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The 'kingpin' strategy focuses on dismantling criminal groups by apprehending their leaders. However, existing evidence indicates that removing a criminal leader may lead to a surge in organised crime-related homicides, and to spatial displacement of organised crime violence. This study explores the strategy's impact on other organised crimes, specifically extortion and kidnapping. Analysing Mexican data from 2011 to 2015, we employ a novel matching method for cross-sectional time-series data to assess how leadership removals affect the incidence of extortion and kidnapping, and whether there are any displacement effects. Our results reveal a significant rise in extortions within 6 months of a leadership removal in a municipality, while kidnappings show no significant change. Notably, no spatial displacement effects were observed in neighbouring municipalities post-removal. These findings underscore the unintended consequences of the kingpin strategy, emphasising the need for alternative policies to address organised crime-related violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the so-called 'migrant crisis' in 2015, there has been intense policy interest around irregular migration along the Central Mediterranean Route to Europe. Despite increased research focus on this route, the details and geographical intricacies of these migration journeys have scarcely been examined. In this study, we investigate the what, where and how of the journeys of 71 people who travelled from Libya across the Mediterranean Sea to Malta. To do so, we break down their journeys into scripts (i.e. sequences of activities) and represent them as a composite script graph. We find that journeys were long – 18 months on average – and circuitous, involving diverse and complex geographical paths. Smuggling, brokerage and working during transit were key aspects of most journeys. Worryingly, two-thirds of participants experienced detention and/or forced labour before reaching Malta. By pinpointing where and how harm occurs, the composite script graph can support policy makers in reducing harm, including by accounting for the possible harm that interventions may cause, directly or as a result of displacement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Arab Journal for Scientific Publishing is the property of Research & Development of Human Recourses Center (REMAH) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Most of the literature on fires focuses on the wild or rural environment. Nevertheless, urban fires, and in particular those related to criminal activity, have recently begun to receive greater attention. This study focuses on the analysis of fires in shopping malls, public markets and businesses in Mexico City to study the criminal intention of arson in cities. Using spatial analysis and count models, we study emergency calls (911) from January 2019 to February 2021 to explore the occurrence of fires and extortion in order to predict these events. Our main finding indicates a spatial concentration of fires in the city, with extortion as a significant predictor that increases the occurrence of fires by an average of 16.63%, controlling for non‐intentional factors. In commercial nodes, extortionists may burn down premises that resist extortion in reprisal and as an indirect threat to future victims. The results contribute to the understanding of a new line of research on arson, real estate fraud and financially profitable activities for organised crime. It is possible that 'professional torches' are also linked to another, previously unconsidered crime: that of extortion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Perpetrators often have easy access to victims via widely used social media networks, such as Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. Nowadays, dating applications have provided one more platform where sextortionists identify potential victims and lure them into extortion and victimization. Limited research and media coverage has revealed that sextortion can cause significant harm, with victims reporting negative psychological consequences, such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. Many empirical findings arise from explorations of webcam sextortion, with limited literature examining sextortion in social media platforms, and particularly online dating sites. In the current, exploratory study, we examine these modern trends directly via an online survey of 102 participants. Overall, 62.7% had been sextorted by another dating application user, and 25.5% experienced failed attempts of sextortion by another dating application user. Results uniquely showed that Tinder, as well as Snapchat, are often used as fishing platforms for identifying sextortion victims. Furthermore, sextortion could be successfully predicted if individuals perceived that the perpetrator "seemed genuinely interested," demonstrating how online dating platforms which specifically target those seeking romantic connections provide an ideal mechanism for perpetrators to fish for victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Jordanian legislator introduced a new legal provision addressing the phenomenon of bullying and the issue of extortion. This was done by adding Article 415 bis to the Amended Jordanian Penal Code No. 10 of 2022, after it became apparent that traditional legal provisions were insufficient to achieve general deterrence and prevention. This study concluded with several findings, the most significant being that the Jordanian legislator adhered to the principle of proportionality between the act and the punishment, beginning with imprisonment for not less than two years, then three years, and reaching up to temporary labor for not less than 10 years, and even the death penalty. The key recommendation was the necessity for the Jordanian legislator to not deviate from general criminal law principles concerning incitement and participation in the crime of bullying, in line with the principle of gradualness in criminalization and punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of