprendre l'intention d'un agent (l'humain) en reconnaissant tout ou partie des actions de l'agent pour l'aider à prévoir les actions futures de cet agent. La connaissance de ces actions futures permettra au robot de planifier sa contribution aux tâches que l'humain doit exécuter ou au minimum, à ne pas se mettre dans une position dangereuse.Dans cette thèse, nous présentons une approche qui est capable de déduire l'intention d'un agent grâce à la reconnaissance et à la représentation des informations de l'état. Cette approche est différente des nombreuses approches présentes dans la littérature qui se concentrent principalement sur la reconnaissance de l'activité (par opposition à la reconnaissance de l'état) et qui « devinent » des raisons pour expliquer les observations. Nous déduisons les relations détaillées de l'état à partir d'observations en utilisant Region Connection Calculus 8 (RCC-8) et ensuite nous déduisons les relations globales de l'état qui sont vraies à un moment donné. L'utilisation des informations sur l'état sert à apporter une contribution plus précise aux algorithmes de reconnaissance de l'intention et à générer des résultats qui sont equivalents, et dans certains cas, meilleurs qu'un être humain qui a accès aux mêmes informations. / Humans and robots working safely and seamlessly together in a cooperative environment is one of the future goals of the robotics community. When humans and robots can work together in the same space, a whole class of tasks becomes amenable to automation, ranging from collaborative assembly to parts and material handling to delivery. Proposed standards exist for collaborative human-robot safety, but they focus on limiting the approach distances and contact forces between the human and the robot. These standards focus on reactive processes based only on current sensor readings. They do not consider future states or task-relevant information. A key enabler for human-robot safety in cooperative environments involves the field of intention recognition, in which the robot attempts to understand the intention of an agent (the human) by recognizing some or all of their actions to help predict the human’s future actions.We present an approach to inferring the intention of an agent in the environment via the recognition and representation of state information. This approach to intention recognition is different than many ontology-based intention recognition approaches in the literature as they primarily focus on activity (as opposed to state) recognition and then use a form of abduction to provide explanations for observations. We infer detailed state relationships using observations based on Region Connection Calculus 8 (RCC-8) and then infer the overall state relationships that are true at a given time. Once a sequence of state relationships has been determined, we use a Bayesian approach to associate those states with likely overall intentions to determine the next possible action (and associated state) that is likely to occur. We compare the output of the Intention Recognition Algorithm to those of an experiment involving human subjects attempting to recognize the same intentions in a manufacturing kitting domain. The results show that the Intention Recognition Algorithm, in almost every case, performed as good, if not better, than a human performing the same activity.

This study examines the concept of coloniality in relation to states' approach to indigenous people's rights, through the perspective of decoloniality. The two countries being compared are Bolivia and Sweden, two countries that differ in many ways. Indigenous peoples are living in the present time and have struggled since modern/Western interference in claiming their position and rights in the part of a reality of existing together. The states’ positioning towards indigenous peoples' rights is evidently contradicting depending on the context. Although international indigenous rights regimes are encouraging as well as setting new standards and norms, the challenges to fully implement them on a national level continue to exist.  Through a semi-systematic literature review, this study aims to analyze and compare how the two states (Bolivia and Sweden) position themselves towards indigenous rights. The theoretical framework for this study is based on decolonial reasoning and indigenous rights regimes, to determine what processes of coloniality are present. In Bolivia and Sweden, the context of indigenous challenges is markedly different, but this study strives to point to some similarities as also incongruencies and gaps when it comes to the state´s approach towards indigenous rights in the two countries.

La liberté de religion prend de plus en plus d’importance dans la jurisprudence de la Cour européenne des droits de l’homme. Bien que le centre de gravité historique de ce droit fondamental réside dans sa dimension individuelle, les juges sont fréquemment confrontés à des aspects « institutionnels » ou communautaires de la liberté de religion : des droits revenant aux groupements religieux comme tels. En quête des prémisses de cette liberté, le chapitre 1er retrace les apports spécifiques du christianisme, du judaïsme et de l’islam en la matière. Les principaux instruments de droit international, universels et européens, ainsi que la jurisprudence de la Cour de Justice de l’Union européenne, sont abordés au chapitre 2 du point de vue de la liberté de religion collective et institutionnelle comme la toile de fond nécessaire à l’activité de la Cour de Strasbourg. Le chapitre 3 examine l’article 9 de la CEDH ainsi que d’autres articles protégeant des droits connexes à la liberté de religion avant de se pencher sur la notion de groupement religieux, dont la distinction d’avec les sectes (dangereuses) s’avère souvent problématique. Les deux derniers chapitres sont consacrés à une étude systématique de la jurisprudence de Strasbourg depuis l’admission, en 1979, de la première requête d’une « église requérante ». Le versant procédural, puis les droits substantiels sont successivement abordés. Leurs contenus seront analysés selon un double axe : d’abord, la liberté d’ « existence » du groupement, puis les plus nombreuses facettes de sa liberté d’ « action » ou de son « autonomie ». / Freedom of religion is becoming increasingly important in the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. Although the historical centre of gravity of this fundamental right lies in its individual dimension, judges are frequently confronted with “institutional” or communal aspects of freedom of religion: the rights of religious groups as such. Within the scope of the search for the premises of this freedom, chapter 1 explains the specific contributions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam in this respect. The principal instruments of international law, both universal and European, as well as the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union are discussed in chapter 2 in terms of collective and institutional religious freedom as the background necessary to the Strasbourg Court’s activities. Chapter 3 examines article 9 of the ECHR as well as other articles protecting any rights related to freedom of religion and subsequently addresses the notion of religious groups, whose distinction from (dangerous) sects is often problematic. The two final chapters are dedicated to a systematic examination of the case law of the Strasbourg Court since the admission in 1979 of the first application by an “applicant church”. The procedural aspect and the substantive rights are discussed successively. Their contents will be analysed on the basis of a double axis: firstly a group’s freedom to “exist”, secondly the more numerous aspects of its freedom to “act” or its “autonomy”.

