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Intersections of the Right to Education and Human Dignity in International Human Rights Law: A Purpose-Based Analysis
Get PDFThe atrocities of World War II were pivotal to the launch of the human rights project, which became anchored on the recognition of the inherent dignity of all humans and formed a cornerstone justifying the ascription of rights. Indeed, it became essential to recognise education as a human right given the emergent need to promote the use of reason, having recognised humans as people imbued with inherent dignity. This paper explores the right to education in international human rights law (IHRL) from the perspective of its purpose, and uses IHRL as its starting point. It argues that the ascription of inherent dignity to everyone justifies access to education and investigates the nexus between dignity and education, arguing that access to education is a sine qua non to expanding the inherent dignity of all humans. Thus, it argues that the recognition of dignity requires that all children must be provided with equal access to education to stimulate the use of reason
Sensitive creators at work
Get PDFCreativity appears to be important to both organisational performance and employee wellbeing but understanding of the individual differences that support the creative process is incomplete. High sensitivity of the nervous system - to both internal bodily states and external context – has been associated with creative potential in the wider psychological literature, but occupational research into sensitivity is sparse. Research that has explored sensitivity in the workplace tends to focus on the vulnerabilities of the trait, such as stress and burnout. This commentary paper calls for further research into the relationship between sensitivity and creativity in the workplace, which has the potential to inform applied practice in the context of both employee wellbeing and talent management to the benefit of highly sensitive employees and their employers
Chapter 18: Fashion and design law
Get PDFThis chapter discusses the protection of fashion through design law, focusing on EU Law. It first introduces the relationship between fashion and the concept of design and the requirements for protection and registration. The chapter then explores the concept of Unregistered Community Design. Design ownership within the fashion industry and infringement, a significant concern in the fashion industry, are also examined. The chapter also addresses contemporary issues in the fashion industry, such as the intersection of artificial intelligence and design law in fashion, and discusses the implications of 3D printing technology in fashion and design law. It also explores the relationship between fashion and traditional knowledge, shedding light on the conflict between modern fashion trends and age-old traditional designs. The chapter further investigates the relationship between fashion law and the circular economy, focusing on sustainability in fashion. Lastly, overlapping intellectual property protections for fashion under EU law are discussed
Finding Yourself: Multiversal Identity Crisis in Ted Chiang’s Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom
No full textWe live in a time when theories of the multiverse are everywhere, penetrating our daily lives: be it in film, television, literature, comic books, video games, the idea of alternate universes is both popular and inescapable. But what effect does the existence of multiple—and potentially superior—variants of ourselves have on our conceptions of identity? In a society seemingly obsessed with multiverse theories, the question of nature versus nurture becomes ever more prevalent: is our nature inherent, or is it our circumstances which define us? If exposed to different scenarios, would we still be us? By examining Ted Chiang’s novella, Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom (2019), this essay seeks to highlight the dangers of the multiverse on a psychological level, and the damage it can have on an individual’s psyche.
The novella’s title is taken from Soren Kierekgaard’s definition of anxiety as the ‘dizziness of freedom’ (1844), and the existential crisis arising from having endless possibilities. Considering the frail nature of identity, the existence of multiple, and more successful, versions of oneself develops an identity crisis which seeks to understand what events may have prevented themselves from becoming this ultimate version; furthermore, if there are never-ending versions of a person, it stands to reason that there is a worst version, and that could very well be you. It is this anxiety of selfhood which Chiang’s novella closely examines. Taking the idea of the double to an infinite degree, the idea of the multiverse simultaneously destroys all certainty of a unique identity while paradoxically suggesting that we are products of experience, and that our identity is subject to change dependent on the life lived. By reading multiversal fiction as a contemporary and science fictional form of double literature, we can examine the concept psychoanalytically to gain further understanding of the insecurity and interchangeability of identity, the battle of nature versus nurture, and the persistent anxiety surrounding ideas of selfhood. If you are in fact everything and everyone, then each one of your multiple selves must come to terms with being nothing and no-one
When Politics Met Intellectual Property Cooperation in the Pan-American Union
Get PDFPan-Americanism and the shaping of the Latin American countries towards markets friendly to the United States saw the arrival of harmonisation of intellectual property in the American region. The ties between the United States and the Central and South American states materialised in January 1889. Yet, while the aim of the Pan-American Union was based on the “Monroe Doctrine”, it was evident that different conceptions were brought to the table by the delegates.
