International Laws of War and the African Child: Norms, Compliance, and Sovereignty

The Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 is one of the most prominent international humanitarian treaty in world history. It entered into force quicker than any other treaty and currently only two countries (the United States and Somalia) have not ratified it.1 Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF, says that the Convention has become “the centerpiece of a global movement, a movement that reflects a growing awareness of the importance of safeguarding human rights—and child rights in particular.”2 Similarly, Lisbet Palme claimed, after travelling to some of the worst conflict zones in Africa, that, “For many of the children I have met and talked with, the Convention takes on a very meaningful reality.”3 Yet, during the 1990’s, more children in Africa became victims of, and combatants in, war than at any time in history. Partially as a result, a bitter Human Rights Watch Report assessing the state of children’s rights ten years after the Convention on the Rights of Children came into force was entitled Promises Broken.4 Indeed, to enhance further international humanitarian law protecting children during war, governments agreed in January 2000, after six years of negotiations, to an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child that raises the minimum age of combatants to eighteen.

The politics of revenue sharing in resource-dependent states

In a significant number of developing countries, revenue from the sale of a few natural resources accounts for the vast majority of export earnings and a large share of total government revenue. As a result, the allocation of revenue from natural resources is a critical political question. Tensions over the divison of natural resource exports have been repeatedly cited as a central contributor to open conflict in some countries and as the major source of political volatility in many others. In contrast, those countries that manage to develop a fair and equitable mechanism for distributing revenue have the potential to solidify national ties. This study will review the institutional structures that guide the allocation export revenue in developing countries that are heavily dependent on a few natural resource exports

SWOG S1400B (NCT02785913), a Phase II Study of GDC-0032 (Taselisib) for Previously Treated PI3K-Positive Patients with Stage IV Squamous Cell Lung Cancer (Lung-MAP Sub-Study).

BackgroundS1400B is a biomarker-driven Lung-MAP substudy evaluating the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) inhibitor taselisib (GDC-0032) in patients with PI3K pathway-activated squamous NSCLC (sqNSCLC).MethodsEligible patients had tumoral phosphatidylinositol-4,5-biphosphate 3 kinase catalytic subunit alpha (PIK3CA) alterations by next-generation sequencing and disease progression after at least one line of platinum-based therapy. Patients received 4-mg taselisib orally daily. The primary analysis population (PAP) was a subset of patients having substitution mutations believed to be associated with clinical benefit of PI3K inhibitors. Primary endpoint was response by Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors version 1.1; secondary endpoints included progression-free survival, overall survival and duration of response.ResultsTwenty-six patients treated with taselisib comprised the full evaluable population (FEP); 21 patients comprised the PAP. Median age for patients in the FEP was 68 years (range: 53-83 years), 19 were male (73%). The study was closed for futility at interim analysis with one responder in the PAP (5% response rate, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0%-24%). Two possibly treatment-related deaths (one respiratory failure, one cardiac arrest) were observed; one patient had grades 4 and 11 had grade 3 adverse events. Median progression-free survival and overall survival in the PAP group were 2.9 months (95% CI: 1.8-4.0 mo) and 5.9 months (95% CI: 4.2-7.8 mo), respectively. These numbers were nearly the same in the FEP.ConclusionsStudy S1400B evaluating taselisib in PIK3CA-altered sqNSCLC failed to meet its primary endpoint and was closed after an interim futility analysis. The trial is unique in cataloguing the diversity of PIK3CA mutations in sqNSCLC

The Geography of the International System: The CShapes Dataset

We describe CShapes, a new dataset that provides historical maps of state boundaries and capitals in the post-World War II period. The dataset is coded according to both the Correlates of War and the Gleditsch and Ward (1999) state lists, and is therefore compatible with a great number of existing databases in the discipline. Provided in a geographic data format, CShapes can be used directly with standard GIS software, allowing a wide range of spatial computations. In addition, we supply a CShapes package for the R statistical toolkit. This package enables researchers without GIS skills to perform various useful operations on the GIS maps. The paper introduces the CShapes dataset and structure and gives three examples of how to use CShapes in political science research. First, we show how results from quantitative analysis can be depicted intuitively as a map. The second application gives an example of computing indicators on the CShapes maps, which can then be used in statistical tests. Third, we illustrate the use of CShapes for generating different weights matrices in spatial statistical applications. All the examples can be replicated using the freely available R package and do not require specialized GIS skills. The dataset is available for download from the CShapes website (http://nils.weidmann.ws/projects/cshapes). © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Major flaws in conflict prevention policies towards Africa : the conceptual deficits of international actors’ approaches and how to overcome them

