1,721,301 research outputs found
Child trafficking in China from a human rights-based approach: A case study of three Chinese provinces
Full text linkChild trafficking is a heinous crime and a severe violation of human rights that concerns every country, including China. Child trafficking in China has particularities and is subject that has been under-evaluated. The prohibition of child trafficking in China has historically focused on the domestic abduction and sale of children, which has always existed in Chinese history. In the 1980s, the crime became widespread, and public concern reignited. The existing domestic legal framework based on the first Criminal Law of the People's Republic of China, adopted in 1979, is remindful of a long history of contrasting a widespread practice. Human rights violations are both causes and consequences of child trafficking, either domestic or transnational. This research examined the crime of child trafficking, as defined in Article 240 of the Criminal Law of China, in three provinces of China (Guangdong, Shandong, and Yunnan) from a human rights perspective, analysing factors that may cause and facilitate child trafficking and human rights issue arise during and after trafficking process, as well as the State's obligations under international human rights law. To ensure that the research questions are adequately addressed, this research adopted a mixed-methods approach. There are three criminal modes of child trafficking: the abduction and sale of children (M1), the parental sale of children (M2), and the organised child trafficking (M3). The quantitative analysis of 1,567 court judgements at national level drew up the flows of trafficked children in the three provinces of study. Detailed analysis of the court judgements regarding 689 victims in Guangdong, Shandong and Yunnan Provinces unveiled both differences and similarities in the trafficking patterns presented in the three provinces. The crime was concentrated in rural areas. Most of the children were trafficked for illegal adoption. They were primarily infants less than one year old. Both boys and girls were vulnerable to trafficking. The anecdotic evidence based on case law proved that human rights violations and issues are not only the causes and consequences of crimes related to child trafficking; they continue to exist after the rescue of the victim. Poverty and gender-based discrimination are the main structural factors identified in this research. Discrimination against persons with disabilities and children born out of wedlock are other factors that cause child trafficking. The birth control policy is a proximate factor that interacts with poverty and discrimination, and flourish child trafficking in the three provinces. Child trafficking causes serious violations of the dignity and fundamental human rights of the victim, including the right to life, the right to liberty, the right to security of person, the right to be free from torture and enslavement, the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, the right to not be separated from their parents against their will, and the right of the child to be registered immediately after birth, to have a name and to acquire a nationality. New human rights challenges arose after the rescue of the trafficked children. The issues of concern include, but not limited to, the care of the victims after the rescue, safe return to family, healthcare and assistance to the child victim, and the right to remedy. China has actively engaged in combating child trafficking, and some of the measures were innovative. However, the policies and measures have failed in many aspects to respond to the realities and particularities of crimes in the country and brought new challenges regarding human rights protections. Some structural defects of the Chines anti-trafficking law and their consequences emerged in this study. Numerous gaps also need to be filled in when referring to international human rights standards and principles
New Technologies in Combating Child Trafficking in China: Opportunities and Challenges for Children’s Rights
Full text linkChild trafficking within China: literature review
Full text linkChild trafficking violates the fundamental human rights of children and is a heinous crime that has concerned the Chinese authority and international community for a long time. As a preparation for a systematic research on the child trafficking within China from a human rights perspective, this review analyses literature, official documents and other relevant publications related to child trafficking and trafficking in persons, with a special focus on the definition and root causes of the issue, the principle and paradigm applicable when confront the crime. After a comparison of a series of national and international legal documents, reports and literature, the review identified some differences and incompatibilities of the definition of child trafficking in the Chinese and international legal framework. There are several approaches to identify and classify factors that cause and encourage human trafficking. However, most of the studies are about causal factors of international trafficking in women and children, while only a small part of literature focuses on child trafficking or domestic trafficking in persons. There is a series of interacting principles that guide the international and national anti-trafficking policies and actions in all the sectors and every aspect of an anti-trafficking response, and human rights is among the most important principles. States and international mechanisms combat child trafficking based on the paradigm for combating trafficking in persons consisting of four pillars of intervention: prevention, persecution, protection and partnership (cooperation and coordination)
Protecting fundamental values through the global human rights sanction regime: China's challenges to the EU's normative power
No full textIn 2021, the European Council, implementing the Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime, imposed sanctions on four Chinese officials and one entity believed to be responsible for human rights violations in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. These sanctions marked the EU's resumption of a hard normative approach towards China, which responded with strong countermeasures. The exchange of sanctions and countersanctions, along with the ensuing debates, offered a valuable opportunity to observe the EU's normative power in international politics. A qualitative content analysis of documents from both China and the EU reveals that while the EU aims to uphold its moral objectives, it faces significant internal and external challenges. The EU's ability to effectively counter China is limited by institutional weaknesses, inconsistent policies, and diminished credibility. Furthermore, the EU is institutionally unprepared for the consequences of imposing sanctions on such a powerful partner and competitor. On the other hand, China has become increasingly assertive in defending its political system and values, responding to EU sanctions with strong countermeasures, thereby complicating the EU's efforts to maintain leverage in this diplomatic struggle
An Inter-University CBL Course and Its Reception by the Student Body: Reflections and Lessons Learned (in Times of COVID-19)
Full text linkThe COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent restrictive measures adopted by the countries have significantly reduced the capacity of higher education institutions to carry out innovative international teaching and learning activities. This paper provides a short reconstruction of how the seven European universities, members of the Arqus Alliance, handled this challenge. During 2020–21, that is, in full pandemic, the Arqus partners redesigned and implemented a trans-European challenge-based learning (CBL) project involving university students from many disciplinary fields, including social sciences and natural sciences, focused on climate change-related risks in European cities and areas. Based on this experience, a contingent conceptualization of CBL is proposed, comprising eight characteristics, whose effectiveness is then tested against data provided by students who participated in the courses. In this context, the results of a Likert questionnaire distributed to students from participating universities will be discussed. The analysis is meant to provide a deeper understanding of CBL not only as a pedagogical tool for a specific output, but also as a broader learning experience generating outcomes for teachers who plan and deliver CBL activities, and for the beneficiaries of such activities. In other words, the article aims to highlight some enabling and inhibiting factors of “strategic CBL”—this latter expression is supposed to capture the process of designing and implementing a CBL activity as a CBL practice in itself
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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