Search

Many African water-related conflicts have their roots in so-called colonial treaties. This article examines the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia regarding the construction and operation of an Ethiopian dam at the headwaters of the River Nile. We start by reviewing these countries' current political and economic circumstances as a prerequisite to assessing the severity of the conflict. We then trace the dispute back to the treaties used by each country to prove its rights to the Nile's water. We identify political circumstances that provide hidden motives behind the stalled negotiations. We conclude that current bilateral economic and political circumstances push decision makers away from reaching a concrete settlement of the dispute and argue that the treaties are only worsening the situation. Cooperation in the field of development in general is required to break the current deadlock, strengthen Egyptian-Ethiopian relations, and promote regional prosperity., Introduction The Earth's total amount of water is estimated to be 1.386 billion km3. Approximately 97.5 percent is saltwater, considered unusable for human consumption, while only about 2.5 percent is [...]

The James Bay Treaty-Treaty No. 9 was unique among the numbered treaties of Canada in that there was a need for the concurrence of the Province of Ontario. Last-minute negotiations by the Dominion of Canada to gain said concurrence led to an agreement with the Province of Ontario, and this agreement became part of the Treaty No. 9 package at Ontario's insistence. However, since the agreement was not executed until after the Treaty No. 9 expedition had left for the field, an incomplete Treaty No. 9 package that lacked the agreement was presented to and signed by the First Nation groups in 1905. Furthermore, spaces had been left in the vellum copies of Treaty No. 9 and the agreement to add in the date of the agreement when fully executed. In the spaces that were left for this purpose, the date of the agreement was backdated to 3 July. This act of deception was suggested by the Treasurer of the Government of Ontario, A. Matheson in order to date of the agreement earlier than the date in the Treaty. Thus, the common law legality of the Treaty No. 9 package must be questioned, especially since officials of the Governments of Canada and Ontario left documentation of their deception. Without the agreement being attached as specified in the Treaty No. 9 document that left Ottawa in 1905, consideration of the terms of the agreement by the First Nation signatories of the treaty could not have occurred prior to signing. It follows that there exists a question of whether the land south of the Albany River was ever ceded in Treaty No. 9 from a common law perspective, unless documentation can be presented indicating that the complete Treaty No. 9 package was presented to the First Nation signatories; the written record indicates otherwise. In the end, the courts will have to decide the legality of Treaty No. 9 from a common law perspective. Key words: Treaty No. 9; 'an agreement dated the third day of July'; choosing of reserves; hydroelectric potential; unceded land; subarctic Ontario; Canada Le Traite de la Baie James, ou Traite no 9, est unique comparativement aux autres traites numerotes du Canada en ce sens qu'il devait etre accompagne de l'accord de la province de l'Ontario. Des negociations de derniere minute par le Dominion du Canada visant a obtenir ledit accord se sont conclues par une entente avec la province de l'Ontario, et cette entente a fait partie de l'ensemble du Traite no 9 a la demande insistante de l'Ontario. Toutefois, puisque l'entente n'a ete executee qu'apres le depart de l'expedition du Traite no 9 pour le terrain, l'ensemble du Traite no 9 etait incomplet et il a ete presente ainsi, sans l'entente, aux groupes des Premieres Nations qui l'ont signe en 1905. Par ailleurs, des espaces avaient ete laisses dans les exemplaires sur velin du Traite no 9 et de l'entente afin de permettre l'ajout de la date de l'entente une fois entierement executee. Dans les espaces laisses a cette fin, la date de l'entente a ete antidatee au 3 juillet. Cette supercherie avait ete suggeree par le tresorier du gouvernement de l'Ontario, A. Matheson, afin que la date de l'entente soit anterieure a la date du traite. Par consequent, il y a lieu de mettre en doute la legalite de l'ensemble du Traite no 9 en vertu de la common law, surtout parce que les representants des gouvernements du Canada et de l'Ontario ont laisse des documents attestant de leur supercherie. Puisque l'entente n'etait pas jointe au document du Traite no 9 qui est parti d'Ottawa en 1905, comme stipule, les signataires du Traite faisant partie des Premieres Nations n'ont pas pu prendre connaissance des modalites de l'entente avant d'apposer leur signature. Il faut donc se poser la question a savoir si les terres au sud de la riviere Albany ont vraiment ete cedees en vertu du Traite no 9 du point de vue de la common law, a moins que des documents ne soient presentes selon lesquels l'ensemble complet du Traite no 9 a ete remis aux signataires des Premieres Nations. Pour l'instant, les ecrits attestent du contraire. Au bout du compte, c'est aux tribunaux qu'il incombera de decider de la legalite du Traite no 9 en vertu de la common law. Mots cles : Traite no 9; << une entente datee du troisieme jour de juillet >>; choix des reserves; potentiel hydroelectrique; terres non cedees; Ontario subarctique; Canada Traduit pour la revue Arctic par Nicole Giguere., INTRODUCTION In 1867, when the Dominion of Canada was created, the Province of Ontario was only a fraction of the size of present-day Ontario (Government of Ontario, 2019; Fig. 1). [...]