Current thinking on African conflicts suffers from misinterpretations oversimplification, lack of focus, lack of conceptual clarity, state-centrism and lack of vision). The paper analyses a variety of the dominant explanations of major international actors and donors, showing how these frequently do not distinguish with sufficient clarity between the ‘root causes’ of a conflict, its aggravating factors and its triggers. Specifically, a correct assessment of conflict prolonging (or sustaining) factors is of vital importance in Africa’s lingering confrontations. Broader approaches (e.g. “structural stability”) offer a better analytical framework than familiar one-dimensional explanations. Moreover, for explaining and dealing with violent conflicts a shift of attention from the nation-state towards the local and sub-regional level is needed.Aktuelle Analysen afrikanischer Gewaltkonflikte sind häufig voller Fehlinterpretationen (Mangel an Differenzierung, Genauigkeit und konzeptioneller Klarheit, Staatszentriertheit, fehlende mittelfristige Zielvorstellungen). Breitere Ansätze (z. B. das Modell der Strukturellen Stabilität) könnten die Grundlage für bessere Analyseraster und Politiken sein als eindimensionale Erklärungen. häufig differenzieren Erklärungsansätze nicht mit ausreichender Klarheit zwischen Ursachen, verschärfenden und auslösenden Faktoren. Insbesondere die richtige Einordnung konfliktverlängernder Faktoren ist in den jahrzehntelangen gewaltsamen Auseinandersetzungen in Afrika von zentraler Bedeutung. Das Diskussionspapier stellt die große Variationsbreite dominanter Erklärungsmuster der wichtigsten internationalen Geber und Akteure gegenüber und fordert einen Perspektivenwechsel zum Einbezug der lokalen und der subregionalen Ebene für die Erklärung und Bearbeitung gewaltsamer Konflikte

Different paths to the modern state in Europe: the interaction between domestic political economy and interstate competition

Theoretical work on state formation and capacity has focused mostly on early modern Europe and on the experience of western European states during this period. While a number of European states monopolized domestic tax collection and achieved gains in state capacity during the early modern era, for others revenues stagnated or even declined, and these variations motivated alternative hypotheses for determinants of fiscal and state capacity. In this study we test the basic hypotheses in the existing literature making use of the large date set we have compiled for all of the leading states across the continent. We find strong empirical support for two prevailing threads in the literature, arguing respectively that interstate wars and changes in economic structure towards an urbanized economy had positive fiscal impact. Regarding the main point of contention in the theoretical literature, whether it was representative or authoritarian political regimes that facilitated the gains in fiscal capacity, we do not find conclusive evidence that one performed better than the other. Instead, the empirical evidence we have gathered lends supports to the hypothesis that when under pressure of war, the fiscal performance of representative regimes was better in the more urbanized-commercial economies and the fiscal performance of authoritarian regimes was better in rural-agrarian economie

The Dualism of Contemporary Traditional Governance and the State

In many parts of the world, people live in “dual polities”: they are governed by the state and organize collective decision making within their ethnic community according to traditional rules. We examine the substantial body of works on the traditional–state dualism, focusing on the internal organization of traditional polities, their interaction with the state, and the political consequences of the dualism. We find the descriptions of the internal organization of traditional polities scattered and lacking comparative perspective. The literature on the interaction provides a good starting point for theorizing the strategic role of traditional leaders as intermediaries, but large potentials for inference remain underexploited. Studies on the consequences of “dual polities” for democracy, conflict, and development are promising in their explanatory endeavor, but they do not yet allow for robust conclusions. We therefore propose an institutionalist research agenda addressing the need for theory and for systematic data collection and explanatory approaches

Data Resource Profile: Network for Analysing Longitudinal Population-based HIV/AIDS data on Africa (ALPHA Network).

No abstract available