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All Projects from the Annual Call for Projects

Annual Call for Projects 2006 A Swiss Network of Scientific Diasporas to Enforce the Role of Highly Skilled Migrants as Partners in Development

This research and action-oriented project, funded by the Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN), is centred around the current international debate on migration and development. The research team's objective is to provide a better understanding of the potential of highly skilled migrants as agents of development, by focusing on their participation in the production and circulation of knowledge. Considering knowledge as a core catalyst in the struggle against poverty, this project examines the potential of highly skilled migrants from...

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Annual Call for Projects 2006 Africa@home: Volunteer Computing for Africa

In this project supported by the Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN) the research team proposes to adapt several epidemiological simulation programs modelling important humanitarian challenges facing Africa, so that they can be run in a distributed fashion using "volunteer computing" technology. This technology, made famous by projects such as Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI@home), can routinely harness the power of tens of thousands of personal computers for important scientific causes. Members of the public who...

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Annual Call for Projects 2006 Crisis and Risk Reduction: Mobilising, Collecting and Sharing Information in Crisis or Risk Situations

The goal of this research project supported by the Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN) is to study how information pertaining to medical risks and crises is collected, disseminated and used. As demonstrated by recent events (the heat wave in France, the tsunami in south-east Asia, the Chikungunya epidemic in the Indian Ocean), the fact that information is available or being circulated does not necessarily mean that those who need it are properly informed or use it to good purpose. One of the aims of the research project is to...

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Annual Call for Projects 2006 Joint Initiative on Trade and Global Economic Governance

The Graduate Institute of International Studies (GIIS), the South Centre, and the Global Economic Governance Programme at the University of Oxford, are jointly implementing a project supported by the Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN) to advance research and policy dialogue on trade, global economic governance and developing countries.

Globalisation, under appropriate conditions, holds the promise of growth and prosperity. Yet for many in the developing world, and for those concerned about sustainable development,...

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Annual Call for Projects 2006 Obtaining Reliable Medical Information Online: A Study Focusing on Francophone Africa

Access to good quality health information is a key component of any health system. With the emergence of information and communication technologies, new tools have become available to facilitate the compilation, publication and access to such data. However, these new tools also present new challenges. Indeed, it is becoming increasingly difficult to gauge the reliability of health information on the web. In addition, the fact that there exists a variety of data must be acknowledged and encouraged.

It is at present not clear whether...

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Annual Call for Projects 2006 Participation, Conservation and Livelihoods: Evaluating the Effectiveness of Participatory Approaches in Protected Areas

The number of protected areas in the world has increased rapidly over the past few decades and is currently in excess of 102,000. The question of their ecological and social sustainability is one of the main challenges to global environmental governance today.

Historically, most protected areas were created under the assumption that, for conservation to be successful, humans had to be excluded from these areas. Many studies have presented evidence that this approach was ineffective. Starting in the 1970s, a new approach...

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Annual Call for Projects 2006 Post-Conflict Peacebuilding and Reconstruction: Development of a Common Language to Improve the Response to Needs

Post-conflict peacebuilding and reconstruction represents a major challenge for the international community and for war-torn societies. This thematic is rife with conceptual and terminological ambiguities, however, which inhibit understanding of the challenges inherent in such contexts and also of the actions undertaken by decision-makers and practitioners. The increasing gap between theory and reality requires an interdisciplinary and empirical study on the significance and relevance of various notions of peace-building, so that the needs...

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Annual Call for Projects 2006 Technology Transfer, Trade, and the Environment: Promoting Synergy for Sustainable Development among the World Trade Organisation and Multilateral Environmental Agreements

Increasing the availability of environmental goods and services (EGS) through market liberalisation is seen as exemplifying the potential "win-win" relationship between trade and environment. Lower costs induced by lower or zero tariffs and non-tariff barriers would allow World Trade Organisation (WTO) Members to economise on resource/energy use and to increase their access to new technologies and know-how. At the same time, WTO Members would be able to comply with better environmental standards and adequately implement multilateral...

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Annual Call for Projects 2006 The Global Detention Project: Mapping the Rise of Migrant Detention in a Globalising World

This project, supported by the Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN), aims at conducting research on the conditions of, and the factors that contribute to, the detention of international "irregular migrants," The transnational movement of people is one of the defining challenges of the 21st century, a fact dramatically underscored in the final report of the UN Global Commission on International Migration, issued in October 2005. According to the report, the number of international migrants has more than...