Cette thèse cherche à rendre compte des réponses que les Aborigènes Noongars du sud-ouest de l’Australie Occidentale déploient face aux discours sur la « tradition » et la « modernité » qui sont construits au sein des institutions et par les acteurs de l’État avec lesquels ils interagissent et auxquels ils sont tour à tour confrontés. L’étude de ces discours, des conditions de leur production et de leurs effets permet d’envisager les concepts de « tradition » et de « modernité » comme des moyens d’action et des techniques sociales mobilisés pour éliminer la différence culturelle dans la mise en œuvre d’un « devenir commun ».L’État australien produit ses propres définitions antagonistes de la « tradition » et de la « modernité », catégories pensées comme étant mutuellement exclusives. Dans certains contextes, il est attendu des Noongars d’être « traditionnels », alors que dans d’autres ils doivent se montrer « modernes ». Les Noongars se trouvent ainsi pris dans une contradiction : ils tendent vers la « modernité » pour rester « traditionnels » et, inversement, ils sont maintenus dans leurs « traditions » lorsqu’ils doivent faire preuve de « modernité ». Dans leurs diverses tentatives de s’intégrer à la nation australienne tout en conservant leurs spécificités, les Noongars redéfinissent leur « identité culturelle ». Pour cela, ils s’approprient, contestent et négocient l’image de l’Aboriginalité qui leur est présentée et se façonnent une identité contemporaine propre, sans pour autant s’opposer radicalement au mythe national de l’Aboriginalité.En analysant les divers processus par lesquels les Aborigènes Noongars revendiquent leur reconnaissance et tentent d’acquérir un degré de souveraineté au sein d’un État-nation, cette thèse enrichit les réflexions sur l’autochtonie en tant que catégorie politique et contingente. Il s’agit d’aborder les questions autochtones comme des réalités discursives devant être analysées dans les contextes ethnographiques particuliers où elles sont produites et articulées. / This thesis seeks to account for the responses that the Noongar Aborigines from the South West of Western Australia display to the discourses of "tradition" and "modernity" that are built within institutions and by state actors, with whom they interact and to which they are in turn confronted. The study of these discourses, the conditions of their production and their effects makes it possible to consider the concepts of “tradition” and “modernity” as means of action and social techniques mobilised to eliminate cultural difference in the implementation of a “common becoming”.The Australian state produces its own antagonistic definitions of “tradition” and “modernity”, categories thought to be mutually exclusive. In some contexts, Noongars are expected to be “traditional”, while in others they must be “modern”. The Noongars are thus caught in a contradiction: they tend towards “modernity” to remain “traditional” and, conversely, they are kept in their “traditions” when they have to show “modernity”. In their various attempts to integrate into the Australian nation, while retaining their specificities, the Noongars are redefining their “cultural identity”. For this, they appropriate, challenge, negotiate the image of the Aboriginality presented to them and shape their own contemporary identity, without radically opposing the national myth of Aboriginality.By analysing the various processes by which the Noongar Aborigines claim their recognition and attempt to acquire a degree of sovereignty within a nation-state, this thesis enriches reflections on Indigeneity as a political and contingent category. It is about addressing indigenous issues as discursive realities that need to be analysed in the particular ethnographic contexts in which they are produced and articulated.

Successful intercultural natural resource management collaboration is challenged by divergent worldviews and power disparities. Studies of non-intercultural collaboration efforts demonstrate that good outcomes emerge when procedural conditions are met, such as fostering open and high-quality deliberations, use of interest-based bargaining techniques and collective definition of the scope of the process. The applicability of these procedural conditions to intercultural collaboration efforts, such as negotiations between Aboriginal people, government resource managers and sustainable forest license holders, has not been explored. The aim of this thesis is to examine the outcomes and factors influencing two intercultural collaborations in the northeast region of Ontario. Semi-structured interviews with collaboration participants, negotiation meeting minutes and draft agreements are used as data sources. Following a general inductive coding approach and using QSR NVivo 2, the analysis of outcomes in both cases highlights improvements in relationships, increased understanding among the parties and the gradual definition of the scope of the negotiation. The findings also demonstrate that several barriers, including a lack of clear policy and legislative framework for collaboration and different definitions of the problem discourage intercultural collaboration. In one negotiation process, frequent and high quality deliberations, using an interest-based negotiation approach, and efforts to mutually define the scope of the negotiation prior to substantive negotiation do not overcome these systemic barriers to collaboration. However, in another negotiation process, the social and relational characteristics of the community and participants do contribute to the parties recognizing their interdependence, focusing on shared goals and undertaking joint action. This research demonstrates that the development of shared goals and acknowledgement of divergent problem definitions are more important to intercultural collaboration success than the development of improved relationships and establishing a mutually acceptable scope prior to collaboration. In the absence of a supportive legislative basis for the distribution of forest decision-making authority and responsibilities, this understanding of how Aboriginal, government and forest industry participants can collaborate is useful for developing more effective and equitable intercultural collaboration.