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THE SUSTAINABILITY OF CHILD PROTECTION SERVICES IN THE REPUBLIC OF KOSOVO
Get PDFToday, in Kosovo, are services provided for the children most in need sustainable? Do these services have stable and long-term funding? Did the decentralization of the Kosovo government strengthen or weaken the existing child protective environment? In an attempt to answer these questions, a review of available literature was completed, as well as direct interviews conducted with relevant stakeholders engaged in Kosovo’s child protection services at both the governmental and civil society levels. The main finding of my research is that vulnerable children in Kosovo, such as children without parental care, children with special needs, and child victims of domestic violence and trafficking, remain without adequate protective services to ensure their safety and resources and supports to put them on a positive trajectory toward future stability and optimal well-being. In 1999, as war with neighboring Serbia ended, the international community came to Kosovo’s aid. New ideas were introduced, and sometimes imposed, including the process of decentralization of governmental services, which increased in intensity when Kosovo declared its independence in 2008. Unfortunately, decentralization was implemented without adequate preparation of the local governments, and in what seemed to be a chaotic manner. Local governments were not prepared to receive the additional responsibilities that came with the decentralization process and did not prioritize child protection services due to a lack of qualified staff and a lack of finances. This left local and international civil society organizations to do what they could to fill the service gaps of vital child protection services. However, funding for many of these organizations is grant-based and is short to medium-term in length. At the same time, the decentralization process has actually weakened the system of child protection services that was in place. Currently there is no sustainable funding for child protection service providers at either the governmental level or through civil society organizations. If there is to be a future for these vulnerable children, Kosovo’s government and its society must urgently reconsider its priorities and commit resources for stable, continuous, comprehensive, and long-term support for these children most in need
NGOs as Learning Organizations: Evaluating Female Sports Development in Jordan Through the Lens of Women’s Soccer
Get PDFThis Independent Study Project (ISP) explores how NGO programs measure the success of their impact on female sports development in Jordan and the impact thereof on improving women’s opportunities in sport. This research relies on several theories, including Sport for Development theory (Lyras and Welty Peachey, 2011), organizational learning and learning organizations (Roper and Pettit, 2002), and monitoring and evaluation (Peters, 2016) to discover the effect of NGO programs on women\u27s sport development in Jordan. It centers on the intersection of gender, social expectations, and non-governmental work for development. This paper aims to answer the following questions: Roper and Pettit suggest that organizations should strive towards bottom-up learning to allow constituents to define NGO practices. How might bottom-up learning redefine how female sports empowerment NGOs in Jordan assess their program’s success? How do female sports empowerment programs (NGOs) in Jordan understand the lives and aspirations of their constituents and how might they collaborate with them to increase women’s sport access? What social and cultural factors influence challenges to visibility and access for women’s sports in Jordan?
