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Can we end poverty?

Technology is changing. The climate is changing. Economic inequality is growing. These issues dominate much public debate and shape policy discussions from local city council meetings to the United Nations. Can we tackle them, or are the issues divisive enough that they’ll eventually get the better of us? In terms of global poverty, economist Marcelo Giugale believes that human beings have the resources and will to overcome the dire state of circumstances under which many people live. In this excerpt from his latest book, Economic Development: What Everyone Needs to Know, Giugale asserts that humans have the means to quash abject poverty on a global scale and make it a thing of the past.

Define poverty as living with two dollars a day or less. Now imagine that governments could put those two dollars and one cent in every poor person’s pocket with little effort and minimal waste. Poverty is finished. Of course, things are more complicated than that. But you get a sense of where modern social policy is going—and what will soon be possible.

Nancy Lindborg trip to South Sudan. USAID U.S. Agency for International Development. CC BY-NC 2.0 via USAID Flickr.

To start with, there is a budding consensus—amply corroborated by the 2008–9 global crisis—on what reduces poverty: it is the combination of fast and sustained economic growth (more jobs), stable consumer prices (no inflation), and targeted redistribution (subsidies only to the poor). On those three fronts, developing countries are beginning to make real progress.

So, where will poverty fighters focus next? First, on better jobs. What matters to reduce poverty is not just jobs, but how productive that employment is. This highlights the need for a broad agenda of reforms to make an economy more competitive. It also points toward something much closer to the individual: skills, both cognitive (e.g., critical thinking or communication ability) and non-cognitive (e.g., attitude toward newness or sense of responsibility).

Second, poverty fighters will target projects that augment human opportunity. As will be explained next, it is now possible to measure how important personal circumstances—like skin color, birthplace, or gender—are in a child’s probability of accessing the services—like education, clean water, or the Internet—necessary to succeed in life. That measure, called the Human Opportunity Index, has opened the door for policymakers to focus not just on giving everybody the same rewards but also the same chances, not just on equality but on equity. A few countries, mostly in Latin America, now evaluate existing social programs, and design new ones, with equality of opportunity in mind. Others will follow.

And third, greater focus will be put on lowering social risk and enhancing social protection. A few quarters of recession, a sudden inflationary spike, or a natural disaster, and poverty counts skyrocket—and stay sky-high for years. The technology to protect the middle class from slipping into poverty, and the poor from sinking even deeper, is still rudimentary in the developing world. Just think of the scant coverage of unemployment insurance.

But the real breakthrough is that, to raise productivity, expand opportunity, or reduce risk, you now have a power tool: direct cash transfers. Most developing countries (thirty-five of them in Africa) have, over the last ten years, set up logistical mechanisms to send money directly to the poor—mainly through debit cards and cell phones. Initially, the emphasis was on the conditions attached to the transfer, such as keeping your child in school or visiting a clinic if you were pregnant. It soon became clear that the value of these programs was to be found less in their conditions than in the fact that they forced government agencies to know the poor by name. Now we know where they live, how much they earn, and how many kids they have.

That kind of state–citizen relationship is transforming social policy. Think of the massive amount of information it is generating in real time—how much things actually cost, what people really prefer, what impact government is having, what remains to be done. This is helping improve the quality of expenditures, that is, better targeting, design, efficiency, fairness, and, ultimately, results. It also helps deal with shocks like the global crisis (have you ever wondered why there was no social explosion in Mexico when the US economy nose-dived in early 2009?). Sure, giving away taxpayers’ money was bound to cause debate (how do you know you are not financing bums?). But so far, direct transfers have survived political transitions, from left to right (Chile) and from right to left (El Salvador). The debate has been about doing transfers well, not about abandoning them.

A final point. For all the promise of new poverty-reduction techniques, just getting everybody in the developing world over the two-dollar-a-day threshold would be no moral success. To understand why, try to picture your own life on a two-dollar-a-day budget (really, do it). But it would be a very good beginning.

Marcelo M. Giugale is the Director of Economic Policy and Poverty Reduction Programs for Africa at the World Bank and the author of Economic Development: What Everyone Needs to Know. A development expert and writer, his twenty-five years of experience span Africa, Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin-America and the Middle-East. He received decorations from the governments of Bolivia and Peru, and taught at American University in Cairo, the London School of Economics, and Universidad Católica Argentina.

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Tracking the evidence for a ‘mythical number’

By Heather Strang, Peter Neyroud, and Lawrence Sherman

There is a widely-repeated claim that victims of domestic abuse suffer an average of 35 incidents before the first call to the police.  The claim is frequently repeated by senior police officers, by Ministers, by government reports, by academics and by domestic abuse victim advocates.  It has certainly influenced police behaviour in deciding how to deal with domestic abuse calls.  Police are required to justify the proportionality of their arrest decisions, so if 35 were the right number in a presenting case, arrest will always be seen as proportionate: after all, culpability may not be clear this time but there have probably been at least 34 priors.