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Annual Call for Projects 2006 Tracking Environmental Impacts of Consumption: Linking OECD and Developing Countries to Alleviate Negative Consequences

Globalisation and the related growth in trade provoke socio-economic as well as environmental consequences. There currently exists a need to shed new light on international responsibilities relating to the environmental impacts of consumption and related trade patterns. The relationship between consumers in developed countries and affected citizens in developing countries merits careful examination. This is all the more urgent due to the emergence of new challenges such as:

Annual Call for Projects 2006 UNHCR and the Global Cold War, 1971-1984

Created in 1950 to solve the problem of European refugees in the wake of World War II, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has subsequently grown to become a global operation that currently addresses the needs of over 19 million people. Beginning in the 1970’s, UNHCR experienced a sudden expansion in its role in the developing world, where large-scale humanitarian crises set in motion an evolution of norms and standard setting with regard to refugee law and exposed the organisation to new challenges. In...

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Annual Call for Projects 2005 Creating a New Dynamic for Public Private Partnerships (PPP) for Sustainable Development: Establishing a PPP "Toolkit" for Countries at the Pre-PPP Stage

Can governments in partnership with the private sector and non-profit organisations promote peace and sustainable development? This is the primary question of this project.

This research will examine whether, and under what conditions, Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) can be conceived to include criteria for peace and sustainable development. This would include considerations for sustainable management of resources, equitable access to these resources for both women and men affected by the PPPs, as well as their safety, the security...

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Annual Call for Projects 2005 Enhancing National Capacities to Assess Wildlife Trade Policies in Support of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)

This two-year multidisciplinary project, approved by the Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN) in 2005, will promote sustainable development by enhancing the capacities of developing countries and countries with economies in transition to assess, design and implement effective national wildlife trade policies. Well-designed wildlife trade policies can play an essential role in protecting biodiversity, reducing poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

A key aim of this project is to improve the availability of...

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Annual Call for Projects 2005 Interdisciplinary Network for Sustainable Management of Marine Biodiversity: Environmental and Social Diagnosis of Marine Turtles in the South-West Indian Ocean

Marine turtles, a common heritage of humankind, are seriously threatened throughout the world. Some global solutions have been developed, implicating international actors in common strategies covering the worlds' oceans. The islands of the south-western Indian Ocean and particularly Madagascar are areas of high concentration and migration for five endangered species. Several research and conservation programmes for marine turtles exist in this sector, but none are devoted to them in the area of Maintirano (which is covered by the...

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Annual Call for Projects 2005 Involvement of Armed Non-State Actors in the Landmine Problem and Recommendations for their Positive Contribution to a Landmine Ban and Mine Action

The aim of this project is to provide a comprehensive picture of the complex role that armed non-State actors (NSAs) play in the landmine problem and to propose concrete recommendations for including them in efforts to ban landmines and cooperate in mine action.

Although NSAs have always existed, in the last twenty years the international community has become acutely aware of their importance in achieving universal compliance with human rights law and international humanitarian law. This is particularly true for the norm prohibiting...

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Annual Call for Projects 2005 Israeli-Palestinian Joint Water Projects: Evaluating 12 Years of Cooperation

The first Israeli-Palestinian international academic conference on water was held in Zürich in December 1992. It served as a prelude to the "water" component of the Oslo accords.

The conference represented the starting point of a long series of cooperative projects between Israelis and Palestinians aimed at addressing water-related issues in a context of shortages and conflicts over appropriation questions.

In parallel to the negotiations and official cooperation between authorities and governmental institutions of both parties...

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Annual Call for Projects 2005 Measuring Equity of Reproductive Health Services

Countries committed themselves to the attainment of "universal access to reproductive health for all by 2015" in 1994 at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). However, considerable literature shows unequal use of reproductive health services by population sub-groups. At the Millennium Summit in 2000, the international community set goals and targets to promote improvements in development and health. Three out of eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are related to different aspects of reproductive health. In...

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Annual Call for Projects 2005 Promoting Decent Work in Construction and Related Services: the Key Role of Local Authorities

Although local authorities in developing countries often play a significant role in fostering construction projects and related activities, information and knowledge about their potential for promoting decent work (including the creation of employment) in such a sector through good policy-making and strategic allocation of public resources is still poorly understood. Publications on decent work have not acknowledged the potential role of local authorities but focused on the private sector. In addition, many development and aid agencies have...

