Managing Babel

This book is a comprehensive, modern study of the important field of international protection of minority rights, focusing on 20th century developments.

Minority protection is integral to a civilised standard of internal good governance. The goal of promoting friendly inter-group relations within states highlights the linkages between constitutionalism and the extending reach of international law in shaping domestic governance and structuring relations between the state, non-state communities and individuals. While law per se cannot guarantee the security and integrity of minority groups, law and legal institutions play a role in promoting a tolerant and pluralistic environment and a multicultural ethos that appreciates, rather than resents, ethno-cultural diversity. This book is a comprehensive, modern study of the important field of international protection of minority rights, focusing on 20th century developments. Minority rights regimes, which address the issue of group identity and autonomy, have essentially been a stabilising force, buttressing state survivability in the face of claims to self-determination or secession. These serve to promote the peaceful co-existence of distinct ethno-cultural groups, captured by the metaphor of ‘Babel’, within existing states. Despite overlaps, the content of minority protection is more modest than the claim of indigenous groups for collective rights or peoples’ rights to self-determination. As part of the contemporary corpus of human rights norms, minority protection may be appreciated as an aspect of the evolving content of the ‘internal’ dimension of the right to self-determination. Chapter 1 introduces some key definitional and conceptual problems in the field of minority protection and presents a brief historical review of international approaches up to 1919. Chapter 2 discusses the League of Nations era. Chapter 3 examines approaches towards minority protection after World War Two as reflected in the drafting of the United Nations Charter and efforts to protect minorities outside the UN regime. In this period, discussed in Chapters 4 and 5, minorities' issues remained largely submerged within the UN project of promoting universal individual human rights. Chapter 6 addresses the post-1989 revival in minorities' issues within the UN; Chapter 7 offers a succinct overview of what might be considered a parallel history with respect to the development of regional human rights schemes and what these afford to minority protection, closing with concluding observations. Meticulously researched, this volume offers a valuable synthesis of this important but often heart-breaking field.

Examines how black intermediaries in colonial Spanish America influenced written portrayals of virtuous and beautiful blackness.

Using both established as well as more recent modes of inquiry, this book sheds new light on an increasingly important dimension of organizational cooperation and competition - that of knowledge and knowledge transfer. Based on research and practice, the book addresses a wide range of issues concerning the management of knowledge, from knowledge transfer between organizations to knowledge management within organizations. Divided into two parts, Managing Knowledge reflects a fundamental conceptual distinction between two world-views. The first part is characterized by representationism, or traditional approaches to viewing knowledge, knowledge transfer and cooperative strategies. The contributors provide a clea

Rev. ed. of: Management of success, the moulding of modern Singapore.

Raphaël Lemkin was one of the twentieth century's most influential human rights figures, coining the word "genocide" in 1942 and working to embed the idea into international law. This book sheds new light on the concept of genocide, exploring the connection between Lemkin's philosophical writings, juridical works, and politics.

Asia's 48 countries have an estimated 1.757 billion urban population and 2.4 billion people in rural areas (or approximately 60 per cent of the global population). Divided into central, eastern, southern, south-eastern and western regions, the continent is also extremely heterogeneous in terms of water quality conditions. The policies and management practices vary significantly from one country to another, and even within one country, depending on specific economic, political, social, environmental, legal and institutional factors. In order to appreciate the complexities associated with water quality policy and management, it is important to acknowledge the multiplicity of interrelated and often conflicting events, issues, actors and interests, both within and outside the water sector that impact them. This complexity, alongside institutional inability for systematic and coordinated collaboration, are potent reasons as to why, in the second decade of the 21st century, formulation and implementation of efficient water quality management policies benefitting humankind and the environment have still not been achieved. The book was originally published as a special issue of the International Journal of Water Resources Development.