The question arises: where did this claim come from? Tracking down the evidence for this number proved to be an interesting chase back through publications over the past thirty years.  Repeatedly, publications cite the number with no reference to specific research demonstrating the finding, only to other publications citing the number.  Finally we traced an obscure Canadian government report about a 1979 study in a small city that reported on 53 women who had experienced domestic abuse to which police had responded.  These 53 were interviewed two years after the incident and represented 24% of all victims the researchers had sought to interview, a worryingly small response rate with a high risk of sampling bias.  They were asked how many times they had been assaulted prior to this particular call, from their earliest recollection until two years previously (a very difficult question to answer accurately): they were not asked how many times they had been assaulted before calling the police for the first time.  The women had a wide range of responses to the question, from zero to 312, and the average (not the median or the mode) was calculated to be 35.  Furthermore, these women reported being assaulted an average of three times in the two years after the incident – a number difficult to square with the reported average of 35 over an unspecified time period when police may or may not have been called for any or all or none of the prior incidents.

So 53 Canadian women, whose domestic abuse came to police attention in 1979, bear the entire weight of the claim so widely – and increasingly – relied on.

Domestic violence is a very serious problem for our society. Effective prevention and criminal justice interventions need the best data. We are certain that many women suffer years of misery before the police are called.  Some, perhaps most, may never call.  But we do not help by citing unreliable numbers about their suffering.  To cite a number as exact as ‘35’ lends a veneer of precision which is false and misleading: a ‘mythical’ number that gives the impression that governments, academics, police and the public generally know a lot more than we actually do.  We submit that mythical numbers need to be defeated by evidence-based discussion, informed by real data.  Victims of domestic abuse deserve no less when we discuss how best to help them.

Peter Neyroud CBE QPM is the editor of Policing, A Journal of Policy and Practice, and Resident Scholar at the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge, Dr. Heather Strang, is the Deputy Director of the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology, and Deputy Director of the Police Executive Programme, Professor Lawrence Sherman, is the Wolfson Professor of Criminology, Director of the Institute of Criminology, Director of the Jerry Lee Centre for Experimental Criminology, and Director of the Police Executive Programme, University of Cambridge.

The full article will be available this June in Policing, A Journal of Policy and Practice, volume 8.2. This  peer-reviewed journal contains critical analysis and commentary on a wide range of topics including current law enforcement policies, police reform, political and legal developments, training and education, patrol and investigative operations, accountability, comparative police practices, and human and civil rights.

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Image credit: Stay away. By Roob, via iStockphoto.

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Unauthorized transfer or assignment of interests or shares in investor-state arbitration

By Borzu Sabahi and Diora Ziyaeva

Contracts for exploitation of natural resources are usually awarded to foreign investors following demanding bidding processes during which the host government carefully vets qualifications of foreign investors. The process is designed to ensure that the investor has, among other things, sufficient expertise and resources to work on the project. Usually, such contracts and the relevant legislation require foreign investors to obtain approval or authorization from the host government before transferring or assigning the shares or farming-out any interest in the project to third parties. Moreover, from the host government perspective the authorization provisions are important for a variety of reasons, be it the national interests or compliance with the host State’s laws and regulations. While transactional and corporate lawyers are familiar with these provisions, the international investment arbitration community has not delved into this issue until recently.

Significantly, these provisions have been at the center of at least two investment treaty arbitrations raising questions as to whether failure to comply would be a basis for dismissal of claims. The ICSID tribunals in Vannessa Ventures Ltd v Venezuela, Award, ICSID Case no. ARB(AF)/04/6; IIC 572 (2013), 16 January 2013 and Occidental Petroleum Corporation v Ecuador, Award, ICSID Case No. ARB/06/11; IIC 561 (2012), 5 October 2012 took contradicting positions on this issue.

Vannessa Ventures v. Venezuela

In Vannessa Ventures, a Canadian company, Placer Dome, had acquired a gold concession from the Venezuelan government. Immediately after the company started exploitation, global gold prices significantly dropped making the operation unprofitable. Placer Dome then first suspended the project (by entering into an Extension Agreement for a year with Corporacion Venezolana de Guayana or CVG, a Venezuelan government agency) and then sought various ways to transfer its shares in its local subsidiary (PDV) which was party to the concession to a third party. In order to transfer its stake though, under various agreements that Placer Dome and PDV had entered into with CVG, Placer Dome required prior approval of CVG. For example, a 1991 Shareholder Agreement provided that: “Except as otherwise provided in this Agreement, neither party may assign any of its rights or delegate any of its duties under this Agreement without first obtaining the prior written consent of the other party which shall not be unnecessarily withheld…” Placer Dome ultimately transferred its shares to a Canadian company, Vannessa Ventures (Vannessa), without obtaining approval of CVG leading to CVG terminating the concession. Vannessa then filed a claim against Venezuela alleging that Venezuela’s termination of the gold concession violated various provisions of the Canada-Venezuela Bilateral Investment Treaty.

The tribunal first held that Placer Dome’s contracts with CVG had an intuitu personae nature, meaning that due to the complex selection process the identity of Placer Dome was a material element in the conclusion of the contracts. Further, Vannessa had a radically weaker technical and financial profile than Placer Dome. But, the majority still considered Claimant’s ownership of PDV shares as qualifying investments within the meaning of the Bilateral Investment Treaty. Nevertheless, the tribunal ultimately held that because of the unauthorized transfer of the shares the claims must fail and dismissed the case in its entirety. The tribunal noted that, under the Extension Agreement, Placer Dome was supposed to work together with CVG to find a third party to join them but Placer Dome did not consult with CVG. This breach justified Venezuela’s subsequent decision to terminate the concession.

