Abstract: To improve the countries’ pharmaceutical situation and to monitor the progress, the World Health Organization (WHO) and member states developed a system of indicators to measure the respective important aspects as a prerequisite step. Level I indicators to assess the country’s pharmaceutical situation include the national drug policy; legislation and regulations; drug accessibility and affordability; essential drug list; quality control; pharmacovigilance; storage and distribution; information and rational use. This study is aimed to document the professional opinion of 20 pharmacy (...) practice professionals on Libya’s current pharmaceutical situation, utilizing WHO indicator-based approach. The core indicators measure the most important information needed to understand the pharmaceutical situation in a country. A closed-end questionnaire was distributed to ten practicing pharmacists and ten pharmacy teaching staff members who practice pharmacy. The questionnaires were handed over personally and collected on the same day. The responses were analyzed using simple statistics. The results were argued in the light of the first author’s observation and view, being expert in this field, with reference to the other experts’ views, relevant publications’ findings and WHO reports’ conclusions on these indicators. Suggestions and recommendations for a proper situation assessment, planning and action taking are presented. Primarily, government’s commitment towards appropriate restructuring, management and monitoring of the pharmaceutical sector is crucial. That is to enhance the country’s pharmaceutical situation, to provide and sustain efficient pharmaceutical services and to improve the overall health care system’s performance. (shrink)

While it is unclear how the crisis in Libya will affect the fortunes and trajectory of the principle of the responsibility to protect, Libya will significantly shape the parameters within which the debate over what RtoP entails, and how it might be operationalized, will occur.

Name der Zeitschrift: Klio Jahrgang: 99 Heft: 1 Seiten: 89-129.

If the Libyan intervention goes well, it will put teeth in the fledgling RtoP doctrine. Yet, if it goes badly, critics will redouble their opposition, and future decisions will be made more difficult. Libya suggests that we can say no more Holocausts, Cambodias, and Rwandas--and occasionally mean it.

In 1911, the prominent Italian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ernesto T. Moneta and, with him, a number of Italian “pacifists” actively supported the invasion of Libya (carried out) by the Italian army. On the columns of “La Vita Internazionale”, journal edited by Moneta since 1898, Italian “pacifists” not only agreed that it was good and convenient for Italy to conquer a part of North Africa, but showed an enthusiasm they had never manifested before in support of pacifist initiatives. The (...) question is why an ardent pacifist and wise intellectual, as Moneta was, renounced so easily his pacifist ideals to support a bloody war and a harsh repression of the Arab rebels, as the one which followed the defeat of the Turkish army. To answer this question, the essay analyzes the articles published by Moneta and other contributors on “La Vita Internazionale” and discusses them with regard to both the international political events occurred during the first decade of the 20th century and the dominant ideologies of the time (namely irrationalism and anti-individualism). The essay concludes that Moneta's agreement with the colonialist war has been prepared and made possible by a number of pre-war ideological and political influences which had transformed his democratic and peace-oriented ideas of nation, people and state into nationalist and aggressive ones. (shrink)

Can state sovereignty justify privileged receiving countries exercising authority over non‐members in a third country to safeguard their own interests? Under the current migration governance of the EU, state sovereignty is manifested in migrant interdiction, interception and detention policies employed to prevent unauthorized migrants from reaching the EU, and even from attempting to embark on cross‐Mediterranean journeys. While reinforcement of the Schengen region's external borders is a key aim of the EU's internal migration politics, collaboration with third countries regarding migration (...) control has, in the last decade, become a key feature of its external migration policy. In close collaboration with third countries, the EU has managed to curb the outflux of migrants from transit and sending countries. In effect, irregular migrants are prevented from exiting as well as from entering. This article explores the justifiability of such practices, by questioning commonly invoked models of justification such as the sovereignty “model”, with a special focus on partnership agreements regarding migration control between the EU and Libya. (shrink)

