Syren Johnstone on COVID-19 versus the Red Cross: Better Solutions via Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (SSRN)

"A Viral Warning for Change. COVID-19 Versus the Red Cross: Better Solutions Via Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence"

Syren Johnstone

SSRN

Published on 3 Feb 2020

Abstract: “One of the lessons learned was that emergency response must be better developed at the local level.” This is what the Red Cross said on the 10 year anniversary of the deadly Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan province in western China. Billions of dollars had been donated following the Sichuan earthquake but had been “mishandled”.

This article addresses what should be a simple question: how can we do better? Doing better facilitating the delivery of supplies to people in need. Doing better to stimulate confidence in the organizations charged with managing humanitarian crises.

     The present crisis is a call to arms for China’s tech industry, which has the know-how and resources to radically change the landscape of crisis response and the management of donations through the implementation and use of blockchain and artificial intelligence.

     Together with global technologists, fundamental changes are needed to the structure and method of how such crises are handled. The time to develop, on a collaborative basis, borderless solutions to issues of common humanitarian concern is now.  Click here to download the paper.

New Book by Shahla Ali: Governing Disasters (CUP)

Governing Disasters: Engaging Local Populations in Humanitarian Relief
Shahla Ali
Cambridge University Press
June 2016, 240 pp.

Description: With growing awareness of the devastation caused by major natural disasters, alongside integration of governance and technology networks, the parameters of humanitarian aid are becoming more global. At the same time, humanitarian instruments are increasingly recognizing the centrality of local participation. Drawing on six case studies and a survey of 69 members of the relief sector, this book suggests that the key to the efficacy of post-disaster recovery is the primacy given to local actors in the management, direction and design of relief programs. Where local partnership and knowledge generation and application is ongoing, cohesive, meaningful and inclusive, disaster relief efforts are more targeted, cost-effective, efficient and timely. Governing Disasters: Engaging Local Populations in Humanitarian Relief examines the interplay between law, governance and collaborative decision making with international, state, private sector and community actors in order to understand the dynamics of a global decentralized yet coordinated process of post-disaster humanitarian assistance.

• Provides a comprehensive review of community engagement with international, state and private entities in responding to natural disasters
• Identifies best practices in locally-engaged disaster governance through comparative analysis of survey data and disaster recovery case studies in six jurisdictions
• Synthesizes findings in the form of law and policy recommendations

Reviews & endorsements:

"Elegantly weaving theory with rich contextual studies, Professor Shahla Ali's Governing Disasters elevates the study of law and disasters [by] setting agendas both for scholarship and policy."

  David D. Caron, King's College London

"Community involvement and public-private partnership are sometimes written off as popular buzzwords. This important and carefully documented book shows, however, that they can make a major difference in the effectiveness of disaster relief."

   Daniel Farber, University of California, Berkeley 

"In drawing on the new governance literature to explore the role of local actors in post-disaster humanitarian relief, Professor Ali generates important insights into the careful equilibrium of decentralization and coordination that is necessary for successful multi-level governance."

  Robert B. Ahdieh, Emory University, Atlanta 

"Offers a rich and comparative analysis of local participation in disaster response and recovery in six recent disasters. At a time when the international humanitarian community is stretched thin by multiple large-scale disasters, and the twin forces of conflict and larger natural disasters place millions in need of humanitarian assistance globally, there has never been a more apt time to consider seriously how best to support and enhance the capacities of local communities to respond to and manage disaster response. Governments, scholars and humanitarian and development practitioners will benefit enormously from reviewing the actual experience of local community participation in disaster recovery expertly examined in this work."

