Search

Tirza Meyer's book, "Elisabeth Mann Borgese and the Law of the Sea," provides a comprehensive account of the Third United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III) and the negotiations surrounding the stretch of seabed beyond national jurisdiction. The book focuses on the perspective of Elisabeth Mann Borgese, who played a significant role in shaping the history of UNCLOS III. Meyer skillfully weaves together legal history and the personal story of Mann Borgese, highlighting the tensions between political idealism and self-interested power politics. The book also sheds light on unresolved historical mysteries and the complex international politics that influenced the development of the Law of the Sea. [Extracted from the article]

This article explores maritime protection zones (MPZ), which are being created in the territorial waters of a number of European states. Through the work of Gaston Bachelard and Peter Sloterdijk, the article analyses maritime zonation as a paradigmatic global security mechanism. It examines how maritime spatial planning seeks to reconfigure sea-space into multi-dimensional spheres of predictability and rationality. These processes, it proposes, seek to routinize the use of sea-space and reconcile tensions between the governance of land and sea, and between fixed infrastructure and mobile capital flows. The political and economic redistribution at stake in the construction of a global network of vast maritime zones, which act as hubs of wealth creation and environmental management, creates further tensions where commercial and military security imaginaries meet local and ecological interests. The article traces the ontology of multi-dimensional zonation and concludes that space which emerges from a pluralist and less anthropocentric understanding of the maritime would provide more effective security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article forms a critique of security sector reforms implemented in Albania and Montenegro between 2000 and 2007 by and on behalf of the European Union. It argues that within these reforms it is possible to discern a tension between a more holistic development approach and a security-based approach that is top-down and largely founded on the self-referential security concerns of the European Union. Drawing on research conducted by the author in Albania and Montenegro, the article utilizes public surveys to point out the distance between internal security reforms funded by the EU and the everyday security concerns of residents living in ineffectively policed states. The article concludes that a security-first agenda has slipped into the EU's aim to create an area of 'freedom, security and justice'. Thus, while the rims of the Western Balkans are being secured, lack of reform in the interior hampers the socio-economic development and democratization of states engaged in the EU enlargement process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]