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Annual Call for Projects 2005 The Development Potential of Trans-National Migrants in the Health Sector in Switzerland

The project, approved by the Geneva International Academic Network (GIAN) in 2005 relates to the current debate on the common themes of migration and development: how can countries of origin profit in the best possible way from the human, social and financial capital represented by their citizens established abroad?

The contribution of migrants to the development of their country of origin cannot be dissociated from their statute, standards of living and integration in the host country. Consequently, this project proposes to examine...

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Annual Call for Projects 2004 Gender and Rights in Reproductive Health: A Research and Capacity Building Initiative for Francophone Countries

Coordinated by the professor Fenneke Reysoo of the Graduate Institute of Development Studies, in partnership with the Gender & Health Research Department of the World Health Organisation (WHO), this project aims to conduct research on the various aspects of the sexual behaviour of youths in Francophone Africa. The result of this research will contribute to the establishment of training materials in French that will allow health service providers to develop services based on the respect for rights and gender rights, particularly for young...

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Annual Call for Projects 2004 International Events and Forced Evictions: A Focus on the Olympic Games

This project is coordinated by Ms Nathalie Mivelaz, of the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE), in collaboration with the Graduate Institute of International Studies (GIIS), the Institute of architecture of the University of Geneva, UN-HABITAT, the UN Special Advisor on Sport for Development and Peace, and several North-American universities. Based on the example of the Olympic Games, the goal of the research will be to examine the phenomena of forced evictions during the preparatory phase for the Games. The research team will...

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Annual Call for Projects 2004 Research Networks and Intellectual Property: A Model for Supporting Developing Country Researchers in Creating, Owning and Exploiting Health Research Results

Coordinated by Ms Cynthia Cannady of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), in collaboration with the Graduate Institute of International Studies (GIIS), the Hautes études commerciales (HEC) of the University of Geneva, the International Institute for Management Development (IMD), the Swiss Tropical Institute and the Council on Health Research for Development (COHRED), this project aims to develop a model to reinforce developing countries' capacity to protect and improve their results in health research and development (R&D;)....

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Annual Call for Projects 2004 The New Configuration and Management Techniques of Value Chains of Global Enterprises and the Resulting Consequences for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in North and South

This project aims to examine new configurations and new management techniques used by multinational corporations in the organisation and management of their international value chains, in order to better understand different types of cooperation between Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and very large corporations worldwide.

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Annual Call for Projects 2004 The WTO Dispute Settlement System and Developing Countries: Analysis of Strategies to Enhance Developing Country Legal Capacity

This project is coordinated by Ms Yvonne Apea, of the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), in collaboration with the Graduate Institute of International Studies (GIIS), the Advisory Centre on WTO Law (ACWL) and the Département of political economy of the University of Geneva. It is designed to analyse and help developing countries to better understand available choices and strategies to advance their objectives and defend their trade rights via the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) Dispute Settlement System.

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Annual Call for Projects 2004 Urban Violence and Security Policies: Local Public and Private Methods of Securing Urban Space

This project is coordinated by the professor Yves Pedrazzini of the Urban Sociology Laboratory (LaSUR) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), in collaboration with UN-HABITAT, and the Small Arms Survey of the Graduate Institute of International Studies (GIIS). The project concerns urban planning policies in contexts of urban violence and insecurity. Building on case studies in Barcelona and Bogotá, the project will analyse private and public initiatives that are undertaken to respond to the security needs of citizens,...

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Annual Call for Projects 2003 A Global Response to Elder Abuse Including Neglect: Building Primary Health Care Capacity to Deal with the Problem World-Wide

The Ageing and Life Course unit of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the University of Geneva Interfaculty Gerontology Centre, in association with institutions in eight countries, are collaborating in a research project aimed at tackling a substantial, yet hidden, societal problem: elder abuse. The aims of the project are: 1) To develop and validate universal and reliable screening tools to facilitate the detection of elder abuse cases by primary health care professionals; 2) To build the capacty of primary health care (PHC) workers...