Gold. La Gran Sabana, near Santa Elana, Bolivar State, Venezuela. Photo by Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Occidental v. Ecuador 2012

In Occidental v. Ecuador, Occidental Petroleum, a US company, entered into a Participation Contract (a type of production sharing agreement) with Petroecuador in order to explore and exploit hydrocarbons in Block 15 of the Ecuadorian Amazon region. A year later, Occidental sought to explore ways to finance the expansion of its operations in Ecuador and entered into a farm-out agreement whereby it assigned a 40% economic interest in Block 15 to another energy company (AEC) in return for certain capital contributions. Such assignment, however, both under the Contract and Ecuador’s Hydrocarbons Law required government approval. As a result, Ecuador subsequently terminated the Participation Contract by issuing a Caducidad Decree as contemplated in the Contract and the Law for violation of the prohibition against assignment.

Occidental argued that it was not in breach because it remained the legal owner in the contract vis-a-vis the State, and it had only transferred the equitable interest. Occidental lost on that issue. The tribunal noted that the assignment, although not in bad faith, violated Clauses 16.1 and 16.2 of the Contract and Ecuador’s Hydrocarbons Law, which required prior government approval.

Despite the above ruling, the tribunal held that the termination of the Participation Contract was a disproportionate response to Occidental’s assignment of rights; there were a number of alternatives to terminating the Participation Contract and the latter should have thus been a measure of last resort. The tribunal also found that Ecuador did not suffer “any quantifiable loss” from the assignee’s taking an economic interest in the relevant block under the Concession. Applying these findings, the majority awarded Occidental damages in the amount of US$1.77 billion plus interest. Ecuador filed a request to annul the decision, which is currently pending.

Comments

At the center of both disputes are transfers of shares (Vannessa Ventures) and beneficial interests (Occidental) without government approval. The outcomes of the two cases, however, are worlds apart, as in the former investors went home with nothing and in the latter with an award worth more than US$2 billion.

The divergent outcomes warrant a closer look at the main issues in the two cases. Contracts and domestic laws generally contain sanctions for non-compliance with such provisions. For example, in the case of Ecuador, the Participation Contract as well as the Ecuadorian Hydrocarbon Law granted the right of Caducidad or cancellation of the contract to the State Party. Similarly, in Vannessa, the State party to the contract had a right to terminate the concession for the breach. Both tribunals held that Claimant’s failure to secure government approval violated the respective contracts and or the laws.

A more complex issue, however, is determining the effect of such violations in international law or more specifically on the Claimant’s right to bring a claim. The majority of both tribunals did not see any reason to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction. The concurring arbitrator in Vannessa had suggested that such violation would breach the treaty provision requiring investments to be made in accordance with the laws of the host State. The Vannessa tribunal appears to have treated the issue as one of admissibility, dismissing the case at the merits stage. Occidental did not dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction either, but engaged in another layer of unprecedented analysis examining whether the State’s termination of the Participation Contract was a proportionate response to the assignment, ultimately finding that it was not.

The diverging outcomes of the two cases do not provide consolation either for foreign investors or the host governments. It remains to be seen whether the Occidental award will survive the annulment proceedings. The issues to consider are, among others, what effect the breaches and subsequent terminations have on the property interests that had been transferred. The majority in Occidental considered the transfer “inexistent” or void as a result of Ecuador’s termination of the Participation Contract, which worked for the investor because, although the investor was in breach of the Participation Contract due to unauthorized assignment of 40% interest to AEC, it still recovered damages for 100% of its interest in the project. Professor Stern criticized the position of the majority, stating that the farm-out should have been considered valid and binding until declared otherwise by the competent court and that Occidental was only eligible for 60% of the damages.

Dr Borzu Sabahi and Ms Diora M. Ziyaeva are both Associates at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP.

Disclaimer: The authors are attorneys at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP. The views expressed in this note are exclusively those of the authors and shall not be attributed to Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP or its clients.

Investment Claims is a specialist service providing researchers with access to a fully integrated and updated suite of arbitration awards and decisions, bilateral investment treaties, multilateral treaties, journal articles, monographs, and arbitration laws.

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Charting Amelia Earhart’s first transatlantic solo flight

By Susan Ware

In 1928 Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly the Atlantic Ocean, a feat which made her an instant celebrity even though she was only a passenger, or in her self-deprecating description, “a sack of potatoes.” In 1932 she became the first person since Charles Lindbergh to fly the Atlantic solo, doing it in record time and becoming the first person to have crossed the Atlantic by air twice.

Having received far more credit than she felt she deserved in 1928, “I wanted to justify myself to myself. I wanted to prove that I deserved at least a small fraction of the nice things said about me.” So on 20 May 1932 (the fifth anniversary of Lindbergh’s flight), Amelia Earhart took off from Harbour Grace, Newfoundland in her single-engine bright red Lockheed Vega. The flight, rocked by storms, lasted over 14 hours and landed her in Londonderry, Northern Ireland.