  Vincenzo Bollettino, Harvard Humanitarian Initiative

Special Issue: Mediation in Contemporary China: Continuity and Change (J Comp Law)

Special Issue on Mediation in Contemporary China: Continuity and Change
Guest Editors: Fu Hualing and Michael Palmer
Journal of Comparative Law
April 2016, Vol. X, Issue 2

Introduction (pp 1-24): The main purpose of this Special Issue is to introduce readers to some of the key developments now taking place in mediation as a form of dispute resolution in China, a society in which mediation has long been a central processual and ideological feature of its legal culture. Generally speaking, there is in the People’s Republic of China (‘PRC’) a number of different institutional contexts within which mediation is used for handling disputes: ‘people’s mediation’, which is primarily a form of local community dispute resolution, judicial mediation carried out by judges in and around the court, administrative mediation as conducted by officials and often focused on specific areas of governmental responsibility (as, for example, is the case with environment disputes), mediation in arbitral proceedings, and private mediation carried out without specific institutional support. Over the past fifteen years or so, in response to the rapid economic and social changes taking place in mainland China (including, inter alia, a declining importance of the local community) there have been attempts to institutionalize mediation, to resource it better, and to give it more legitimacy and legal force. In handling cases that come before the courts, judicial mediation continues to be seen as a particularly useful process, offering flexibility and effectiveness in dispute resolution. Under the current Xi Jinping government, the Chinese Communist Party’s (‘CCP’) concern with political stability and social harmony has intensified and judges, people’s mediators, arbitrators and others have to consider the social and political impact of what they do, even more so now than in the past...

"Rethinking the Mediation Campaign" (pp 44-64)

Zhang Xianchu

In the course of legal development in contemporary China, mediation (tiaojie) has attracted wide domestic and international attention because not only it carries heavy traditional social and culture value of China as an ‘oriental experience’, but also because in recent years the process has been increasingly deployed as a means of extra-judicial control to deal with social conflicts and to support the political regime in China’s bumpy course toward a market economy and rule of law reform. Against this background and the promise made by the new leadership installed in 2012 to promote the country’s development under the rule of law this article critically examines the campaign to promote mediation in China in recent years and considers whether a new direction is emerging in the changed political environment. Following this Introduction, the first section highlights the campaign to systemize mediation as a legal mechanism in the political framework in China, particularly after 2008; the second and third sections review the debates on the political promotion of mediation and critically assesses the effectiveness of its implementation from judicial perspective; sections four and five look at some signs for a new direction and the difficult path ahead, and offer reflections...

"Mediation in Contemporary China: Thinking About Reform" (pp 65-83)

Zhao Yun

Mediation, a popular mechanism for resolving disputes in Chinese society, is believed to be an important process for realizing the official goal of a harmonious society in China. The wide acceptance and adoption of mediation in daily life justifies a serious consideration of the ‘normalizing’ of mediation as a discipline in legal studies. The promotion of “grand mediation” (da tiaojie) and the unification and consolidation of the system of mediatory justice in the People’s Republic of China (‘PRC’) provide rich theoretical potential for the study of a number of substantive aspects of mediation. The highly practical nature of mediation requires us to consider its institutionalization and professionalization. As such, skill-based teaching and study of the practical dimensions of this process constitute an important part of mediation as a discipline, supplementing theoretical analysis of mediation...

"When Local Meets International: Mediation Combined with Arbitration in China and its Prospective Reform in a Comparative Context" (pp 84-105)

Gu Weixia

In line with its remarkable economic growth over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of commercial disputes in the People’s Republic of China (hereinafter referred to as ‘China’) in recent years. A significant portion of the disputes are resolved by alternative dispute resolution. The leading arbitration institution in China, the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC), reported that the total number of cases which it accepted in the year 2014 was 1610, more than a double the caseload when compared to the year 2000. The emergent need to resolve disputes in a more efficient manner, coupled with the long-standing tradition of mediation, has created the opportunity for med-arb practice to thrive. Currently, approximately 20% to 30% of the caseload of CIETAC is resolved by med-arb...

"Mass-Claims Mediation in China" (pp 142-157)

Shahla F Ali

Though China has experienced multiple and severe disasters since ancient times, its approaches to addressing mass claims issues through mediation by courts and grassroots entities is undergoing a process of reform and change. The selection of recent disasters, whether natural or human-induced, include the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome epidemic (‘the SARS Incident’), the earthquake that struck Wenchuan County, Sichuan Province in China in 2008 (‘the Wenchuan Earthquake’) and the Sanlu contaminated milk powder incident (‘the Sanlu Milk Contamination Incident’). The mass claims arising out of these disasters illustrate the continued preference for settling wide-scale claims outside of court. This settlement tendency alongside continued attention to strengthening the rule of law in China, naturally gives rise to questions regarding how such processes might simultaneously advance due process, transparency and avenues for appeal. Through examining China’s mediated response to disaster events experienced in recent years, this essay aims to provide a brief overview of China’s recent approaches to post-disaster governance, an evaluation of the country’s achievements to date, an analysis of challenges ahead and some suggestions for improving the existing approaches and mechanisms drawing on existing lessons learned...

