Open Research Repository
The Open Research Repository (ORR) is the official institutional repository of the Central European University. The repository provides access to the research output of the CEU community by collecting open access versions of scholarly works authored or co-authored by CEU faculty and students.
For more information, please contact us at: scholcom@ceu.edu
Recent Submissions
Item The Characterization of ISIL Under International Law and Islamic Sharia(2023-12-15)A curious phenomenon has appeared on the contemporary international scene: The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). They seized vast areas of Iraq between 2014 and 2017 and committed appalling crimes against innocent civilians in the areas they controlled. They targeted certain minorities with particular viciousness, persecuting them in the name of religion in contravention of both humanitarian principles and the religious precepts of Islam. This paper attempts to characterize the nature of ISIL in the form they took during their armed conflict against the Iraqi and Kurdistani regular armed forces and against the anti-ISIL international coalition forces. This characterization will be done through the lenses of both international law and Sharia. ISIL misinterpreted certain Quranic verses by neglecting traditional rules of interpretation for the Quran and Sharia in order to legitimize their extremist ideology and horrible actions. This understandably contributed to an increase in Islamophobia in non-Muslim nations. Methodologically, this paper’s analysis draws upon the foundational texts and views of scholars of both international and Sharia law. It concludes that ISIL is neither a state under international law nor is it Islamic according to the Sharia. By carefully classifying the nature and essence of ISIL as an organization and by clarifying certain ambiguities concerning their legal status under both international law and Sharia, this article aims to help legal and religious scholars improve their conceptual clarity on the matter, and thereby also improve the consistency and precision of their rulings and provisions going forward.Item Vulnerability of health systems : Legal versus ethical perspective. Comparative approach Hungary and Romania(2017-06-01)The concept of vulnerability is inscribed in the universal specificity of human condition. On the one hand, it expresses human limits and frailty; on the other hand, it represents moral and ethical action principles. Vulnerable persons are those whose autonomy, dignity and integrity are being threatened (Barcelona Declaration, 1998). We propose a comparative analysis of vulnerability in the access to health services in the framework of the health systems reforms from Romania and Hungary, as of 2012. From a methodological point of view, the legal framework is critically analysed (situate ourselves in the paradigm of critical analysis). We use content analysis of the main law texts from the two national contexts. The association between health and politics happens when the health associated risks are shared in the name of solidarity. Thus, the state presents itself as managing health and, indirectly, individual health. Health policies become a necessity. Or, in this management process, through politicizing the health system, medical practice becomes directed from outside in a bureaucratic way, for the worse of the true beneficiaries of health policies and makes the population become vulnerable.Item Sarafu Community Inclusion Currency 2020–2021(2022-12)We describe a dataset of account information and detailed transaction records for a digital complementary currency in Kenya. This “Sarafu system” initially encompassed several local, physical community currencies, which began transitioning to a feature-phone mobile interface in 2017. One unit of “Sarafu” is roughly equivalent in value to a Kenyan shilling. The published data includes anonymized account information for around 55,000 users and records of all Sarafu transactions conducted from January 25, 2020 to June 15, 2021. Transactions totaling around 300 million Sarafu capture various economic and financial activities such as purchases, transfers, and participation in savings and lending groups. So-called “chamas” are key to the operation of the Sarafu system and many such groups are labeled in the data. Describing this data contributes to research on the operation of community currencies, monetary systems, and economic networks in marginalized, food insecure areas. The observation period includes the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and several documented pilot projects and interventions.Item Universal Basic Income in a Blockchain-Based Community Currency(Association for Computing Machinery, 2023-09-06)Recent advancements of blockchain technologies ensure security and trustability of Community Currency Systems (CCSs), enabling their increasingly widespread adoption. These systems aim at empowering the local economies by virtue of a medium of exchange whose governance and circulation are local. Smart contracts enable the enforcement of token economy policies, which facilitate the experimentation of radically new economic models. Recent studies investigated blockchain-based CCSs. Still, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study analyzing a CCS providing a token-based Universal Basic Income (UBI). We evaluate the Circles UBI decentralised application utility in delivering an unconditional income to its users, focusing on its main pilot project running in Berlin. We analyse the structural changes in the network, especially in relation to a subsidy program, involving local businesses. We also identify prominent users based on centrality measures, and investigate how the UBI was effectively spent. We adopt a method agnostic to the economic context to identify optimal aggregation windows for the temporal network of CCS transactions based on the Causal Fidelity (CF) index. This aims to provide static representations as accurate as possible in terms of sequential order of edges, which aspect was not considered in previous research on CCSs. Our findings suggest that the pilot project sustained the expansion of the economic network and the system facilitated trade in urban communities in Berlin. Future research is needed to identify methods to ensure sustainability of self-organised CCSs adopting a UBI issuance scheme and to further decentralise their governance.Item Shaping Policies and Shifting Norms : Knowledge Transfer in Global Programmes(2022-06-27)This communication aims to enrich the panel by making novel contributions on 'how knowledge is developed, shaped, promoted, contested, accepted or rejected' in transnational policymaking. It presents the preliminary results of a three-year EU-funded research project on "Knowledge Transfer in Global Gender Programmes" (GlobalKnoT). The presentation focuses on global gender programmes, their actors, and networks. It employs the Actor-Network Theory to conceptualize the novel configurations of entities (e.g. people, research evidence, technologies, financial resources, institutions, and regulation) that jointly shape global governance. With the Sustainable Development Agenda, a plethora of global programmes have emerged that pool resources and expertise to address common (policy) problems at global, regional, national, and local levels. These multi-stakeholder partnerships generate and mobilize knowledge for (policy) change across diverse socio-cultural and political systems. The UN-led Global Programmes to End Female Genital Mutilation, Gender-biased Sex Selection, and Child Marriage are representative of this trend and serve as case studies. All three programmes engage in knowledge transfer to shape policies and shift discriminatory gender norms. How is knowledge generated, processed, and transferred within and across these global programmes? Which knowledge(s) become dominant and political over time and across programmes? Who are the actors and networks engaged in transnational knowledge transfer? What helps or hinders knowledge transfer? Employing a thematic analysis of policy and programme files and drawing from over 40 expert interviews and 200 hours of participant observation during global convening between 2021-2023, the paper explores similarities and differences across the three global gender programmes. Particular attention is placed on the so-called 'knowledge hubs' that the programmes have created to scale up transnational lessons sharing and the associated obstacles that hinder effective transfer of knowledge into policy.
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