Love Thy Neighbor: The Tampere Convention as Global Legislation
The Internet, 24-hour news sources, and a host of other telecommunications advances have allowed global citizens to become instantaneously informed. With the privilege of real-time updates and acute awareness of the world’s events comes the responsibility of being more than a passive observer. Specifically, this Note focuses on the technological improvements in communication during natural disasters—improvements that can be used to assist and aid the victims of catastrophes. In the aftermath of a natural disaster, the country affected is rarely able to provide for its citizens; tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes can (and often do) cripple an entire nation. This Note argues that a global responsibility exists to step in and help an affected country when it cannot help itself.  For instance, the 1998 Tampere Convention on the Provision of Telecommunication Resources for Disaster Mitigation and Relief Operations is the first global attempt to concretely define relief efforts by other nations, without demanding compliance or a singular rigid course of action. Instead, the Convention creates a flexible framework that each member nation can adapt to its own telecommunications infrastructure. In legislating on a global scale, the Convention acknowledges the interconnectedness of the world’s people, and presents ways in which global citizens can improve one another’s existence in the hours following a natural disaster—arguably when they need help most.
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies: An Introduction
The Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies is a faculty-edited, peer reviewed interdisciplinary journal focusing on the intersections of global and domestic legal regimes, markets, politics, technologies, and cultures. "Globalization" means different things in different contexts, and we offer this journal as a forum for communication and exchange among the many research agendas that now involve this concept. In our view, "globalization" refers to complex, dynamic legal and social processes; it is not?or at least not necessarily?a synonym for "universality" or "homogeneity." Nor is "global" necessarily a synonym for "world-wide." Global processes can be intensely local or regional. They may result, for example, from economic or political forces that create markets for goods, capital, or labor that are beyond the control of any one nation-state. Similarly, global processes can be the result of problems such as ozone depletion, global warming or reductions in biodiversity that create issues transcending the boundaries of nation-states. Some of these transnational forces and issues generate transnational law and global legislation such as the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer; however, different localities and different domestic legal regimes may and often do respond to such global forces in different ways. Domestic law?local, state, or federal?may thus be affected significantly by a variety of forces outside the control of any of the local decision-makers involved. Global forces may encourage new forms of economic and legal integration or harmonization across local legal and economic systems. On the other hand, such global forces may also trigger local, domestic reactions that deepen tensions between multinational and
The new interventionism, 1991–1994: United Nations experience in Cambodia, former Yugoslavia and Somalia
At the end of the Cold War the hope was that it would be possible to reform international society and create a new world order. This book explores the experience of the United Nations in the three largest peacekeeping operations of recent years, in Cambodia, former Yugoslavia, and Somalia, to explain why it has proved so difficult for the international community to live up to this hope. The introduction explores the common themes and the major contrasts in the three operations, and each case study is accompanied by a chronology of events and a selection of relevant UN documents.