The moral permissibility of the intervention in Libya largely turns on two fairly tricky assessments: whether the situation was sufficiently serious at the time the intervention was launched and what the predominant purposes of the intervention were.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate Libyan journalists’ perspectives regarding the media laws Articles 37,132, 38 and 46, which address media freedom in the new Libyan Constitution of 2017. Design/methodology/approach Focus group discussions were done with 35 Libyan journalists, 12 of them from the Constitution Committee, while 23 of them reported the update of the constitution in the Libyan Parliament. Findings The results of the study indicated that there were media laws articles that did not conform to (...) the international laws and United Nations treaties, which the Libyan Parliament committee approved. Another finding from the journalists was the Constitution should provide and guarantee press freedom, while media laws articles approved to put a paragraph about “censorship” in the press and media as a tool to silence government opposition. In addition, journalists indicated future constitution should redraft Article 38 to conform with Article 19 of the “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” to support the “principles of freedom of expression and information” without control. Moreover, Article 46 needs to be changed and linked to the “provisions of international law on the right of information access” to improve the access and dissemination of information in the media. Practical implications Redrafting the constitution articles in the future can be summarised as follows: First, the Libyan Constitution should provide and guarantee press freedom without any censorship and include clear articles to protect journalists in conflict zones. Second, Articles 37,132 and 38, about “freedom of information and publication,” need to be redrafted to link with Article 19 of the “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” to support the principles of freedom of expression and information, and the use of this right must not be subject to prior control. Third, Article 46 needs to be changed and linked to the provisions of “International law on the Right of Access to Information” to improve access and dissemination of information in the media to protect confidentiality sources. The most important articles should be implemented because after the Arab Spring revolutions, there was a transitional period in societies and a change in the constitutions of Tunisia and Egypt. They developed legal articles about media freedom so that Libya resembles other Arab countries. From that point, the journalists recommended that all information should be protected from government interference to ensure transparency, combat corruption and protect independent journalists. These articles will open the way to add more development articles to media freedom rules in the Journalists’ Syndicate. Fourth, there are also various types of threats encountered by journalists in their work. In pursuit of their right and freedom of expression, they recommended that Libya must establish an independent self-regulatory media that are free from political and economic influence. Fifth, journalists need licenses for them to work through the syndicate. The new syndicate should play an active role to safeguard the rights of journalists, activists and media entities to carry out their work and end the self-censorship. Sixth, the constitution should also add articles to end the impunity and change the articles in the penal code. Overall, the journalists covering the conflict and war are encountering threats, violence and imprisonment. As a result, Libyan journalists must seek new legislation to defend independent journalism and freedom of expression in their deeply divided country. In addition, they need to have a strong central authority to defend journalists and journalism in wartime, where journalists are regularly threatened, abducted and sometimes killed. Also, the Libyan Journalists Syndicate should stress the importance of the media’s self-regulation to guarantee their rights to freedom of expression, grant their readers’ respect and minimise government’s interference. Finally, they need to develop new laws to grant media freedom from regulations and restrictions, as well as defend and promote democracy, the citizens’ right to be informed, as well as their right to discuss and disseminate information. There is also the need to implement articles in the constitution, articles about the protection of political speech, which would be specific enough to differentiate between what is legally permitted and what may be ethically offensive. Originality/value This study will help the new Libyan parliament after the legislative elections on 24 December 2021 to amend the media laws articles in the constitution. (shrink)

According to Bentham's utilitarian mode of reasoning, the legitimacy of an intervention was not to be valued on the grounds of the underlying intentions or the means employed, but rather in light of its (expected) consequences. What at first would seem as incoherent, arbitrary or ambivalent attitudes towards intervention were in fact consistent with his situational and pragmatic mode of reasoning. Rather than a disjuncture between ideal theory and practical reasoning, his positions on intervention reflected the inevitably local nature of (...) his principled 'moral casuistry', characterised by the attempt to reconcile self-regarding interests with extra-regarding interests. The key to this move resided in Bentham's concept of 'effective benevolence'. The 'business of the Deontologist' - and the essence of his principled moral casuistry - was that of exposing the dictates of 'effective benevolence' wherever possible, and Bentham himself took up this challenge in his writings on Tripoli and... (shrink)

Awjila Berber is a highly endangered Berber variety spoken in eastern Libya. The minimal material available on it reveals that the language is in some respects very archaic and in others grammatically unique, and as such is of particular comparative and historical interest. Fieldwork has been impossible for decades due to the political situation. Recently, however, several inhabitants of Awjila have set up a Facebook group Ašal=ənnax (“our village”), posting largely in Awjili. Analysis of this partly conversational corpus makes (...) it possible to extend our knowledge of the language, yielding unattested words and constructions. Examination of its grammatical features also reveals that these posters’ usage is heavily influenced by Arabic, showing language attrition absent from earlier data; even subject-verb agreement has been extensively reworked. In both respects, this study casts light upon the uses and limits of social media as a source of linguistic material. (shrink)

