In the Sahel, host communities are among those most affected by recurrent internal displacement, but they are often ignored in responses to displacement. Furthermore, their situation has attracted little attention from researchers or other observers. The present article will argue that it is essential to provide these communities with adequate protection, especially as they play a leading role in providing humanitarian protection and assistance to internally displaced persons (IDPs). The article begins by examining the legal instruments that protect populations affected by forced displacement, in order to identify and present the legal protection they offer to IDP host communities. The article will then analyze and highlight the advantages of fully applying this protection. It will show that the recurrent violence and breaches of the law that these communities suffer are impeding the full realization of those advantages. Finally, the article shall propose solutions that would overcome the deficiencies noted and hence ensure enhanced protection for IDP host communities in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

For the first time in its history, the EU is in the process of acquiring significant and genuine permanent operational powers. A new Regulation on the European Border and Coast Guard provides Frontex with a permanent corps of 10,000 border guards—3,000 of which will be EU agents—its own equipment, and its own competences to intervene along the EU borders and beyond. The operational powers will allow the EU to directly and physically intervene in tangible reality.

This Article argues that the conferral of operational powers on the EU poses a risk to individual legal protection. This is because once authorities have acquired operational powers of a certain extent and quality, they can afford to act against or without the law by simply overpowering or eluding the legal mechanisms that normally constrain the exercise of public power. So far, Members of the European Parliament and academics critical of Frontex and the new Regulation have overlooked this issue and concentrated exclusively on how to legally constrain the exercise of operational powers. This Article addresses this blind spot by examining whether and how public law should place legal constraints not only on the exercise but also on the build-up of operational powers.

The European Convention of Human Rights recognises a certain number of rights and freedoms for persons within States' jurisdiction. For those confined in psychiatric hospitals, this legal protection concerns first of all the lawfulness of deprivation of liberty, which must conform to the conditions laid down by the Convention as interpreted by the case-law of the Convention organs (the Commission and Court of Human Rights). The Convention also guarantees to person deprived of their liberty further rights: the right to information, the right to appear before a court, the right to compensation and also the right to the respect of privacy and correspondence.

Attention to the legal position of psychiatric patients has greatly increased during the last 25 years. The criteria for a civil commitment have been tightened and procedural guarantees have increased. In many countries major changes and improvements in the area of mental health law took place. In this paper the main developments are discussed. Attention is given to the legal protection in case of civil commitment, to the legal position of the involuntarily admitted patient during his stay in hospital and to the relationship between patients' rights and the availability of mental health care. Furthermore the impact of legal intentions to the field of psychiatry is discussed. It is argued that legal interventions should be closely monitored, in order to prevent negative consequences. Legal interventions may be necessary, but this instrument should be used with great caution.

This article explores the structure of the legal protection of refugees in Europe today. To this end, it will contrast historical arrangements providing protection to refugees, namely church asylum in the late Middle Ages and refuge for religious minorities, with the current European refugee regime, that is the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), in particular the Dublin system. The central claim of this article is that a basic condition for the legal protection of refugees is the existence of multiple jurisdictions, which in turn caters for competition for jurisdiction. The official logic of the CEAS, however, endorses harmonization, unity and the hierarchy of jurisdictions rather than a competition between jurisdictions. This partially explains the difficulties under the CEAS in organizing the protection of refugees through law. In policy terms, this article supports calls for reconsidering the Dublin Regulation, since through the ‘single jurisdiction’ approach Dublin hampers the legal protection of refugees.

Edward Doyley led English Jamaica for most of its first decade. Sent as part of a military force intent on conquering the island, he rose to a position of command in the army as a result of his survival and seniority. Eventually he took charge of the navy and civilian affairs as well. Wielding theoretically vast powers he lacked official authorization from any central authority for much of his tenure. His correspondence requesting support for the island reveals the needs of a newly conquered colony, enumerating the requirements that an expanding imperial center must fill as England moved more decisively toward engagement in the wider world. Scholarly debates over state building that emphasize military and naval expansion as a driving force, and debates about state formation focusing on negotiations between central and local authorities, speak to the experience of early Jamaica. Doyley's circumstances place him in a position between the two ideal situations described in that literature.

Appropriate legislation based on in-depth ecological evidence is essential for ecosystem conservation. Wetland areas in the Brazilian Cerrado hotspot are facing difficulties in terms of status under environmental law: only those wetlands with the palm Mauritia flexuosa (veredas) are recognized as protected. Comprehensive fieldwork in central-western Brazil (72 50-m transects) coupled with both exploratory and confirmatory analyses showed that communities with (MP) and without (MA) M. flexuosa are similar in terms of the floristics and ecology. The results demonstrate that the analysed wetlands are part of a continuum, in which a gradual replacement of species and community structure occurs without a pattern related to physiognomy. Considering such floristic and structure patterns when legally defining the ecosystem would promote a more comprehensive and realistic view of the ecosystem's characteristics and functions, and result in laws with a stronger scientific support. Conservationists should further examine the lack of consistent separation of plant community attributes between the MP and MA areas, and reconsider the scientific definition of veredas.

Elder abuse is a social phenomenon which has recently been brought to light. As such it has brought about different legal responses in the Canadian provinces. The Atlantic provinces have all enacted Adult protection legislation modelled on child protection legislation. The author has undertaken a study of New Brunswick legislation in order to evaluate which factors are most important when judges order protective measures. Different materials have been analysed such as New Brunswick court files from 1983 to 1989, cases which have never gone to court collected by nurses and social workers, interviews with social workers, and the normal practice of New Brunswick judges and crown prosecutors. From those data, it was found that two different factors play an important role in the administration of Adult protection legislation. First, the legal representation of the elderly person is the most significant factor influencing the outcome of the case. The other important factor is the legal philosophy espoused by the relevant judges. Judges adopting a liberal philosophy are more critical of that legislation as compared with judges who accept the social intervention philosophy which forms the basis of this legislation.