The below map features quotes from Earhart’s acceptance speech of The Society’s Special Medal after her unparalleled achievement. (Please note all pinpoints are approximate as there are no logs of times and coordinates for her flight.)

View Amelia Earhart’s 1932 Transatlantic Solo Flight in a larger map. Or, download the accompanying American National Biography Online Amelia Earhart infographic.

The hundreds of telegrams, tributes, and letters that poured in after the 1932 solo flight testify that women in the United States, indeed throughout the world, took Amelia Earhart’s individual triumph as a triumph for womanhood, a view she herself encouraged. At a White House ceremony honoring her for her flight, she succinctly captured the links between aviation and feminism: “I shall be happy if my small exploit has drawn attention to the fact that women are flying, too.”

With all the mythology surrounding Amelia Earhart’s last flight in 1937, it is hard not to let the unsolved mystery of her disappearance cloud our historical memories. Without that dramatic denouement, however, it seems likely that Amelia Earhart would have been remembered primarily for the skill, daring, and courage demonstrated in her 1932 Atlantic solo. It is the life, not the death, that counts.

Susan Ware is the General Editor of American National Biography Online and author of Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism. A pioneer in the field of women’s history and a leading feminist biographer, she is the author and editor of numerous books on twentieth-century US history. Ware was recently appointed Senior Advisor of the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

For more information on Earhart, visit her entry in American National Biography. The landmark American National Biography offers portraits of more than 18,700 men and women — from all eras and walks of life — whose lives have shaped the nation. More than a decade in preparation, the American National Biography is the first biographical resource of this scope to be published in more than sixty years.

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Image credit: Earhart and “old Bessie” Vega 5b c. 1935. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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10 things you may not know about the Police Federation

The 90th annual conference of the Police Federation of England and Wales (commonly known as POLFED) starts today in Bournemouth. Running from 20-22 May, the event will see police officers from England, Wales, and further afield join with representatives from policing agencies, the legal profession, and the government to discuss pressing issues from the world of policing and within the Police Federation itself.

To mark the occasion, we’ve put together a list of 10 things you may not know about the Police Federation.

The Police Federation was founded as result of the Police Act 1919. Ninety years earlier, the Police Act 1829 allowed for the official foundation of the Metropolitan Police, followed by the formation of regional forces across England, Wales, and the rest of the UK.

The Federation was the first association officially created to protect the rights of police officers, providing a viable Government-supported alternative to the perceived threat of the growing trade union movement. Government officials were worried by continuing unrest in the late 19th and early 20th centuries relating to officers’ pay.

Fallen London Police, 17 May 1919 in Parliament Square. CC BY-SA Leonard Bentley via Flickr.

The Police Act 1919 also named the Home Secretary as responsible to Government for the police force, an appointment which continues today. As is tradition, current Home Secretary Theresa May will deliver a keynote speech to the annual Police Federation conference, an event which has previously proven controversial with the attendees.

Representing all officers up to the rank of Chief Inspector, the Police Federation currently has around 127,000 members, from across the 43 forces of England and Wales. Officers above the rank of Chief Inspector are represented by either the Police Superintendents Association of England and Wales, or the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

Outside of England and Wales, there are equivalent organisations across the UK including the Scottish Police Federation and the Police Federation for Northern Ireland, as well as specialist branches for the British Transport Police and the Defence Police Federation for Ministry of Defence Police staff.

Before the Sexual Discrimination Act 1975, the police service ran separate establishments for men and women, allowing individual forces to control the number of women joining the police. Chief inspectors were responsible for designating appropriate roles for female officers.

After an apparent rise in assaults on police officers in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including the deaths of two officers, the Police Federation successfully supported a movement for revised safety equipment. As well as uniform changes, the campaign introduced longer, Americanised truncheons, new ‘Quik-kuffs’, and stab-proof vests.

Although officially politically neutral, the Police Federation took a firm stance prior to the 1979 General Election, placing open letters to candidates in national newspapers. These letters were a sharp critique on the way the previous Labour government had handled police pay, legislation, and crime – things that Margaret Thatcher’s, ultimately successful, Conservative manifesto promised to improve.

On 20 January 2014, the RSA published the Final Report of the Police Federation Independent Review. Led by Sir David Normington, the review panel assessed how the Police Federation could continue to “act as a credible voice for rank and file police officers.” The 36 recommendations outlined in the report will be discussed at the annual conference.

This year’s conference will be the last public event of the current Chairman Steve Williams and General Secretary Ian Rennie, who have both chosen to leave their posts, and their roles within the police service, at the end of May.

Blackstone’s will be tweeting from the Police Federation conference. Follow @bstonespolice for our updates and join the conversation using #pfewconf14.

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Image credit: Uk police vehicles at the scene of a public disturbance. © jeffdalt via iStockphoto.