University of Sharjah Journal of Law Sciences (JLS) is the property of University of Sharjah - Scientific Publishing Unit and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Payments made to non-state armed groups are often treated as predation. But rebel organizations deploy multiple logics when constructing their taxation systems, many of which cannot be reduced to extortion. Rebels also use taxation as a "technology of governance" to resolve a number of social and political challenges related to constructing a wartime order. Drawing on extensive subnational research in four distinct areas of control by a single organization, the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak Muivah, we argue that two factors, political legitimacy and military control, determine whether taxes are extortive or deployed as a technology of governance. Our controlled comparison shows that rebels frequently implement a wider variety of taxes than commonly presumed and that these different categories of taxation are shaped by the larger social and political context in which the group operates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Violence across Latin America is an increasingly important factor influencing migration to the US. A particular form of violence that is experienced by many Latinx migrants is extortion. This research analyzes the extortion experiences of Latinx immigrant adults arriving at the US southern border and the impact these experiences have on mental health. We find that on average, participants paid $804 in extortion during their migration. The most common perpetrators of extortion in our study were police followed by immigration officials throughout Latin America. Pregnant participants were less likely to experience extortion and adults traveling with children were more likely to be extorted. Participants who were extorted for money reported significantly greater severity of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms compared to those who were not extorted. This research is the first of its kind to analyze extortion experiences among Latinx immigrants to the US, quantifying the prevalence, amounts paid, countries where extortion occurs, and perpetrators of extortion. In addition, extortion experiences are associated with negative effects on the mental health of newly arrived Latinx immigrants to the US. Based upon these findings, we recommend that extortion should be considered a significant stressor in the migrant experience, particularly for those adults traveling with children.

The book review in Social Semiotics discusses Daniel E. Agbiboa's work, "They Eat Our Sweat," which delves into corruption, language, and everyday survival in urban Nigeria. Agbiboa challenges the simplistic view of corruption as the misuse of public power for private gain, instead exploring it as a multi-faceted phenomenon deeply embedded in everyday life and sociocultural relations. The book offers insights into corruption in Africa through a linguistic anthropological perspective, focusing on the popular semiology of corruption in Lagos and the informal transport sector. Agbiboa's research sheds light on the complex interactions between formal and informal actors and processes, providing valuable insights for researchers interested in corruption, informal governance, urban theory, and semiotics. [Extracted from the article]

This review examines Votes, Drugs, and Violence, Authoritarian Police in Democracy, Resisting Extortion, as well as Democracy and Security in Latin America to outline the latest scholarly developments on how the region has dealt with the challenges posed by violent, militarized state and non-state actors. Leveraging distinct cases and methods, these four recently published books discuss the political rationale behind the military and institutional responses that have shaped public security in Latin America over the last three decades. Beyond unpacking their contributions, common themes, tensions, and shortcomings, we argue that by focusing on the political dynamics behind state interventions, these volumes highlight the persistence of a democratic paradox : rather than curtailing militarism and violence, or facilitating their containment via reforms, electoral dynamics and partisan incentives—part and parcel of democratic politics—have enabled the endurance of state and non-state militarization and violence. Relatedly, as Eduardo Moncada's new title underscores, ordinary Latin American citizens have had to adopt civilian militarization as a bottom-up resistance strategy to navigate the uncertainty this worrying paradox presents. By examining work by scholars including Guillermo Trejo, Sandra Ley, Brian Fonseca, and Yanilda María González this review helps to delineate future research as well as policy interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to understand the everyday experiences of financialised inclusion amongst fintech users in Nigeria. Concerns about the use of fintech to drive financial inclusion in the global south have led social scientific scholars to argue that it extends processes of financialisation by employing opaque algorithms to extract the behavioural data of users in order to inundate them with unsecured credit and monetise their data through resale. The consequences of these practices are not fully understood across various contexts. Using a variety of ethnographic methods, this paper examines patterns of fintech adoption and usage in Jimeta, Nigeria. It demonstrates that while fintech allows people to sort out their personal issues amidst precarity, it is also entangled in algorithmic governance issues that facilitate algorithmic extortion to the detriment of user populations. Ultimately, the paper argues that fintech, contrary to claims about its potential to unlock prosperity, is one that opens up novel possibilities for profit making and accumulation, albeit with severe consequences on user populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a widespread belief among scholars and policy-makers that populism has fuelled a unilateralist