This book proposes a new Ethics of Political Commemoration adapted from the Just War tradition, reflecting that remembrance is often conducted with political – and even coercive – intent. With its Ius ad Memoriam (what to commemorate) and Ius in Memoria (how to commemorate) criteria, the framework looks to guide debates that are currently inchoate so that remembrance of the past can transform relationships in the present and build a shared future. Offering a moral argument with memorable illustrations, Gutbrod and (...) Wood draw on experiences from Armenia, Georgia, Ireland, Lebanon, and Libya, while connecting to mainstream debates in Western Europe and the United States. Bringing together an ethical tradition with the practice of conflict transformation, the framework fuses two perspectives that enrich each other. The book, in providing a first systematic presentation of the ethics, seeks to engage citizens and scholars, and help those who work to transform conflicts. (shrink)

States are increasingly paying other states to host refugees. For example, in 2010 the EU paid Libya € 50 million to continue hosting the refugees within its borders, and five years later Australia offered Cambodia $31.16 million to accept asylum seekers living in Naru. These exchanges, which I call ‘refugees markets,’ have faced criticism by philosophers. Some philosophers claim the markets fail to ensure true protection, and are demeaning, expressing just how much refugees are unwanted. In response, some have (...) defended refugee markets, claiming they can ensure refugees have protection and are not demeaned. I argue that many markets do demean refugees, and therefore have moral costs, but can still be all-things-considered preferable to alternative schemes if they protect refugees more than these alternative schemes. (shrink)

The member states of the United Nations General Assembly in 2005 unanimously adopted the resolution on Responsibility to Protect to save citizens from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. Since adoption, the norm has been invoked in Libya, South Sudan, Yemen, and Syria, nonetheless, the UN refrains to respond to the genocide committed in the Jammu & Kashmir and triggering a greater sense of anxiety. In this context, the present paper elucidates the factors behind the UN (...) failure. It asks why the UN failed to call R2P despite systematic crimes against humanity in Kashmir. What factors or forces preclude the UN to invoke R2P? The paper argues that the inability of the UN to invoke R2P is a consequence of systemic and domestic factors. The Indo-US strategic partnership, materialism, and New Delhi’s influence in the international system are obstructing the UN’s ability to play a decisive role. Meanwhile, the economic and military potential of India and its regional influence forbid the international community to dissuade India not to commit genocide in Jammu & Kashmir. So the high politics of materialism and national interests override the norm of human rights and humanity. (shrink)

These notules deal with the question of the lexical data in vernacular/semi-vernacular Arabic collected in the Manāqib Abī l-Qāsim al-Misrātī by the writer Ǧamāl al-dīn Muḥammad b. Ḫalaf al-Misrātī al-Qayrawānī. We remind historians and linguists of the interest there would be in studying the textual material in vernacular/semi-vernacular Arabic from Tunisia-Libya in the 11th/17th century in order to contribute to a better knowledge of the social history of linguistic habits. The information is exposed in Arabic script and ranged into (...) two sections: common lexicon and compound formulas/sentence segments. (shrink)

Aeneas' speech of defence before Dido is the longest and most controversial he delivers. Although by no means typical, it can open up some revealing perspectives over the rest of the poem. The exchange between the two, having as its kernel a dispute over obligations and responsibilities, requires some words of context. The early part of the book describes the establishment of a liaison between the refugee leaders, while revealing amongst the poem's characters a wide discrepancy of opinion over the (...) nature of that liaison. Juno announces that she will arrange the marriage of the couple ; after the ensuing marriage-parody of the cave-scene , Dido also calls what now exists a ‘marriage’: coniugium uocat, hocpraetexit nomine culpam . Fama too, moving around Libya, speaks as if Dido has taken Aeneas for husband . But the local King Iarbas regards Aeneas as a pirate who has carried off a successful job of plunder , while Jupiter looks down from heaven and sees ‘lovers’, amantis . Mercury is able to address Aeneas as uxorius. (shrink)

Domestic sovereignty and international sovereignty have both been eroded in recent years, but the former to a much greater extent than the latter. An oppressed people's right to fight for liberal democratic reforms in their own country is treated as axiomatic, as the international responses to the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya illustrate. But there is a reluctance to accept that foreign intervention is always justified in the same circumstances. Ned Dobos assesses the moral cogency of this double (...) standard and asks whether intervention can be consistently and coherently opposed given our attitudes towards other kinds of political violence. His thought-provoking book will interest a wide range of readers in political philosophy and international relations. (shrink)