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Why we should all care about ‘dying’ musics

By Catherine Grant

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, it’s not just plants and animals that are becoming extinct at alarming rates. The world’s languages and cultures are disappearing too, and the pace is even worse: 11% of birds and 18% of mammals are predicted to die out by the end of the century, but a conservative estimate places language extinction at 40% (that’s about 2,800 of the world’s languages). The situation is just as grim for other expressions of culture — songs, stories, performance traditions — particularly those of Indigenous and minority peoples. International recognition of this new global crisis led UNESCO, in 2003, to proclaim a need for “urgent safeguarding” of the world’s intangible cultural heritage, including music.

For those of us not directly affected by this massive cultural extinction, though, it’s easy to be complacent. Take music. For one thing, it can be difficult to imagine how it feels to have the music of our community disappear, especially if we grew up identifying most closely with the Rolling Stones (or Bing Crosby, or the Spice Girls). For another, it’s hard to think of any dire consequences when an obscure (to us) set of Maori fishing songs or Tibetan goat-herding songs are forgotten. So what exactly is lost when a musical tradition dies out? Why should we all care about this global crisis?

For humanity’s sake

Take ca trù, a complex and sophisticated chamber music tradition of north Vietnam, refined over many centuries, but so badly affected by recent decades of war and adverse government policy that in 2009, UNESCO ear-marked it as needing urgent support for its survival. Like all music genres, ca trù expresses what it is to be human. It offers a direct glimpse at the creativity of the human mind, and represents a continuum of intellect and imagination through the generations. As such, its loss, like that of potentially thousands of other threatened genres across the world, would be a loss to the common heritage of humanity.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Ca trù artists Doan Van Huu, Nguyen Thi Chuc, and Pham Thi Hue play ca trù. Video: Ca Trù Thang Long.)

For diversity’s sake

Another reason we should care about the loss of these traditions is that music, in all its forms, contributes to the rich diversity of humankind, and of our planet. Contemporary music genres are almost always nourished by older traditions, which form a point of departure for invention and transformation. And current genres will inform future ones too. This is what UNESCO refers to when it says cultural diversity “widens the range of options open to everyone”. That includes you, me, and Björk (who has drawn in her songs on the music of Syria, Japan, Iran, Bali, and her native Iceland, among various other sources).

For culture’s sake

Just as smoke and fire go hand-in-hand, music is very often intimately linked with other intangible expressions of culture within a community. The loss of musical heritage may therefore mean the loss of the unique story that it carries, or the loss of an associated dance or ceremony.

Kuriko Indians (Brazil) play Taquara Flutes. Dance, music, and ceremony are often interlinked in Indigenous cultures. © Wilfred Paulse. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 via Wilfred Paulse / Flickr.

Particularly for indigenous people and communities, songs can also be unique vehicles for transmitting local culture and history. They encode knowledge of genealogies and mythologies, records of ancestors and clan names, knowledge of the universe and the land, medicinal and culinary knowledge, social norms, taboos, and histories, and cultural skills and practices, among other things. When these songs disappear, much more than the songs themselves is lost.

The loss of such knowledge is not only a loss for the communities concerned, but for the rest of us too. One music researcher has even convincingly argued that since songs represent ways of being in the world, their extinctions could “potentially compromise our ability to adapt to as yet unforeseen changes”. Traditional fishing or food-gathering songs may contain traditional ecological knowledge that could help us deal with contemporary issues challenging the future of the planet, including our own species. Vanishing musical heritage therefore holds consequences for the whole of humanity.

For people’s sake

We have long used music for expression, entertainment, communication, aesthetic pleasure, and to validate social institutions and religious rituals. In most cultures, including to some extent the Western one, music plays an important role in daily life. It helps us express our individual identity, and reaffirms our membership of a community, our sense of being and belonging. Particularly for Indigenous and minority peoples, music can provide a sense of continuity with the past, with cultural traditions and ancestral heritage. According to senior Tiwi woman Lenie Tipiloura, “If all the old songs are lost, then we don’t remember who we are”. Or as the Amazonian Suyá told Tony Seeger, “When we stop singing, we will really be finished”. Keot Ran, teacher and performer of Khmer smot, a kind of Buddhist chanting used to comfort the dying or the bereaved, told me she felt it was vitally important to keep that cultural practice strong simply because it “is who we are and it is attached to what we are doing” – “this is our tradition, our culture, of being Khmer.”

Smot teacher Keot Ran chants smot on temple grounds in Kampong Speu province, Cambodia. Photo by Catherine Grant, February 2013. Used with permission.

These are not the only reasons to keep music genres strong. Various other arguments invoke tourism, community capacity building, social cohesion, economic growth, positive health and well-being outcomes, and music’s remarkable ability to promote cross-cultural understanding, exchange, co-operation, reconciliation, and peace (this study carried out for UNESCO introduces many of these ideas). What is clear is that consequences of disappearing musics extend well beyond those individuals and communities directly affected.

Music is one of the key links that ties us to one another – within and across communities, to the past, the present, and the future. We are just beginning to realise the possible repercussions of music endangerment across the globe. The challenge now is for us to care enough about what lies outside our own worlds, so that together we may make efforts to recover what is nearly lost.

Catherine Grant is Joy Ingall Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Creative Arts, University of Newcastle (Australia). Her book, Music Endangerment: How Language Maintenance Can Help, explores ways to keep endangered music genres strong.