backlash because of its emphasis on nationalism, popular sovereignty and identity politics. Although a few populist governments have indeed withdrawn from some international institutions, this 'disengagement hypothesis' needs to be scrutinized and unpacked. In this article, we develop a framework that distinguishes between four types of institutional disengagement—criticism, obstruction, extortion and exit—and show that populist governments use them in a fluid and tactical way to navigate between the radical and pragmatic imperatives of populist politics. Our comparative case-study of the Hungarian executive under Viktor Orbán (since 2010) and the Trump administration in the US (2017–2021) demonstrates that both governments have frequently used criticism, obstruction and extortion to disengage from international institutions but have only rarely exited from them. The article thus deepens our understanding of the impact of populism on both individual institutions and the multilateral order more broadly, and helps policy-makers develop strategies to counter the adverse effects of populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violence across Latin America is an increasingly important factor influencing migration to the US. A particular form of violence that is experienced by many Latinx migrants is extortion. This research analyzes the extortion experiences of Latinx immigrant adults arriving at the US southern border and the impact these experiences have on mental health. We find that on average, participants paid $804 in extortion during their migration. The most common perpetrators of extortion in our study were police followed by immigration officials throughout Latin America. Pregnant participants were less likely to experience extortion and adults traveling with children were more likely to be extorted. Participants who were extorted for money reported significantly greater severity of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms compared to those who were not extorted. This research is the first of its kind to analyze extortion experiences among Latinx immigrants to the US, quantifying the prevalence, amounts paid, countries where extortion occurs, and perpetrators of extortion. In addition, extortion experiences are associated with negative effects on the mental health of newly arrived Latinx immigrants to the US. Based upon these findings, we recommend that extortion should be considered a significant stressor in the migrant experience, particularly for those adults traveling with children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Al-Adab / Al-ādāb is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Al-Adab / Al-ādāb is the property of Republic of Iraq Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research (MOHESR) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Corruption crimes encompass a variety of offences, one of which is the Extortion Offence. Extortion offences involve offenders proven to demand, receive, or withhold payments through force or threats on material matters while performing their duties as certain officeholders. In Indonesia, regulations for corrupt acts involving extortion offences are outlined in Article 12 letter f of Law Number 20 of 2001, amending Law Number 31 of 1999 on the Eradication of Criminal Acts of Corruption, as well as Article 425 paragraph (1) of the Indonesian Criminal Code. The extent to which a person is considered to have committed a corrupt act involving extortion is a crucial aspect of corruption offences. This study employs the Normative Research Method utilizing statutory and conceptual approaches, with legal material analysis conducted through descriptive means. The findings show that significance of Article 12 letter f in the Corruption Eradication Act as an extension and lex specialist in Article 425 paragraph (1) of the Criminal Code. Officials can take measures to prevent such misconduct to avoid improper cash handling or extortion by those in positions of authority over them. This study offers an in-depth study of illegal levies in corruption, emphasizing Article 12 letter f of Law Number 20 of 2001, aiming to bridge the gap of previous studies and provide practical insights for law enforcement in anti-corruption efforts in Indonesia through normative legal research.

This paper explores the relationship between media, government, and terrorism. It investigates what terrorists want from the media, what governments seek from the media when covering terrorism, and what the media aims to achieve in its coverage of terrorism. The paper discusses coverage versus boycott, extortion and exploitation, ethical considerations, the war on terrorism and public diplomacy, current trends in terrorist operations, and attacks on journalists and media institutions, the Media in the West, and the Middle East dealings with terrorism. The purpose of the study is to investigate the complex relationship of three parties (terrorists, media, and government) with different objectives and agendas. The problem of media and terrorism lies in the conflicting interests and goals of these three different entities. The author used several case studies related to the problem of this study to highlight the conflictual approach to terrorism and how each entity looks at it, making the equation of terrorism, government, and media complex, challenging, and extremely sensitive that must be managed with caution. Both media and political institutions must consider several factors such as national security, public interest, economic, political, and ethical considerations. The relationship between terrorism, media and governments are characterized by a set of challenges, such as the public right to know and the potential for extortion and exploitation by terrorist groups, and the attempts from the governments to set the agendas. How can the media serve the truth without falling into the trap of extortion, exploitation, without succumbing to the pursuit of journalistic scoops, and sensationalism and without falling into the pressure of control and pressures from the governments?