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Annual Call for Projects 2003 Climate Change, Mountain Hydrology and Institutional Constraints: International and Local Dimensions

A crucial vulnerability faced by the international community in the near future will be access to fresh water in sufficient quantity and of adequate quality to meet increasing and more diverse needs of a growing world population. Mountains have always held a privileged relationship with water as the sources of the world's greatest rivers and as the home of the great reserves of water held in glaciers. Major global forces nevertheless threaten these mountain reservoirs. Climate change is predicted to modify quantities of water available as...

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Annual Call for Projects 2003 Facilitating Communication Between Languages and Cultures: A Computerized Interface and Knowledge Base

The United Nations University, the Information Systems Interfaces Research Group, the Universal Networking Digital Language (UNDL) Foundation and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) have combined their efforts on a project aimed at facilitating multilingual and multicultural communication on the Internet. The UNL (Universal Networking Language) is an artificial, formal and non-ambiguous language; it is independent of natural languages. The role of the UNL is to act as an intermediary. Unlike computer translation...

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Annual Call for Projects 2003 Globalisation, Migration and Human Rights

The main purpose of this research is to develop a framework of analysis and innovative proposals for guiding the different actors involved in migratory movements, namely States, international organisations, policy-makers and societies of origin, transit and destination of migrants. This comprehensive study will evaluate and describe, from both an interdisciplinary and an empirical perspective, the two main components of the migratory phenomenon: economic migration (work) and political migration (asylum). This study aims at providing a...

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Annual Call for Projects 2003 Human Genetic Databases: Towards a Global Ethical Framework

This project aims at studying the conditions under which genetic databases can be established, kept, and used in an ethically acceptable way. The technical possibilities for automated analysis of large DNA sample collections and the bio-informatic processing of the resulting data have developed dramatically during the past several years and are constantly being improved. Protecting the data available in such databases has consequently emerged as a highly complex ethical issue in the arena of health policy. The ethical issues become even...

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Annual Call for Projects 2003 Social Dialogue Regimes: Worker Rights, Collective Bargaining and Negotiated Policy-Making

This research project promises to generate important information on the desirability of particular labour market institutions and on the conditions in which these institutional configurations are sustainable. The project team will analyse the structural determinants (economic, social, cultural and institutional) as well as the socio-economic outcomes of "social dialogue regimes," i.e. socio-political regimes in which workers have the freedom to establish organisations of their own choosing, negotiate collectively over working conditions and...

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Annual Call for Projects 2003 Strengthening the Employment and Related Socio-Economic Dimensions in Response to Conflict and Natural Disaster Situations

Employment and job creation is becoming an essential ingredient of any crisis response program, a fact that experience has highlighted in many crisis contexts and diverse urgent situations on a world scale. This critical area manifestly requires further research. This project will analyse the employment and related social and economic aspects of armed conflict, socio-economic crises, and natural disasters. It aims to provide a better understanding of the challenges for sustainable development and more equitable social relations, in light of...

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Annual Call for Projects 2002 Global Solidarity: Towards a More Rational and Transparent Promotion of Micro-Finance Institutions

Micro-finance is an anti-poverty strategy that can make a tangible contribution to the attainment of the Millennium Development Goal to halve poverty by 2015. However, contrary to ideas expressed by promoters of that strategy, with few exceptions, most micro-finance institutions do not fully recover costs and remain dependant on contributions from donors. This research project aims, firstly, to analyse the characteristics of an efficient, poverty-oriented micro-finance institution and determine whether all existing institutions are indeed...

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Annual Call for Projects 2002 Health, Human Rights and Legislation: A Special Focus on Mental Health

The Department of Mental Health and Substance Dependence of the World Health Organization (WHO), the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (Unige) and the Institute of Legal Medicine (Unige) have joined their efforts under the GIAN to undertake research in the area of human rights as it relates to issues of health and mental health. This research will determine the current level of knowledge and awareness among health students and professionals on the issue of the right to health and mental health and determine future training needs...

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Annual Call for Projects 2002 Inter-Disciplinary Training for Policy Dialogue in the Field of Education

The objective of this project is to develop new approaches, methodologies and synergies concerning "training for policy dialogue" and the development of an international discussion in the field of education/training, principally focused on youth education (12 to 18 years). Undertaken by the University of Geneva (Unige), the International Bureau of Education of UNESCO and the Summer University on Human Rights, this project is intended for persons involved with national and international policy dialogue on education, as well as with...