RESUMEN: Trata este trabajo de la actitud del presidente Barack Obama en relación con las rebeliones de la denominada Primavera Árabe, desvelando si los criterios de la guerra justa por él señalados y defendidos en sus discursos se compaginan con la real política bélica de Estados Unidos. Se insertan ambos planos en el escenario de las rebeliones acaecidas en tres países: Libia, Egipto y Túnez. La conclusión principal es que hay un largo, además de irregular, distanciamiento entre la teoría y (...) la práctica del presidente Obama, prevaleciendo los intereses de Estados Unidos por encima de la protección de los derechos humanos, que es uno de los vectores principales de su concepto de guerra justa.ABSTRACT: This work refers the attitude of the President Barack Obama concerning the rebellions of the so-called Arab Spring, revealing if the criteria of the just war defended in his speeches correspond to the real policy of the United States. Both planes are included in the scene of rebellions occurred in three countries: Libya, Egypt and Tunisia. The main conclusion is that there is a long, as well as irregular, distance between theory and practice of president Obama, prevailing the interests of United States respect to the protection of human rights, which is one of the main vectors of their concept of just war.PALABRAS CLAVE: primavera árabe, guerra justa, rebeliones árabes, Obama y política exterior, Obama y filosofía bélica.KEYWORDS: Arab spring, just war, Arab revolts, Obama and foreign policy, Obama and war philosophy. (shrink)

Više začuđuje da je Aristip, koji se smatra rodonačelnikom kirenskog hedonizma, sokratovac, nego činjenica da je rodom iz mediteranske Kirene. Grad u kome je rođen, osnovali su nekoliko stoljeća prije grčki koloni, koji su došli s otoka Tere. Po Pindaru, njegova je porodica bila najbogatija i najuzvišenijeg roda u cijeloj Libiji, čime se objašnjava činjenica što je budući hedonist, od malena, bio naviknut na život u raskoši. Nikada ga nisu smatrali sokratovcem u pravom smislu te riječi , što će biti (...) razlogom spora među Sokratovim sljedbenicima. Svijet čulne realnosti kojem je on pripadao, s jedne strane, te Platonov idealni, s druge, implicira pitanje Sokratova izvornog učenja: hedonistički, kirenski ili onaj platonizirani Sokrat, kako sugerira najveći broj istraživača?The fact that Aristippus, considered the founding father of Cyrenaic hedonism, is a Socratic is far more astounding than the fact that he was born in Cyrene on the Mediterranean. His hometown was founded a few centuries earlier by Greek colonists arriving from the Island of Thera. According to Pindar, his family was the richest and of the noblest lineage in the whole of Libya, which says that this future hedonist had been used to a life in luxury ever since he was born. He was never considered a Socratic in the true sense of the word , which was to become the cause of controversy between Socrates’s followers. The world of sensual reality he belonged to on the one hand and Plato’s world of ideas on the other pose the question of Socrates’s original orientation – was he originally a hedonist, a Cyrenaic or a Platonist, which is what most researchers suggest? (shrink)

Three central questions lie at the heart of this roundtable. First, what are the implications of Libya for the RtoP doctrine? Second, how should we judge the intervention in Libya morally and politically? Third, what is the likelihood of future action under RtoP?

This paper starts from the premise that Western states are connected to some of the harms refugees suffer from. It specifically focuses on the harm of acts of misrecognition and its relation to epistemic injustice that refugees suffer from in refugee camps, in detention centers, and during their desperate attempts to find refuge. The paper discusses the relation between hermeneutical injustice and acts of misrecognition, showing that these two phenomena are interconnected and that acts of misrecognition are particularly damaging when (...) they stretch over different contexts, leaving us without or with very few safe spaces, and they dislocate us, leaving us without a community to turn to. The paper then considers the ways in which refugees experience acts of misrecognition and suffer from hermeneutical injustice, using the case of unaccompanied children at the well-known and overcrowded camp Moria in Greece, the case of unsafe detention centers in Libya, and the case of the denial to assistance on the Mediterranean and the resulting pushbacks from international waters to Libya as well as the preventable drowning of refugees in the Mediterranean to illustrate the arguments. Finally, the paper argues for specific duties toward refugees that result from the prior arguments on misrecognition and hermeneutical injustice. (shrink)

Explores the history and background of "humanitarian" intervention with regards to Libya.