This chapter evaluates the Pan-American Union conferences between the years 1919 to 1939, seeking to critically examine the build-up of the intellectual property system in Latin America. For instance, early propositions to adhere to the Protocol of Madrid ended with the resolution to call for a special conference of representatives, specifically trademark specialists, to consider international problems of inter-American trademarks. In general, the formalities and prerequisites required by domestic laws were debated and replaced, aiming to harmonise the law in the region. While the Pan-American Conferences put forward intellectual property treaties and agreements, the extent to which they were implemented is a different story
Automation of Violent Activity Recognition Utilising CCTV Video Data
Get PDFIn this era, security trends identified violence as a significant issue plaguing society globally. Statistics depicted alarming thresholds for violence, establishing itself as a momentous challenge for homeland security and defence institutions, predominantly in schools and other public locations. The advent of state-of-the-art closed circuit television (CCTV) surveillance solutions exists to aid in limiting the manifestations of violence and its impact. However, most institutions need proper analysis mechanisms that lead to prevention, apprehension, or conviction in a timely fashion. Manually monitoring and collectively analysing anthropometric data generated by CCTV surveillance devices proved impractical and time-consuming, and its outcome increases the complexity of identifying violent behavioural patterns as substantial evidence. Despite innovative CCTV sensor improvement, the impact of adequately analysing vast amounts of CCTV data adds to the monitoring challenge. This thesis proposed the amalgamation of the ”You Only Look Once version five medium” model (YOLOv5m) as activity recognition and Three Dimensional Convolution Neural Network Single level (3DCNNsl) activity recognition, two state-of-the-art artificial intelligence models incorporating weight embedding procedures to identify primitive stages of violence and weapons artefacts. The approach integrates classification support to confirm the existence of specific weapon objects (knives, bladed instruments, clubs, and guns) of interest belonging to a specific class of violence (beating, shooting, stabbing).
It also validates the presence (primitive stages of violence) of violent classes by utilising the existence of weapons belonging to its category group to infer the activity outcome. Utilising classification support concepts to validate the existence of primitive stages of violence enhances the classification outcome of violent activity recognition with robust results. This thesis commenced by conducting a two-stage literature investigation to satisfy
the research objectives, which disclosed the state-of-the-art 3DCNNsl at stage one and the YOLOv5m framework for activity with artefact recognition towards violence at stage
two. The proposed one-stage (simultaneously performing object localisation and classification) solution combines the models’ processing, reducing the impact of their architectural limitations. 3DCNNsl facilitates behavioural pattern classification, generically associating sub-class labels suggesting the presence of violence at high accuracy. In addition to 3DCNNsl, YOLOv5m architecture serves two functions: operating in an activity recognition capacity, fortifying 3DCNNsl activity output, and detecting artefacts, which establish the presence of weapons, enhancing the action classification and overall accuracy. The thesis
optimised the deep learning model selections by identifying violence in scenarios and validating its presence through a redundant weapon artefact classification weight embedding
procedure. The concept allows the classification of violence in its primitive stages before its impact escalates to lethal outcomes. The proposal extensively reviewed its operations via transfer learning in multiple fusion scenarios to identify the most optimal strategies to