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Annual Call for Projects 2002 Structural Causes Of Violence: An Analysis Through The Human Rights Perspective

Within the GIAN framework and with its support, five institutions and three experts from the UN Commission on Human Rights are cooperating in order to analyse the impact that the lack of enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights can have on the occurrence of torture, ill-treatment, forced disappearances, summary executions and other violations of physical and psychological integrity. The project comprises a general analysis, along with an analysis of national situations. It aims to establish synergies between the project's partners...

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Annual Call for Projects 2001 A Policy Proposal for Promoting Inter-ethnic Stakeholder Enterprises in Macedonia

Prof. Norman Scott of the Graduate Institute of International Studies (GIIS) passed away on 10 March 2004. Professor Scott was former Director of the International Trade Division at the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and Associate Professor of Eastern European and Soviet economics at GIIS. Since 1999, he was Director of the Diplomatic Studies Programme at GIIS, and a highly-respected member of the faculty.

The GIAN deeply regrets his passing and extends the sympathy and condolences of its members and staff to his...

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Annual Call for Projects 2001 Environment and Sustainable Development: Implications of Biosafety

This research project on biosafety will focus on issues raised by the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety signed in January 2000 in Montreal. The Cartagena Protocol is an important link in the implementation of instruments seeking to protect biodiversity from potential risks brought about by the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). It is based on the precautionary principle and provides the introduction of safety norms during transport, use and disposal of GMOs regulated in the Protocol. It authorises importing countries to...

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Annual Call for Projects 2001 Linguistic Analysis and Collocation Extraction

Cross-cultural communication raises frequently the problem - in particular in the context of international organizations - of the proper understanding of idiomatic expressions, i.e. multi-word expressions whose meaning differs from the composition of the individual meaning of their parts. The importance of multi-word expressions is widely recognized in the domains of translation and terminology. For one thing, these expressions usually cannot be translated literally, and one must find adequate correspondence (idiomatic or not) in the target...

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Annual Call for Projects 2001 Negotiating Conflicts of Interest Related to Water Management

The program aims to develop and implement processes of negotiation in water-scarce contexts where conflicting interests lead to reduced water use efficiency.

Its specific objectives are:

• To identify and analyse conflicts of interest and secondary effects induced by water resource development programs and management systems;

• To develop tools and methods aimed at conciliating divergent objectives related to the utilisation of water and reducing secondary undesirable effects;

• To develop training material on the analysis of...

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Annual Call for Projects 2001 Peace and Social Reconstruction: A Study of the Paradoxal Dynamic between Individual and Collective Bereavement

The capacity of the human mind to accommodate the process of bereavement seems to be a major force in human beings. The process of collective bereavement develops much more slowly than individual bereavement as the paralysing or "gelling" of the process, particularly in situations of survival, has the tendency to inhibit the unfolding of the individual bereavement process, thereby also paralysing social reconstruction. This last phenomenon has important consequences for the relationship between individual and collective memory, on one hand,...

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Annual Call for Projects 2001 Social Challenge of Development: Globalisation, Inequalities and Social Protection

Within the GIAN framework and with its financial support, six institutions have decided to co-operate in an analysis of the effects of globalisation on inequality. This is one of the major questions of our time, at the intersection of politics and economics. The project considers the general impact of globalisation, and also focuses on health, education and social protection.

The Graduate Institute for Development Studies (GIDS) in Geneva, UNRISD (United Nations Research Institute for Social Development) and the Faculty of Economics of...

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Annual Call for Projects 2001 The Coordination of the Rules of International Humanitarian Law, Human Rights Law and Criminal Law Applicable to International Forces and Transitional Civil Administrations

This research aims at determining to what extent international human rights law, international humanitarian law, national criminal law and, where appropriate, international criminal law apply to the activities of military forces and international transitional civil administrations (ITAs), when one or different international organisations intervene and operate in a State's territory. An additional goal of this research is to determine whether the aforementioned legal regimes should be seen as complementary with one another, or, rather, they...

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Annual Call for Projects 2001 Understanding the Impact of Small Arms on Global Public Health

This project is a partnership comprised of three Geneva-based organizations, and a number of international collaborators (to be identified during Phase 1 of the project). The Geneva-based organizations include the World Health Organization (WHO): Injuries and Violence Prevention Department, the Graduate Institute of International Studies (GIIS): Small Arms Survey (SAS) project and the University of Geneva: Institute for Legal Medicine.

The project aims to document and better understand the public health effects associated with the...

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