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Why we love libraries: the Aussie way

This week is National Library and Information Week in Australia — a week-long celebration of library and information professionals across the country. To celebrate the wonderful work of Australian libraries and librarians, here are a few thoughts on why libraries are so important, from those at the very heart of them. Also this week, a selection of articles from our resources about Australia are available to read online for free.

“I’ve always had a love of libraries and being raised in NYC allowed me access to some of the most well recognized and memorable ones; Ghostbusters anyone? However, the public libraries here in Melbourne are a little different from what I knew. One of my favourite public libraries is the City Library in the CBD. It has the most casual feel; very reflective of the general Australian demeanour. There are portals and nooks to cater to everyone, not to mention a cornucopia of information on hand in a myriad of formats. They’ve developed different methods to attract patrons and appeal to more than your common bibliophile; from video game consoles to a bar/café, from corners to nap in to an upright piano that you can play or just leave to the experts. You just can’t beat being lulled to sleep, whilst listening to a beautiful rendition of Moonlight Sonata, as you curl up with the newest book from your favourite author. Oh bliss.”


–Nami Thompson, Oxford University Press, Australia

“I had just started working in my current role at a public library after many years on the reference desk at a big university library when an elderly lady came to the desk to borrow a handful of books. After I had finished issuing them she looked up and said with a heartfelt sigh ‘I don’t know where I’d be without this library’ and I thought ‘I can’t remember hearing the students saying anything like that before!’”


–Sarah Hopkins, Bayside Library Service, Victoria, Australia

“What I love most about libraries are the surprises. You never know just what you will find. I am always excited to find what treasures have been found in collections from all over the world as well as my own library. It is this that makes libraries what they are – not just a place to find a book or to get an answer – but a place to explore and discover!”


–Karen Stone, State Library of Queensland, Australia

“I’ve loved libraries since I learned to read. My mother let me take books out on my own library card as well as those of my three brothers who had different priorities. This big reading habit has persisted all my life and the library allows me to read huge numbers of books and try out new authors and find ‘mystery’ reads. It’s great fun! The public library is an oasis of calm and just the thing to relieve stress. I wonder how many people realise that it is also a place where you can find free wifi, DVDs, CDs, ebooks, audio books and online resources of all kinds.”


–Marika Whitfield, Oxford University Press, Australia

“I’m fortunate enough to have worked across the Library service in Public, Academic, School and Tafe Libraries. I find the Library to be one of those integral services we all take for granted until it’s not there. Librarians are not usually the most outspoken or visible people in society, but most who I know are committed and hard working professionals who always strive to be available and willing to provide the best possible service to their customers. If you want evidence of the popularity of Libraries, go to any public library’s story time session. I remember when I worked at Moreland Library Service at the Coburg branch, as Community Liaison Librarian. All staff would get rostered during these sessions, and one point of service was being on ‘pram duty’. That’s right, we had to help the public park prams in a confined space. Up to 50 prams was not unusual.

“Academic Libraries are different, but again are highly valued by both staff and students. One of my favourite experiences recently was talking to a group of Grade 5 students, who visited the Library during a day on campus. I took them on a tour and then read a story for Halloween – I loved seeing their enthralled and eager faces – the next bunch of university graduates, assuming any of us can afford higher education in 10 years’ time!”


–June Frost, RMIT University Library, Melbourne, Australia

“Last night after work I went to see a person about buying some antique opera glasses. His house was in Hughesdale which is two suburbs along from where my library service is, about a 20-minute drive. After we concluded our transaction we chatted for a bit and he asked me where I worked after I said I had travelled from Brighton. When I told him I managed the library service he broke into a very broad smile and said he goes there all the time and to one of my other branches and that it was the best library around. Even though there is a library about 1km away he would rather travel to us because we have what he wants. This is why I like public libraries, they make people happy!”


–Karen Siegmann, Bayside Library Service, Victoria, Australia

“What an open ended question is the one that asks why do you love libraries. It nudges memories long buried; pleasure afforded by books borrowed in childhood from the local library; landscapes, towns, animals, and lifestyles different to my own revealed through National Geographic magazines in the school library, idle time spent searching for the oldest books in the stacks of the University Library and long afternoons of silent study.

“In the school libraries I have worked in I learnt the meaning of serendipity in unexpected finds on the shelves and in websites as I planned research activities for classes; I have learnt the pleasure of finding the unfindable, sharing favourite authors and novels with students and staff and I have learnt that change is constant as the library adapts to technologies and the demands of different approaches to teaching and learning.

“I read somewhere that the best thing about libraries is the sense of community they evoke and the opportunities they make available for those who choose to use them. A visit to any of the public libraries in my area would prove the accuracy of this. Libraries are vibrant points of connection where people of all ages and from all backgrounds come together to use resources, communicate or find a safe haven.

“Long may I ponder why I love libraries and long may they exist for others to do likewise.”


–Di Wilson, Caulfield Grammar School, Victoria, Australia

“I love libraries. My local library, a QLD library (who shall remain anonymous) and the State Library are still considered my favourites. I am fortunate in my role as I visit so many libraries around Australia and see they have changed and embarked technology and developed some very creative ways to drive patrons to the library.