The research includes five interviews with program providers and local experts on women’s sport in Jordan. It postulates that in order for women’s sport to expand and be sustained on a national platform, the efforts and emphasis on sport for development as implemented in refugee-specific initiatives may serve as a foundation for shared learning and collaboration among women’s sports activists, but should ultimately be tailored to the needs of the Jordanian society as a whole
The Political Development of Capital Punishment in the Modern Moroccan State
Get PDFThe modern Moroccan state seen today is very young. Having only been independent from France since 1956, the country has spent the last sixty-four years crafting its post-colonial statehood. What has emerged is a hybrid political system with powers split, however unequally, between the King and his inner circle, known as the makhzen, and the Parliament. Not only is the monarchy constitutional—meaning that its legitimacy is literally written into the primary governing document of Morocco, which had its last referendum in 2011—but it is also self-sustaining and self-legitimizing, for the monarchy uses its constitutional powers to grant itself further powers and enforce its approved social order. One of the primary ways any state enforces its approved social order is through public violence and/or the threat of public violence. This paper will explore how the use of and meaning behind public violence in Morocco has shifted from its independence in 1956 to today, specifically through analyzing the political development of capital punishment, or the death penalty. As of 2011, an organization called the Advocates for Humans Rights reports that there are approximately 150 people on death row in Morocco. Ultimately, this paper will contribute to the growing literature discussing the human rights implications of the continued use of the death penalty worldwide and what its abolition could mean for human rights movements
From the Ulama to the Legislature: Hermeneutics & Morocco’s Family Code
Get PDFThis study examines the role that Islamic law has played thus far in reforming the Moroccan Family Code, also known as the Moudawana. When King Mohammed VI reformed this law in 2004, Morocco received immediate international praise for its liberal strides towards gender equality. Through this study I investigated the hermeneutical tools and methods of ijtihad employed both by the drafters of the Moudawana and by activists leading up to the 2004 reforms. I then investigate impediments to the implementation of this Code in providing substantive legal rights to Moroccan women and the role that interpretation of Islamic law plays in these barriers. I will also situate this in larger debates concerning the role of CSOs in authoritarian regimes, the international regime’s conception of universal human rights and state control of religion. Finally, this study examines the strengths and challenges facing the Islamic feminist movement and assesses the potential for this movement to produce further reforms to the Moudawana and increase gender equality in Moroccan society
Exploring Approaches to Effective Evaluation for Public Diplomacy Exchange Programs
Get PDFThis study explores what factors have limited strategic measurement of outcomes for ‘mutual understanding’ across U.S. government-funded public diplomacy exchange programs by conducting a thorough desk review of available materials, completing a meta-review of twelve existing evaluation reports, and coupling this with interviews with eight evaluation practitioners. The sample of programs included were selected based on the criteria that ‘mutual understanding’ was an explicit goal in the program design. Programs included: Fulbright Student Program, Fulbright Scholar Program, International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP), Youth Exchange and Study Program (YES), Future Leaders Exchange (FLEX) Program, and the Peace Corps.
This paper synthesizes definitions of both ‘public diplomacy’ and ‘mutual understanding’ as used across the field of international relations and in government-sponsored people-to-people (P2P) programing. From a review of the literature, this study also captures posited frameworks, approaches and tools that can assist in measuring public diplomacy programming. It also reviews different approaches to evaluation and identifies strategies that have been used previously to measure mutual understanding and identifies pain-points for measurement of ‘mutual understanding’ and provides some possible recommendations moving forward.
Key words: mutual understanding, public diplomacy, evaluation, measurement, soft power, Fulbright, IVLP, Peace Corps, Kirkpatrick Model, exchange program, mixed method
Colonial Patronage: Evolutions in the Critique of Sartre’s “Orphée noir”
No full textOne of the most interesting and controversial episodes in the history of the Négritude literary and philosophical movement came when two white, French authors prefaced the texts of two of the movement’s most significant authors. Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Orphée noir” is one of these texts in question, and it served as the preface for Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Anthologie de le nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache de langue française. In one sense, one might characterize Sartre as a friend to the Négritude movement, exposing it to the francophone mainstream and thereby helping it gain traction in Western academia. Viewed a different way, however, and Sartre was intruding into a dialogue in a way he did not truly understand and limiting the movement he sought to help by defining it within his own definition of Blackness. In this project, I propose to investigate the larger implications and perspectives surrounding Sartre’s essay in order to extract the most important criticisms against it as well as the most optimistic takes on what good can be salvaged from his work