realise the research objective. The evaluation dataset utilised in this thesis encompassed a selection of samples accumulated via the University of Central Florida (UCF) dataset and several social media forums. The violent action samples reflect several multifaceted real-world scenarios representing sporadic accelerated motion attributes in various environments, which aids in reducing the risk of dispensing biased results and affecting the model’s robustness. The proposal disclosed three contributory elements, which reflect the following; 1. Conducted performance testing of two known machine learning techniques (YOLOv5m and 3DCNNsl) in independently recognising violent and non-violent activities in CCTV video footage. 2. Demonstrated violent activity recognition performance in such videos when both machine learning techniques operate in tandem. 3. Implemented performance enhancement by further incorporating threat object detection in the previous combined solution. Contribution one disclosed the effectiveness of YOLOv5m activity recognition at 74% and 3 the state-of-the-art 3DCNN at 75%, conceding high misclassifications utilising data with and without augmentations and resolution modifications. The operations emphasised the obligation to explore alternative processing measures to alleviate the disadvantages of the two machine learning models. Contribution two emphasised the effectiveness of fusion enhancement techniques via decision-level voting at 85.20% over 3DCNNsl and YOLOv5m activity recognition. As a validation strategy, the operations incorporated surplus data encompassing 50 samples designed to enhance the classification complexity. The approach
rigorously appraised the operations, thus confirming its applicability. Contribution three showcased the amalgamation of fusion’s activity recognition and the power of object detection to establish its effectiveness in concatenating weight embedding. The experiments maintained data consistency similar to contribution two. Analysis disclosed the dominance of fusion incorporating threat object detection at 88.20% over 3DCNNsl, YOLOv5m activity recognition, and fusion without threat object enhancement. The results underscore the robustness of the proposed method, which has proven its classification competence, particularly in scenarios with surplus data, from an overall accuracy perspective. While the proposal debates the efficiency of individual processing compared to fusion without support, the research endeavour accentuates the effectiveness of integrating classification redundancy through weight embedding to suggest the presence of artefacts confirming the occurrence of violent actions. The findings highlight the effectiveness of the proposed method without artefact processing at 85.20% while incorporating threat object support analysis concatenating weapons (knife, club, gun in the videos) improved the accuracy to 88.20%. This evidence substantiates the solution’s robustness, fulfilling the research objectives to conclude the investigations
Fostering Socio-Economic Rights and Human Dignity Through Collaborative Partnerships: The Role of Civil Society Organisations
No full textThe end of the Second World War (WW II) illuminated the new hope of a world order that tumultuously recognises human rights and the inherent dignity of all humans. States now recognise that improved human rights mechanisms and their enjoyment; particularly socio-economic rights are dynamics consistent with the dignity of humans under international human rights law. However, their observance and promotion are traditionally predicated on State’s discretion. Thus, it is pivotal to have a concerted push toward adopting common measures that put these rights on the frontlines of States’ economic blueprints. Civil Society Organisations in partnership with National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) would play a central role in realising this global effort. This paper aims to argue that Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) could play a crucial role in fostering resilience within national boundaries and the promotion of socio-economic rights as key indices in reshaping the economic landscape of states in the twenty-first century, especially in States like South Africa and Nigeria
‘Mrs Thatcher’s Praetorian Guard’: The 92 Group and the defence of Thatcherism, 1979-83
Get PDFEver since Mrs Thatcher’s departure from office Conservative politicians have rushed to invoke her name, her legacy, and her policies, in one form or another. Being the ‘Thatcherite’ candidate still has value within the party. This research examines Mrs Thatcher’s backbench supporters and their contribution to the development of Thatcherism, the people we look back and call the first ‘Thatcherites’. It concludes that she needed the 92 Group, her so-called ‘Praetorian Guard’, within her first term. Led by George Gardiner, Ian Gow and William Clark, they were indispensable counterweights to those Conservative MPs who could never accept Mrs Thatcher’s leadership or policies. Using archival material, interviews with contemporaries, and private papers, this thesis demonstrates how the activity of leading members of the 92 Group ensured Mrs Thatcher’s survival in her first term. Without these backbench supporters, she would have been forced into a U-turn in 1981, or toppled from power, and Thatcherism, as we know it, wouldn’t exist.