“I used to visit the library to do my studies, or quickly borrow a book because I knew it was available. Librarians were always so helpful I knew I could always rely on whatever they told or showed me. My fondest memories were meeting with my friends after school at the local library. We would all sit by the round table with books laid out as far as the table could stretch busily trying to complete our assignment and wait in line for the printer.

“Today my library is different. I can engage and find out all sorts including the wonderful events that help bring my local community together which is so relevant and important to me. I can now access online resources that were previously only available through my University to do my own professional / personal research.

“It’s a different kind of library, my retreat, one I can always rely upon and even though the internet has expanded, one thing remains for me: ‘Librarians are still the original search engine’.”


–Tina Argyros, Oxford University Press, Australia

Celebrate Australian National Library and Information Week with a selection of articles about Australia available to read online for free.

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Celebrating Victoria Day

Monday, 19 May is Victoria Day in Canada, which celebrates the 195th birthday of Queen Victoria on 24 May 1819. In June 1837, at the age of 18, Victoria became Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as the Empire was called then.

Queen Victoria would reign for more than 63 years, longer than any other British Monarch to date. The Victorian Era, as it came to be known, was a time of expansion of the British Empire, as well as modernization and innovation following the Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century.

To celebrate Victoria Day, we’ve chosen a few of her most famous quotations to illustrate her life and legacy.

On being shown a chart of the line of succession, 11 March 1830

Theodore Martin The Prince Consort (1875) vol. 1, ch. 2

On the Boer War during ‘Black Week’, December 1899

Lady Gwendolen Cecil Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury (1931) vol. 3, ch. 6

“The Queen is most anxious to enlist every one who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of ‘Women’s Rights,’ with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety.”


–Queen Victoria, letter to Theodore Martin, 29 May 1870. From Oxford Essential Quotations.

“What you say of the pride of giving life to an immortal soul is very fine, dear, but I own I can not enter into that; I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments; when our poor nature becomes so very animal and unecstatic.”


–Queen Victoria, letter to the Princess Royal, 15 June 1858. From Oxford Essential Quotations.

The Little Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (5th ed), edited by Susan Ratcliffe, was published in October 2012. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (7th ed), edited by Elizabeth Knowles, was published in 2009 to celebrate its 70th year.

Oxford Reference is the home of reference publishing at Oxford. With over 16,000 photographs, maps, tables, diagrams and a quick and speedy search, Oxford Reference saves you time while enhancing and complementing your work.

Images: 1. Queen Victoria in her Coronation Robes by George Hayter. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 2. Portrait of Queen Victoria, 1843 by Sir Francis Grant. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons. 3. Wedding of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert engraved by S Reynolds after F Lock. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

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We’re all data now

By Fleur Johns

Public international lawyers are forever in catch-up mode, or so it seems. The international legal appetite for ‘raw’ data of global life is seemingly inexhaustible and worry about the discipline lagging behind technology is perennial. There has, accordingly, been considerable energy devoted to ‘cybernating’ international law, in one way or another, or adapting the discipline to new possibilities posed by digital technology.

Much international legal writing concerned with computer and information technology (CIT) and global data flows has been concerned with developing law on these phenomena on the global plane. Scholars and practitioners of international law have, for instance, published important work on privacy and data protection and cyberwarfare.

Just as important, however, but receiving far less attention, are legal and equitable dimensions of the global data economy being envisioned by institutions such as the World Economic Forum. International law is often viewed, in this context, diminutively and technically: as a means of delivering on foregone conclusions and facilitating the realization of pre-agreed goals. Yet, as a recent paper in the London Review of International Law argued, there is much more at stake in the global laws surrounding data-gathering, data-mining and the monetization and use of datasets, than the technical assurance of frictionless interface and the protection of privacy. Whether with regard to global offshoring in the CIT industry, or global practices of data gathering and profit-seeking at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’, new modes of economic inequality are under construction, with law playing a crucial infrastructural role – a role which merits tougher questioning.

Another set of challenges for contemporary international lawyers arises from the turn to ‘big data’ — large-scale data mining and data analytics — for global governance. In the UN Global Pulse initiative, for example, the United Nations is mining digital data sources and using real-time data analytics to evaluate human wellbeing and vulnerability, and directing resources and policymaking attention accordingly. When states that are parties to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) gather to review the listing of animal and plant species for differing levels of treaty protection, they frequently act (in part) on the basis of species distribution modeling (SDM). This SDM will have been carried out by software implementing one among a number of possible presence/absence algorithms.

It is a routine preoccupation of international lawyers that global norms and public decision-making processes should be apparent to those whom they impact: transparency is today treated as a meta-principle of international legal order. Yet it is still unclear what ‘transparency’ could or should entail when decision-making processes in question are partially automated, use complex and dynamic algorithmic operations, and draw inputs from a range of public and private sources. In relation to SDM for CITES listing purposes, for instance, a recent report in Science suggested that the relevant software’s intricacies are not grasped by many scientist-modelers: there are ‘many in the SDM domain unable to interpret the original algorithms, much less understand how they were implemented in the distributed code’. One wonders what CITES decision-makers to whom SDM modeling outcomes are being delivered are making of this material, if many responsible for these models’ development are unable to interpret them satisfactorily. Another recent paper has drawn attention to the traps that big data analysis can present for policy-makers seeking up-to-the-minute insights on global populations’ health and wellbeing.