Teaching Joe Kincheloe is one of a handful of important recent books posthumously pushing Kincheloe's work further into the twenty-first century. Written and edited by former students and colleagues, the book underscores the depth and breath of his extraordinarily productive career. The text offers students and educators alike invaluable insights into transformative ways of seeing conducive to challenging the technocratic, imperialistic purpose of dominant forms education in an era marked by ruling elite desperation as U.S. power wanes globally. Through this (...) and other projects, Kincheloe would surely have been pleased to see his many postformal contributions counter-hegemonically providing critical pedagogy the theoretical and practical strength to contribute to the global uprising currently challenging the imperialist project of wealth extraction and cultural domination from Cuba; Venezuela; Peru; Chiapas, Mexico; Tunisia; Libya; Egypt; Yemen; and Iran, to regions in the United States. Teaching Joe L. Kincheloe will surely gain relevancy as the global movement against authoritarianism and domination intensifies and citizens begin to search for new ways to better understand their worlds and how those contexts interrelate with the historical development of their own identities. (shrink)

What are the health impacts of President Trump's January 27, 2017, executive order suspending the resettlement of refugees and temporarily banning entry of nationals from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen? Even if the President's constitutional arguments are credible, the order is deeply troubling under international law and humanitarian values. Under the 1967 Refugee Protocol, the United States has assumed a legal obligation to examine the claims of asylum seekers who reach U.S. territory without discrimination based on (...) race, nationality, or religion. Congress has delegated the decision as to how many refugees to accept to the president. Still, the executive order runs contrary to the principle of solidarity—which includes the fair sharing of responsibilities and burdens in accepting endangered individuals. Migrating doctors and nurses fill much of America's health care resources shortfall. The executive order also undermines science and academia, which depend on the free flow of knowledge and the spread of ideas. (shrink)

This wasn't merely a man, it was the sultan Al-Malik, Al-Zâhir Rukn al-Dunia wal- Dîn Abü l-Fath Baybars whose swords were the keys to kingdoms, whose standards were like hills and the spears that rose above them were like fires whose duty it was to command men.Between 1260 and 1277, the second half of the seventh century Hegira (the thirteenth century by the Christian calendar), the Bahri Mamluk empire, founded in 1256, was governed by the sultan Baybars, the fourth sovereign (...) of his dynasty The Bahri's were former slaves from the borders of the Black Sea. They were succeeded in 1382 by the Circassian Mamluks, who were in turn supplanted in 1517 by the Ottomans. The empire comprised a vast territory including Egypt and the eastern part of present day Libya; the Near-East up to the Euphrates; rule over Nubia, Sudan and the north of Ethiopia; and sovereignty over the holy places of orthodox Islam: Mecca and Medina. The empire was threatened, from the east by the Mongols, who made inroads into Iraq and Syria on several occasions (although Egypt remained beyond their reach), and from the north by the Seljoukids of Asia Minor (Rûm). The interior, where the Crusaders held several strongholds was plagued by dissidents, notably the Isma'ilis, a movement derived from shi'ism. (shrink)

This article documents, in the cases of Libya and Egypt, situations that occur in many other nations: conversion of farmlands to nonagricultural uses, exhaustion of nonrenewable water resources, irrigation leading to waterlogging and salinization of agricultural lands, development that does not benefit people in the regions being developed, etc. It is suggested that use of natural resources should be in accord with nationally determined priorities and should occur in a sustainable manner.

The 2011 NATO intervention in Libya has been hailed as a successful humanitarian intervention, beginning the implementation of the United Nations' Responsibility to Protect. Yet when the intervention pursued a mission of regime change which was not necessary to halt an imminent catastrophe, it became dubious on the strict reading of just cause that has been influential in just war theory. However, a recent trend suggests that minor uses of force with small cost to benefit ratios can be justified (...) by a lower threshold of harm, so long as the cause is prima facie just or force is directed at an illegitimate illiberal state. This paper rejects these arguments by arguing that both deontological principle and utilitarian considerations support maintaining a strict catastrophic harm threshold for intervention. (shrink)

In regards to the international response to the situation in Libya, the NATO response can be regarded as a potential good.