AbstractExamples of responses to killing are provided from three groups of state-sanctioned killers: executioners, perpetrators of genocide, and members of the armed forces; as well as violent offenders. The extent to which such individuals experience guilt and shame is related, from a personal construct theory perspective, to the degree to which their actions are consistent with their core roles as construed by themselves and others. Drawing upon examples from situations of warfare, it is argued that one mechanism for the avoidance of guilt and shame may be hostile extortion of evidence that the individual’s actions are ultimately the responsibility of another, and that cycles of hostility may foment and perpetuate the conflicts concerned. Other such mechanisms that are discussed are reduction of permeability of moral constructs, depersonalization of killing, and dehumanization of victims. By contrast, guilt and shame are likely to be more fully experienced, and possibly to lead to reconstruction, when the individual’s encounter with their victim is one that engenders both commonality and sociality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Establishing and maintaining mutual cooperation in agent-to-agent interactions can be viewed as a question of direct reciprocity and readily applied to the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. Agents cooperate, at a small cost to themselves, in the hope of obtaining a future benefit. Zero-determinant strategies, introduced in 2012, have a subclass of strategies that are provably extortionate. In the established literature, most of the studies of the effectiveness or lack thereof, of zero-determinant strategies is done by placing some zero-determinant strategy in a specific scenario (collection of agents) and evaluating its performance either numerically or theoretically. Extortionate strategies are algebraically rigid and memory-one by definition, and requires complete knowledge of a strategy (the memory-one cooperation probabilities). The contribution of this work is a method to detect extortionate behaviour from the history of play of an arbitrary strategy. This inverts the paradigm of most studies: instead of observing the effectiveness of some theoretically extortionate strategies, the largest known collection of strategies will be observed and their intensity of extortion quantified empirically. Moreover, we show that the lack of adaptability of extortionate strategies extends via this broader definition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The bulk of scholarship on police intervention in enforcing COVID-19 pandemic-imposed restrictions focuses on police misconduct, securitisation, human rights, police preparedness, and legitimacy, but empirical research on police corruption during the restriction in Nigeria is sparse despite reports of pervasive police extortion and bribery. Thus, this study fills the academic gap by examining the dynamics of police predation and corruption during the enforcement in Nigeria. With interview data, I uniquely examined the intervention from the purview of predatory policing – an aspect of policing that is understudied in the context of COVID-19 policing despite its relevance in contemporary discourse on social control. Evidence indicates that, as COVID-19 policing characterised predation in Nigeria, the embedded problems of police corruption revolve around unresolved police institutional challenges and police-public connivance that results from moral decadence, thereby portending gloomy implications for law enforcement and society. Therefore, advancing and implementing police reforms, addressing moral corruption, and resolving widespread socioeconomic problems are very critical in the effective policing and containment of future public health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, cyber extortion has emerged as one of Jordan's most concerning and prevalent cybercrimes. This has necessitated a multi-pronged approach to tackle the issue, including legal measures. The previous cybercrime law of 2015 lacked provisions to address cyber extortion and establish appropriate penalties for perpetrators. Article 415 of the Jordanian Penal Code served as its sole source of traditional legislation. Recognising this gap, the new 2022 cybercrime law introduced a specific provision, Article 18, to explicitly address cyber extortion. This study reveals that the Jordanian legislature has adopted a punitive approach towards cyber extortion. Article 18 prescribes a combination of imprisonment and a fine, aiming to eliminate ambiguity during legal proceedings. This ensures judges do not have the discretion to choose just one penalty based on personal judgement. Furthermore, the study offers recommendations for combating cyberextortion and curtailing its spread within Jordanian society. However, the provided excerpt does not include these recommendations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although language research has focused on blackmail in general, less attention has been paid to emotional blackmail. To date, researchers could not locate any literature that examines emotional blackmail from a linguistic standpoint. The current study is intended to fill this gap by scrutinizing emotional blackmail from a pragma-stylistic point