Public international lawyers will doubtless continue to pursue broad-ranging regulatory initiatives, regionally and globally, concerning cybercrime and data protection. Beyond these efforts, however, global policy-makers and international lawyers working in a far greater range of fields need to engage critically with the priorities, preferences and relations embedded in, or generated by, the software and hardware of global data gathering and analysis. Associations among co-patterners (or those correlated in some analytical pattern) may prove just as significant as those among co-citizens or fellow right-holders — if not more so — in the global operations of law.

Fleur Johns is a Professor in the Faculty of Law at UNSW Australia, Sydney and a contributor to the London Review of International Law, a new journal, published by Oxford University Press, which publishes highest-quality scholarship on international law from around the world; the first issue featuring Professor Johns’ article ‘The deluge’, discussing the significance of big data for public international law, is free to read online for a limited time.

The London Review of International Law publishes highest-quality scholarship on international law from around the world. Reflecting the pace and reach of developments in the field, the London Review seeks to capture the ways in which received ideas are being challenged and reshaped by new subject-matters, new participants, new conceptual apparatuses and new cross-disciplinary connections.

Oxford University Press is a leading publisher in international law, including the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law, latest titles from thought leaders in the field, and a wide range of law journals and online products. We publish original works across key areas of study, from humanitarian to international economic to environmental law, developing outstanding resources to support students, scholars, and practitioners worldwide. For the latest news, commentary, and insights follow the International Law team on Twitter @OUPIntLaw.

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Image: information weapon, keyboard grenade. Photo by -antonio-, iStockphoto.

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An illustrated history of the First World War

A hundred years on, the First World War still shapes the world in which we live. Its legacy survives in poetry, in prose, in collective memory, and in political culture. By the time the war ended in 1918, millions had died. Three major empires – Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottomans – lay shattered by defeat. A fourth, Russia, was in the throes of a revolution that helped define the rest of the century. The Oxford History of the First World War brings together in a single volume many distinguished World War One historians. From its causes to its consequences, from the Western Front to the Eastern, from the strategy of the politicians to the tactics of the generals, they chart the course of the war and assess its profound political and human consequences.

This is a slideshow of just some of the book’s striking images, capturing the First World War in photographs, illustrations, and posters.




Erich Ludendorff
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The victors of the battle of Tannenberg, Paul von Hindenburg and his chief of staff, Erich Ludendorff, pose for their photograph later in the war. They would consolidate their collective reputation on the eastern front, but struggled to impose themselves in the west after 1916, when Hindenburg succeeded Falkenhayn as chief of the general staff.

Russian troops
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Russia had more abundant supplies of men than any other belligerent in the war, but in addition it had a more relaxed approach to women serving in combat units. After the March revolution, Maria Botchkareva, who served in the tsarist army, was asked by Kerensky to form a ‘battalion of death’, made up exclusively of women. Botchkareva herself said it was designed to shame the men into fighting, but elements did go into combat in the summer of 1917.

Ambulance drivers
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Women had formed nursing units for service with the British army in the Crimean War, and continued to do so until 1914. Nonetheless many who volunteered in 1914, and particularly female doctors, found the War Office reluctant to accept their offers of service, and so they joined the French and Serb armies instead. Such resistance was rapidly replaced by a readiness to have women as nurses on all fronts and, as here, as ambulance drivers.

Fokker advertisement
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A Fokker advertisement depicting a close-up view of a German fighter pilot in his Fokker monoplane, its synchronized machine gun and propeller, with Germany’s highest medal, le pour le mérite, in the top left corner.

Remember Belgium
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The rape of Belgium in 1914 remained a powerful propaganda tool even in October 1918 and even in the United States. But America’s war loans proved unpopular with private investors: the interest rate of 4.25 per cent seemed low in relation to a long period of inconvertibility. The banks took 83 per cent of the third and fourth Liberty Loans.

Women of France
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This American poster, produced shortly after the USA entered the war, was designed to encourage support for the allied war effort, and remind the public of what the French people were going through. The grimness of the factory, and the sight of heavy work being done by women, were designed to elicit sympathy, but ironically reflected reality for many European munitions workers.

Women of America
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The women of America were urged to follow the militant example of Joan of Arc and buy War Savings Stamps. Few would remember the embarrassing detail that it was the English who burned Joan at the stake.

The new, updated edition of the Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War has been published to mark the centenary of the War’s outbreak in 1914. Editor Sir Hew Strachan became Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of All Souls College, and between 2003 and 2012 he directed the Oxford Programme on the Changing Character of War. The first volume of his planned trilogy on the First World War, To Arms, was published in 2001, and in 2003 he was the historian behind the 10-part series, The First World War, broadcast on Channel 4. He is a Commonwealth War Graves Commissioner and a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum, and serves on the British, Scottish, and French national committees advising on the centenary of the First World War.

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Image credits: All images are in the public domain.

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