A closer look at recent reports of “modern slavery” in the Sahara, particularly the exploitation of sub-Saharan migrants in contemporary southern Libya, shows that they speak of other forms of captivity, such as debt bondage, forced prison labor, and hostage taking for ransom. Such forms of exploitation have an equally long history in the region but are more obviously enmeshed with contemporary phenomena: repressive migration policies, state incarceration, and the worldwide ranking of nationalities. This article seeks to understand them (...) for what they are, using fieldwork and historical examples. Understanding shifts the blame for the migrants’ plight from “local culture” to the international political economy and grants migrants a degree of agency that blanket condemnations of slavery often deny. It also opens up more general questions about links between labor, mobility, and captivity; the relationship between state and nonstate systems of political control, their boundaries and overlaps; and the different ways value is accorded to individual lives—or actively created, negotiated, or denied—in the Sahara and beyond. (shrink)

President Barack Obama has clearly placed himself in the just war tradition, and so we may ask how successful has President Obama in fact been as just war theorist? His justification of the recent NATO intervention in Libya shows that the record is at best mixed. More broadly, Obama’s failure as just war theorist is at least partly a failure of the theory itself: as long as this theory does not address issues of “just military preparedness,” it will fail (...) to place real constraints on American resort to military force. (shrink)

Several bioethical topics received a great deal of news coverage here in Scotland in 2009. Three important issues with transatlantic connections are the swine flu outbreak, which was handled very differently in Scotland, England and America; the US debate over healthcare reform, which drew the British NHS into the controversy; and the release to Libya of the Lockerbie bomber, which at first glance might not seem particularly bioethical, but which actually hinged on the very public discussion of the prisoner’s (...) medical records. On a national level, there have been attempts in both Scotland and England to change the law on assisted suicide, where success looks more likely than ever. This paper will discuss each of these issues, and hopefully raise awareness of how these issues were dealt with in the UK and its component countries. (shrink)

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but (...) ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world. (shrink)

The question of military intervention for humanitarian purposes is a major focus for international law, the United Nations, regional organizations such as NATO, and the foreign policies of nations. Against this background, the 2011 bombing in Libya by Western nations has occasioned renewed interest and concern about armed humanitarian intervention and the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect. This volume brings together new essays by leading international, philosophical, and political thinkers on the moral and legal issues involved in AHI, and (...) contains both critical and positive views of AHI. Topics include the problem of abuse and needed limitations, the future viability of RtoP and some of its problematic implications, the possibility of AHI providing space for peaceful political protest, and how AHI might be integrated with post-war justice. It is an important collection for those studying political philosophy, international relations, and humanitarian law. (shrink)

The ‘responsibility to protect’ (RtoP) concept has rapidly taken a prominent place in international debates about how to ensure the protection of civilians from mass atrocities in places such as Libya, the Congo, and Darfur. This article argues that RtoP has deep roots both in Scripture and also in Christian political thought of the last two millennia. In particular, it observes that, whereas twentieth-century arguments for ‘humanitarian intervention’ framed the protection of strangers and foreigners as a discretionary right, RtoP (...) echoes Ambrose of Milan and others in framing such protection as a duty. It further suggests that the emphasis of RtoP on the responsibility to work with states and to help build their capacity to protect their civilians, rather than waiting until military intervention is necessary, holds the promise of advancing the Christian principle of assisting the vulnerable while, at least in some instances, avoiding thorny and divisive debates about the justice of war. (shrink)

The conflict of religions during the Christianization of the Greco-Roman aristocracy in Late Antiquity is typified by Synesius, an old-fashioned pagan Neoplatonist who studied under Hypatia at Alexandria, yet who in A.D. 410 became the Christian bishop of Ptolemais in Libya. Before accepting, however, he openly stated his objections to certain Christian dogmas. Was he a Christian or a "baptized Neoplatonist"? The generation of Synesius saw the rapid decline of paganism. Furthermore, the Constantinople he visited was a Greek-Christian Rome (...) whose elites were classically educated. He returned home an ally of the city's Orthodox Christians. He tried to reconcile Neoplatonism with Christianity, but a study of his works demonstrates that he was only partially successful. Synesius is important for our understanding of the old aristocracy in Late Antiquity. His becoming a bishop completes the picture in which we finally see the ancient world transforming itself into the medieval world. The life of Synesius, one man of Late Antiquity, may be viewed as both the recapitulation and anticipation of all the major themes of Classical and Late Antiquity. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982. (shrink)