IN NOVEMBER 2011, BOLIVIA AND THE UNITED STATES signed a 'framework agreement' to resume diplomatic relations, more than three years after President Eva Morales ejected the U.S. ambassador on charges [...]

Abstract: This paper analyzes the transformation of center-regional relationships in post-Soviet Russia, focusing on the division of powers and power-sharing treaties. Under the presidency of Vladimir Putin, the Russian government [...]

The purpose of this study is to propose a Neo-Assyrian origin for the so-called 'canon formula' found in Deut. 13:1 (LXX 12:32). Sections of Esarhaddon's Succession Treaty, also known as [...]

We examine the role of the state as entrepreneur and institutional entrepreneur in the Middle East. Using historical event sequencing methodology we seek to understand the rise of Dubai and [...]

Byline: Charles Kolstad (1), Alistair Ulph (2) Abstract: In this paper we synthesise and extend our earlier analysis (Ulph, J Risk Uncertain 29(1):53--73, 2004 Kolstad, J Environ Econ Manage 53(1):68--79, 2007) of the formation of an International Environmental Agreement (IEA) under uncertainty about the damages that might be caused by climate change and different models of learning, in which better information about these damage costs become available. Our results are generally pessimistic: the possibility of either complete or partial learning generally reduces the level of global welfare that can be achieved from forming an IEA. This suggests that information can have negative value. This may seem strange, since for a single decision-maker information cannot have negative value, because it can always be ignored. However in this case there are strategic interactions between a number of decision-makers responding to information, and it is these strategic interactions which can give information a negative value. Author Affiliation: (1) Department of Economics and Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA (2) Faculty of Humanities, University of Manchester, Manchester, England Article History: Registration Date: 24/01/2008 Received Date: 12/01/2007 Accepted Date: 13/12/2007 Online Date: 14/03/2008 Article note: An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference 'Learning and Climate Change', IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria, 10--11 April 2006.

This article characterizes how incentives to lie affect international cooperation and the design of cooperation agreements. I study the optimal structure of cooperation agreements in an environment where the costs of cooperation fluctuate over time. Cooperation is complicated by the fact that the costs of cooperation are private information and participants can benefit from lying about them. When the extent of asymmetries of information between the cooperating governments can be measured in terms of the transparency of the political process, democracies face greater contracting opportunities than authoritarian regimes. However, this article shows that even under asymmetries of information, a limited extent of cooperation can be achieved when the design of cooperation agreements recognizes incentives to lie.

The need of application of new technologies to cope up global climate change with relation to Kyoto Protocol is analyzed.

The ratification process for international treaties has become increasingly politicized in many democratic states. While scholars have devoted attention to the negotiation of international agreements, few have studied ratification struggles [...]