of view by examining the style of the characters in selected episodes extracted from the American Breaking Bad series. To carry out the study, an eclectic model comprising kinds of emotional blackmailers by Forward and Frazier (1997), Searles' speech acts (1979), Grice's maxims (1975), Brown and Levinson's politeness (1987), Culpeper's impoliteness (1996), and Simpson's stylistic levels (2004) will be used. The study examines how emotional blackmailers reflect themselves through language and how different pragmatic theories contribute to detecting emotional blackmail. The pragma-stylistic analysis reveals that emotional blackmailers use different pragmatic and stylistic elements. Pragmatically, the analysis demonstrates that punishers more frequently utilize commissive speech acts, whereas sufferers more frequently use representative and expressive speech acts. Besides, the punishers' speech is realized by breaching the quantity and manner maxims whereas the sufferer's speech is manifested by breaching the quantity and quality maxims. Concerning (im)politeness, the punishing behavior is accomplished by positive politeness, negative impoliteness, bold on-record impoliteness, and positive impoliteness while the suffering behavior is accomplished through positive politeness. Stylistically, the language used to talk about suffering is associated with discomfort and unhappiness. Concerning grammar, the punishing discourse emphasizes threats through fronting strategies. With suffering, negative auxiliaries are used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Accounting & Auditing Review is the property of University of Tehran, Faculty of Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Legal & Economic Research / Mağallaẗ Al-Buḥūṯ Al-Qānūniyyaẗ wa Al-Iqtiṣādiyyaẗ is the property of Beni Suef University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista de Derecho Penal y Criminologia is the property of Editorial UNED and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article examines Azerbaijan's policy towards Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh after the 44-day war of 2020. This research answers the questions: What is Azerbaijan's strategy and policy following the 2020 war, and why has Azerbaijan been conducting them? The article's argument is that Azerbaijan has been employing military coercion. It includes threats, territorial seizures, ultimatums, full-scale use of force, blackmailing, and other means to secure concessions and maintain a dominant position over its adversary. Applying the concept of coercion the article seeks to explain the article discusses several examples of how Azerbaijan employed these tactics against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Applying the concept of coercion, the research tries to comprehensively explain Azerbaijan's policy and reveal conducive factors that encourage the implementation of such a policy. In some senses, the post-2020 period can be seen as a continuation of the 44-day war, characterised by lower intensity. The analysis contributes to further understanding of militarized coercion. Although the history of the conflict has been thoroughly examined by scholars, there are still a handful of studies on the post-2020 situation, which makes this article's contribution important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Media & Religion Studies is the property of Journal of Media & Religion Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The main purpose of this paper is to rationally reconstruct Nozick's account of unproductivity, especially vis-à-vis his characteristically libertarian, and hence uncompromising, ban on fraud. We posit that, when Nozick's theory is interpreted charitably, it does not yield to contradictory prescriptions concerning permissibility. That is, there does not have to be any inconsistency in the Nozickian ban on certain exchanges, with the ban tracking two properties of the said exchanges; that is, either (1) their unproductivity or (2) their fraudulence. When analyzing economic exchanges, our interest is focused on both productive and unproductive blackmail exchanges. However, we suggest that Nozick's banning exchanges along the lines of their unproductivity tallies poorly with his avowed libertarianism since his position predicts prohibiting unproductive and yet non-fraudulent exchanges. Hence, and we suggest resolving the said tension in a principled libertarian (deontological) manner; that is, by banning fraudulent exchanges and allowing non-fraudulent ones, ceteris paribus, while submitting that the properties of exchanges such that being productive or being unproductive are morally inert. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing numbers of social media users report being blackmailed on social media following their sharing of sensitive and personal information. However, little is known about this emerging crime and its victims. Using a survey of adult WhatsApp users in Oman (n = 1452) and interviews (n = 18) with victims and Omani criminal justice professionals, this study addresses this gap by examining the prevalence of blackmail among adult WhatsApp users arising from their voluntary self-disclosures, as well as the characteristics and vulnerabilities of those who fall victim to this activity. New insights are also offered into the factors influencing victim's decisions to report their experiences to criminal justice professionals, as well as the challenges associated with investigating and prosecuting this activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The European Court of Justice recently annulled Council Decision (EU) No. 2019/217, which had authorised the conclusion of an agreement—in the form of an exchange of letters—between the European Union and the Kingdom of Morocco. This agreement initially extended coverage of preferential trade treatment between the two parties to products originating in Western Sahara and subject to the control of Moroccan customs authorities. The ECJ’s ruling has removed those trade preferences and imposed a de facto EU embargo on the region. This article critically discusses the ECJ’s ruling on both legal and policy grounds. From a legal standpoint, the ECJ’s decision foregoes consideration of notions of sovereignty applicable to Western Sahara in virtue of Islamic law, which would have led to recognition of its enduring ‘allegiance’ to Morocco. Moreover, the same decision amounts to an instance of extra-territorial application of EU law and infringes the principle of indivisibility of agreements. From a policy standpoint, by acknowledging standing in virtue of mere non-State armed military presence, the ECJ’s ruling has offered to terrorist groups and rebel militias—in a context of profound instability in the Sahel region—a blackmail strategy vis-à-vis regional governments. Methods: This critical review uses the descriptive approach to outline, analyse, interpret, and criticise the 2021 ECJ ruling, which denies preferential trade treatment to products from the Western Sahara region, even when under the control of Moroccan customs authorities, while Moroccan products continue to receive such treatment. Results and conclusions: The European Court of Justice partially used the concepts of international law as it paid no regard to the concept of sovereignty in the Islamic world, which is connected to tribe, allegiance and loyalty. Further, extending the application of the European Law to a third state, which has several agreements with the European Union, must be devoid of any political dimension affected by regional conflicts and international balances. The enforcement of the referred ruling is tantamount to the economic embargo on the Western Sahara Region, which will inevitably affect the security situation thereof and thus bring it closer to the influence of terrorist groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios Demográficos y Urbanos is the property of El Colegio de Mexico AC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Since the mid-2000s, extortion has impacted social and economic development in El Salvador significantly. Against the grain of the extant literature, which predominantly takes for granted that extorted businesses are passive victims, we leverage business surveys and 103 interviews, primarily with 54 micro and small enterprises (MSEs) in the San Salvador metropolitan area, El Salvador, to explore (a) the impact of extortion and (b) how businesses operate in the face of extortion. We conducted some interviews before and others during the state of exception in force since March 2022, garnering unique insight into both impacts and business strategies. By way of statistical analyses, we elucidate the differential impact of extortion on Salvadoran MSEs, showing that the very smallest businesses suffer a disproportionately heavy burden. Drawing upon extensive fieldwork, we find that MSEs (a) act strategically in the face of extortion, (b) adopt a diversity of strategies to manage extortion on a continuum from avoidance to adaptation, negotiation, and resistance, and (c) have different ranges of strategies available to them, largely varying according to the businesses' mix of tangible and intangible resources, which MSEs leverage to manage extortion and ameliorate its impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Social Work Studies is the property of Helwan University, Faculty of Social Work and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

How do rebel organizations capitalize on transit migration? While numerous studies have examined the role of refugees, this article explores a broader yet significant category of mobile populations in civil conflict. Focusing on Mali, I argue that transit migration increases rebel capacity based on three causal mechanisms: Obstacles in transit, camping banditry, and dynamic recruitment. Obstacles are an enabling mechanism by facilitating the intersection between rebels and migrants. As camping bandits, rebels move between violent extortion and systematic exploitation depending on levels of competition. Finally, I argue that rebels recruit transit migrants using dynamic strategies, including coercive incentives and short-term contracts in which social and ideological requirements are relaxed. Combining quantitative analysis with original interview data, I find significant support for the causal argument and preliminary evidence for my conceptual framework. The findings improve our understanding of rebel organizations and the role of mobile populations in civil conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]