Crude Intentions: Evaluating the Growing Risks of Arctic Alaskan Oil Production
Get PDFThe discovery of oil on Alaska’s North Slope in the 1920s began a century of fossil fuel exploration, development, and production in the Arctic region. Alaska became integral to the nation’s growing energy dominance. However, since 1988, oil production on the North Slope has been in steady decline. In 2015, Shell, followed by several other oil majors, terminated their Arctic Alaska operations. This past year, BP made waves by ending six decades of operations in Alaska. Most recently, five of the six major U.S. banks announced they would no longer finance Arctic oil and gas projects. This paper analyzes these decisions by evaluating the environmental, economic, and reputational risk of engaging in Arctic oil exploitation. A thorough review of existing literature demonstrates waning interest in the region’s fossil resources. Operating in and likely harming the pristine and fragile Arctic Alaskan ecosystem requires companies to incur added costs and face growing backlash that diminished potential returns can no longer justify. Consequently, I conclude that despite recent efforts by President Donald Trump to revive the region, Arctic Alaska will lose relevance for national oil production in the coming decades and possibly as early as the mid-2020s
The Cultural and Systemic Influence on Substance Use Disorder
Get PDFThe opioid epidemic is an extensive global problem, but it is not random that it is most severe in the United Sates. It is commonly believed that the individuals with substance use disorder and the health care system are at fault, however many people disregard the impact culture and systems have on substance use disorder. I tackled this gap by conducting formal qualitative interviews with experts in the field of addiction and dissecting academic work. After this research it is apparent that the American culture and institutions has made individuals vulnerable to become addicted to opioids while other similar European countries cultures contain protective factors that lowered their citizen’s risk to use opioids
El artista está en línea: E-performance en el tiempo de COVID-19
No full textEsta investigación propone una lectura detallada y comparativa de varias e-performances creadas por el artista visual uruguayo Ernesto Rizzo y la performer argentina Susy Shock, trazando un corpus de trabajo creado durante la crisis de COVID-19 y compartido en Instagram desde finales de marzo a finales de mayo de 2020. Al centrarse en el giro digital del arte de performance debido a las particularidades de la cuarentena, esta investigación busca distinguir este momento de e-performance , entendiendo cuáles serán sus ramificaciones para el/la artista y el arte de performance en general. Así, a través de una reflexión teórica sobre el terreno digital, se puede comprender este distinto desplazamiento digital de COVID-19 en tiempo real, proporcionando modestamente una perspectiva inicial sobre los paisajes cambiantes del arte presencial en los primeros meses del distanciamiento social.
This research proposes a detailed and comparative reading of several e-performances created by the Uruguayan visual artist Ernesto Rizzo and the Argentinean performer Susy Shock, tracing a body of work created during the COVID-19 crisis and shared on Instagram from late March to late May 2020. By focusing on the digital turn of performance art due to the particularities of the quarantine, this research seeks to distinguish this moment of e-performance , understanding what its ramifications will be for the artist and performance art in general. Thus, through a theoretical reflection on the digital terrain, it is possible to understand this digital shift of COVID-19 in real-time, modestly offering an initial perspective on the changing landscapes of presential art in the first months of social distancing
Parásitos gastrointestinales de Tierra del Fuego, Argentina
No full textEste trabajo intentó encontrar helmintos comunes, especialmente compartidos, en cuatro carnívoros patagónicos del sur con distribuciones geográficas superpuestas y dos carnívoros patagónicos del norte, y esbozar el análisis fecal y los métodos de identificación morfológica para futuros investigadores. El estudiante encontró solo un parásito helminto compartido entre cualquier otra especie y la nutria nativa del sur del río, a pesar de una superposición en el hábitat con el visón americano invasivo, pero esto puede deberse a un bajo recuento de estudios regionales previos de helmintos en cualquiera de las especies. Se encontraron múltiples parásitos en las cuatro especies hospederas de Lycalopex , con una gran superposición entre el zorro gris sudamericano, que es invasivo en Tierra del Fuego. Encontró que el uso de la centrifugación en los procedimientos de flotación o sedimentación puede aumentar el recuento de huevos recuperados, y que la identificación basada en la morfología a veces no pueden identificar a unos especies de helmintos a niveles taxonómicos por debajo del orden o familia sin análisis de ADN. Este estudio describe las etapas de la vida y las características morfológicas básicas que los investigadores deben esperar ver para cada especie de helmintos, así como algunas técnicas de sedimentación y flotación utilizadas previamente en la investigación de coproparasitológicos