Shahla Ali on Environmental Disaster-Related Disputes and the UNCITRAL Rules on Transparency

"Prospects of Utilizing Investor-State Mediation and UNCITRAL Rules on Transparency for Polycentric Environmental Disaster-Related Disputes: The Case of Vattenfall v Germany"

Shahla Ali
Comparative Law Journal of the Pacific
Special Issue, Vol. XIX, 2015

Under the backdrop of the Japanese Fukushima nuclear disaster, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government decided to phase out rapidly nuclear energy in Germany with an amendment to the “Atomic Energy Act”.

     Previously, Merkel had decided to extend the usage of the nuclear reactors past their due phase-out date. Following Fukushima, such a decision was rendered politically unpalatable and untenable

      In 2009, Vattenfall arbitrated against the German government at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes excessive imposition of water quality standards for a coal power plant, which rendered Vattenfall’s investment project “unviable”. The claim against Germany was about €1.4BN, but it was settled in 2011, with Germany agreeing to a more lenient water quality standard in favor of Vattenfall.

      In 2012, Vattenfall, a Swedish nuclear plant operator, sought compensation from the rapid exit from nuclear energy in Germany – “fair compensation” associated with the rapid phase-out of their two nuclear plants. Press reports in late 2011 put Vattenfall’s lost investments in nuclear power plants at €700MM. In 2012, the company estimated the damages from the nuclear phase-out actions at €1.18BN. However, the exact amount of Vattenfall’s compensation claim against Germany is unknown. 

      Vattenfall initiated arbitration proceedings by filing a Request for Arbitration at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington D.C. Vattenfall was attempting to claim “compensation for the phasing out of nuclear energy” under the Energy Charter Treaty. The Energy Charter Treaty is a multilateral treaty that essentially protects foreign investors in the energy sector by allowing them to bypass the domestic courts of the host country and file a complaint to an ad hoc international tribunal to challenge proposed government regulations.

     Despite enormous public interest about the case, only minimal amounts of information have been made available to the public. The recent UNCITRAL Rules on Transparency in Treaty-based Investor-State Arbitration might put pressure on the ICSID to be more transparent regarding the proceedings of the case... Click here to read the full article.

An Empirical Study of Post-Disaster Governance (New Article by Shahla Ali)

"Towards Peer Presence in Post-Disaster Governance: An Empirical Study"
Shahla Ali
Hastings International and Comparative Law Review
Summer 2015, Vol. 38, pp. 243-274

Abstract: Recent experience reminds us the United States is anything but immune to the effects of major natural disasters; in 2012 Hurricane Sandy demolished the entire eastern seaboard, impacted 24 states and caused $ 50 billion to $ 68 billion of damage. As natural disasters occur with increasing frequency, there is growing interest and scholarship in disaster relief governance. Empirical research regarding the mechanisms of post-disaster local governance is therefore timely given the scale and magnitude of suffering involved. The findings presented in this article draw on the attitudes and perceptions of practitioners working in disaster response fields to provide us with insights into the dynamics, challenges and lessons learned from the perspective of those directly engaged in the work of post-disaster relief. The principal finding of this paper, based on survey data and follow-up questions with 96 humanitarian aid practitioners, is that there is a statistically significant correlation between the level of "peer" engagement with local residents and the perceived effectiveness of response. In-depth knowledge about the elements of post-disaster humanitarian aid coordination efforts will be essential to understanding the role of states, transnational governance and legal networks, and global nonstate actors in order to contribute to effective post-disaster responses. Such insights will be particularly useful, as states and organizations increasingly implement and coordinate relief efforts with civil society participants.  Full article available on LexisNexis.