The ongoing review of defamation laws by the Jamaican government has sharpened the focus on the need to identify appropriate standards for public officials in libel actions in light of the growing recognition of a need for transparency. This article explores how British, Caribbean and U.S. jurisdictions have sought to manage the paradigm shift between the right to reputation and the need to ensure responsible and accountable governance. The aim is to identify a path of reform for Caribbean defamation law that ensures greater public official accountability and better incorporates twenty-first century notions of democracy.
Drawing on original case studies of police reform in Burundi, Haiti and Southern Sudan, this article demonstrates that developmental approaches to security system reform have more scope for application in fragile states that are not at war or involved in the War on Terror.
The recurrence of violence in Haiti since February 1986 has generated strong demands for reforms to the security and justice system, in the broader context and process of democratic construction. Important transformations have been implemented, but certain factors have hampered change. Challenges include an institutional culture that resists certain changes, weak links between the police and justice, inadequate support from international actors, and a deeply constraining economic context.
Journal Article, Examines the power-evasive reduction of 'race,' racial conflict, and racial subordination from the terrain of the social, material, and structural to the 'private' realm of affect and emotions, in an effort to explain how neoliberalism operates in the everyday lives of U.S.-born Latino and Latin American migrant youth, particularly, young, working-class Puerto Rican and Brazilian women in Newark, New Jersey. Argues that urban neoliberalism has been complicit in generating new racial configurations in the United States and that, in the case of populations of Latin American and Spanish-speaking Caribbean backgrounds, such articulations of difference have deployed a variation of 'racial democracy' ideologies.
A variety of approaches are discussed in this work, dealing with the economic problems, geopolítics, social conditions, and controversial themes affecting the region
Reviews several books which focused on the social and political history of Haiti. Haiti in the New World Order: The Limits of the Democratic Revolution, by Alex Dupuy; Building Peace in Haiti, by Chetan Kumar; Haiti Renewed: Political and Economic Prospects, edited by Robert Rotberg; The Haitian Dilemma: A Case Study in Demographics, Development, and U.S. Foreign Policy, by Ernest Preeg.;
Discusses the relationship between squatters and the state in Brazil. Information on redemocratization in Latin America; Return of electoral democracy; Political transition from authoritarian to procedurally democratic regimes; Detailed information on the squatter settlements in Brazil; Distribution and sale of cocaine from public low-income housing projects; Information on prison authorities in Brazil.
