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United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

E-Books on Peace and Justice

Understanding Corruption

Corruption takes many different forms and the systems that enable it are complex and challenging. To best understand corruption, one needs to examine how it operates in practice. Understanding Corruption tells the story of how corruption happens in the real world, illustrated through detailed case studies of the many different types of corruption that span the globe. Each case study follows a tried and tested analytical approach that provides key insights into the workings of corruption and the measures best used to tackle it.

Child Exploitation and Trafficking

Each year, more than two million children around the world fall victim to commercial sexual and labor exploitation. Put simply, the growing epidemic of child exploitation demands a coordinated response. This Second Edition of Child Sexual Exploitation and Trafficking: Examining Global Enforcement and Supply Chain Challenges and U.S. Responses brings fresh, practical thinking to this oft-misunderstood area of the law, helping erase some of its counterproductive mythology. The book not only provides the first comprehensive, practical introduction to the history and present-day reality of child exploitation and supply chain issues, but it also traces the interconnected web of domestic and transnational federal laws and law enforcement efforts launched in response thereto. Written from the distinctive perspective of those who have spent their careers in the trenches investigating, prosecuting, and adjudicating these intricate, emotional cases, as well as those who are tasked with ensuring that products are free from the taint of child exploitation and force labor, the book is uniquely proscriptive, as well as descriptive, in the sense that it relies on real-world examples to serve up practical advice and reform proposals for those involved at all levels of this challenging area."

Violence in the Contemporary World: an Interdisciplinary Approach

Understanding violence in the context of the contemporary world leads us to an infinite number of viewpoints and theoretical frameworks. Not only the study of violence has been largely split into specific groups, but at the same time different disciplines seem to have assumed the existence of a peaceful society in which violence occurs only in specific places and events - including armed conflicts, civil unrest and violent crime. However, it is a slippery concept that transcends unstable limits between public and private, legitimacy and illegitimacy, individual and collective spheres. Taking an interdisciplinary approach to the concept of violence in the contemporary world, we present a collection of seventeen chapters, organized in four sections: Sexualised and Intimate Partner Violence: encouraging disclosure; Urban Violence: crime and fear in the contemporary world; Representing violence: a critical analysis; Violence and Political destabilization: war, elections and corporations.

Organized Crime

Organized Crime: From the Mob to Transnational Organized Crime, Seventh Edition, provides readers with a clear understanding of organized crime, including its definition and causes, how it is categorized under the law, models to explain its persistence, and the criminal justice response to organized crime, including investigation, prosecution, defense, and sentencing. This book offers a comprehensive survey, including an extensive history of the Mafia in the United States; a legal analysis of the offenses that underlie organized crimes; specific attention to modern manifestations of organized crime activity, such as human smuggling, Internet crimes, and other transnational criminal operations; and the application of ethics to the study of organized crime.

Contemporary Issues in Human Rights Law

This book reveals the influence that national and foreign law, EU law and the European Convention have on Human Rights, and European and Asian law exert over one another. The various chapters cover general fundamental rights and human rights issues in Europe and Asia as well as specific topics regarding the principles of nondiscrimination, women's rights, the right to freedom of speech in Japan, and China's Development Banks in Asia. Protection of human rights should be guaranteed in the international community, and research based on a comparative law approach is useful for the protection of human rights at a higher level.

The Limits of Institutional Reform in Development

Developing countries commonly adopt reforms to improve their governments yet they usually fail to produce more functional and effective governments. Andrews argues that reforms often fail to make governments better because they are introduced as signals to gain short-term support. These signals introduce unrealistic best practices that do not fit developing country contexts and are not considered relevant by implementing agents. The result is a set of new forms that do not function. However, there are realistic solutions emerging from institutional reforms in some developing countries. Lessons from these experiences suggest that reform limits, although challenging to adopt, can be overcome by focusing change on problem solving through an incremental process that involves multiple agents.

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