In its original version, this paper was delivered by the authors to the Bureau Europeen des Unions des Consommateurs in April 2004 in order to provide the basis for that body's submissions to the intergovernmental conference then charged with the task agreeing a new constitutional Treaty for the European Union. The aim: to improve the attention paid to the consumer interest in the Treaty. Ultimately the text agreed by the Heads of State and government of the Member States of the EU in June 2004 largely adopted the existing consumer-related acquis communautaire--in fact in most areas of substantive EU policy-making, not merely consumer policy, textual continuity is the hallmark of the newly agreed text. This paper has been revised to provide a commentary on the consumer-related provisions that were agreed in June 2004, in order both to show chances that have been missed (but may be revived should the ratification process founder) and to reveal areas of current debate that remain topical and controversial because of the preference simply to absorb existing provisions, lightly amended or left wholly unamended, into the constitutional Treaty agreed by the Heads of State and government of the Member States of the EU in June 2004.

August 2004 saw the 400th anniversary of the Treaty of London (1604), one of the most significant treaties in British history and splendidly commemorated in the great portrait of the [...]

The Constitutional Treaty succeeds in realizing one of the major aims of the Convention on the Future of the European Union--to rationalize the institutional framework for EU governance, a goal [...]

The simulation of a generalized econometric model of international environmental agreements for the reduction of emissions, based on the possible formation of coalitions between asymmetric nations, is presented.

This paper develops a bargaining model that explains why political power-sharing agreements lead to peaceful resolution of civil wars between governments and insurgents in some cases, but not others. The model predicts that if the civil war ends in a military stalemate, the government uses its offer of a political power-sharing agreement to the insurgents as a tool to misrepresent private information about its military capacity and defeat the insurgency. This exacerbates commitment problems, increases the degree of support that insurgent leaders receive from their civilian supporters and consequently increases the likelihood of recurrence of civil war. Conversely, the model shows that when the war ends in a decisive military victory for the government or the insurgents, the offer of a political power-sharing agreement reduces the degree of support that insurgent leaders get from their civilian supporters and increases the costs of fighting for the insurgents. Hence, after a decisive military victory insurgents have incentives to accept the political power-sharing agreement and not revert to fighting. Results from Cox Proportional Hazard models estimated on a data set of 111 civil wars (1944u1999) provide robust statistical support for the model's predictions.

This paper analyzes the principled content of 62 international river agreements for the period 1980u2000. We ask two questions: whether governments are converging on common principles for governing shared river basins and whether the effort to create a global normative framework for shared rivers has shaped the principled content of basin-level international accords. The data reveal a complex process of normative development. A few core principles emanating from global legal efforts have shown significant growth, diffusion and deepening at the basin-specific level. Others are common in basin agreements but show no diffusion or deepening. Still others are weakly represented in the data. If joint articulation of common principles is necessary for regime formation, then there is only weak evidence for a global rivers regime. But the data also reveal normative developments not captured by a regime-theoretic lens: a backlash reinforcing sovereign rights, the emergence of two seemingly conflicting clusters of principles, and an ambiguous relationship between some principles typically thought to be mutually reinforcing. The results show the need to treat principled content as an important dependent variable in the study of cooperation and to view institution building as a dynamic, multi-dimensional and multi-level process.

The significance of structural power resources and economy in the Russian bi-lateral treaty process is analyzed.

Byline: Christian Kirchsteiger This paper presents a review of the management of industrial safety on the basis of international agreements and institutions. It is written from the viewpoint of the national or international regulator. Focus is given to major hazard risks related to the chemical process industry. Firstly, the key technical elements of the process to assess and manage industrial risks are described together with the related key legislative principles. Various techniques exist for the assessment of risk in industrial operations, and for the assessment of hazards to the environment and mankind. These techniques share common areas, e.g. with regard to data collection and interpretation, that offer the possibility of synergetic approaches via international agreements and institutions. In addition to technical risk assessment, cultural factors will need to be taken into account when addressing the topic of acceptable risk in any given social context. Secondly, various examples of current risk management frameworks in a multi- and bilateral context are given. Finally, as a concrete example of an industrial risk management framework, the European Union's legislation to control major accident hazards, the Seveso II Directive, is discussed. An outlook on future actions concludes the paper.