Formed in 1964 the 92 Group got its name from 92 Cheyne Walk, the London home of its first chairman Patrick Wall. To most observers it was solely a dining club. Yet archival material demonstrates that it was more than that. It discussed ‘conservative principles’ and how the Conservative party had lost its way at the end of thirteen years of governance. Intellectually it fit within the New Right. It was unhappy at the increased size of the state, planning, high taxation and universal welfare. To some extent it was uneasy with the permissive society. It was unreservedly nationalistic in sentiment, a reaction to the end of Empire and new Commonwealth immigration. In all of these we see the intellectual hand of Enoch Powell and many of the principles that came to be associated with Thatcherism.
The Heath years were as symbolic in shaping the 92 as they were the Thatcherites who became Mrs Thatcher’s key economic ministers. The 92 grudgingly sided with Heath, supporting his prices and incomes policies only because they were a weapon to stifle trade union power. This did not stop them complaining in private at the direction of policy away from the 1970 manifesto. Unsurprisingly, they enthusiastically supported Mrs Thatcher for the leadership in 1975, their opportunity to keep the Conservative party ‘conservative’.
With Gardiner and Gow joining the 92 in the late 1970s they saved it from atrophy after the Group’s convenor died. This is key as Gardiner became Mrs Thatcher’s staunchest defender in the press and Ian Gow her assiduous Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS). With William Clark elected chairman of the backbench finance committee, they had their positions and roles to defend the Prime Minister. The Group supported her economic policy when it looked as if it was not working. Their pressure forced Jim Prior, the Employment Secretary, to concede to more trade union reforms, against his wishes, reforms that were central to the Thatcher project. The 92 organised to ensure her supporters were elected to the backbench policy committees, a vital barometer of opinion in the party. Such was the strength of its activism and support for the Prime Minister that a leadership challenge to Mrs Thatcher was averted in 1981.
This is not to say the 92 were the brains trust of Thatcherism. From 1985 the No Turning Back group became the intellectual guard of Thatcherism. They published sophisticated papers developing Thatcherism by calling for the introduction of market mechanisms into public services. Mrs Thatcher recognised their talent and appointed several of them within her administration. Yet had the battles of the early 1980s not been won by the 92, historians must ask whether what followed would have been possible
Concurrent Application and Artificially Intelligent Target Selection
No full textThe authors wish to utilise the recent novel (though arguably controversial) use of the targeting artificial intelligence (AI) system, codenamed “Lavender” by Israel, as a way of framing a much broader and much needed research question. As readers of this Journal will no doubt be familiar, the use of Lavender by Israel is cantered firmly within the in bello realm in relation to target selection. The purpose of this Article is not to assess the poignant sensitivities of the on-going conflicts in Gaza or Ukraine. Rather, it is to transpose and pose the crucial question as to how a system like Lavender (if operating in the ad bellum realm) would need to be designed for it to comply with both the ad bellum and in bello legal tapestry. More specifically, the authors are uniquely examining how an artificially intelligent system might operate within both realms. And in doing so, the authors provide a greater granular appraisal of the concept of concurrent application (a simultaneous implementation of ad bellum and in bello principles in regards to target selection) which remains a highly topical area in need of further scrutiny. The article presents that in order to correctly vet and appraise from the in bello perspective (in terms of the sine qua non requirements of proportionality and military necessity) there is a natural intersect with ad bellum proportionality and necessity assessments in relation to Article 51 UN Charter and customary requirements re the lawfulness of a state’s inherent right of self-defence. It is certainly true that the concept of concurrent application is not typically one that appears front and centre of most discussions relating to the lawfulness of a state’s recourse to force. However, and in no uncertain terms, the authors suggest that it should. Moreover, they consider that it is an absolute must for a system such as Lavender—that is deployed in the in bello realm (where a state is acting in self-defence) to be programmed with concurrency (and the factoring in of the ad bellum). Undeniably, it is not always readily apparent when the ad bellum ends, and / or where the in bello commences. Where there is ambiguity the authors’ default position is to maintain that the prerequisite of concurrency is non-negotiable