Jolyon Ford

Too Little, Too Late? International Oversight of Contract Negotiations in Post-conflict Liberia

International actors involved in transitional post-conflict situations often focus their attention on the reconstruction of a states political apparatus. Even where control of natural resources is central to the conflict, there tends to be less consideration of resource governance issues in transitional periods. This article examines one particular aspect of resource governance – the negotiation and signing of foreign investment contracts – in the context of post-conflict, pre-election Liberia. The investment contract process was mishandled by the transitional Liberian government. Although local interests resisted external oversight, international actors could and should have done more, in the interest of all Liberians, to proffer contract negotiation expertise and to prevent the transitional government from locking the state into unsatisfactory deals on major resource assets. International actors did address the contract issue and external oversight of economic governance more generally during Liberias formal transitional period, but ultimately their interventions amounted to too little and they came too late.

Transitional Justice: A truth commission for Zimbabwe

An eventual sustained democratic transition process in Zimbabwe may include a ‘truth and reconciliation’ commission. The need for—and possible form of—any such institution is situated in a number of discussions: the balance of principle and pragmatism that peace deals sometimes require; comparative experiences in other societies and the promise and limits of institutional modelling; the dynamic between global expectations or prescriptions and ground-level exigencies; the interface of international criminal law and institutions with national-level justice processes; the content of the States international legal duty to afford a remedy. In considering the extent of an international normative framework limiting the justice options of transitional States, a certain margin of appreciation may be appropriate or necessary to enable a society to reconcile with its violent past on its own terms.

GLOBALIZATION AND CLINICAL TRIALS

Globalization has contributed to fundamental changes within the biomedical research endeavor. Indeed, when considered in concert with the effects of commercialization, the transformation might be described as dramatic. With the ongoing consolidation of the pharmaceutical research industry into massive multinational corporations, the scope of the business of developing medical products has grown to unprecedented levels, spanning across national boundaries and affecting health care consumers throughout the world. The influence of the global pharmaceutical industry is both reflected in and strengthened by international treaties protecting drug patents and initiatives to harmonize regulatory requirements. 1 At the national level, industry has been shown to have a significant influence on setting research agendas, public health policy and the education and practices of health care professionals. 2 And as this chapter will argue, globalization of the pharmaceutical industry can also be felt on an individual level. Specifically, we will address the problem that arises when a human subject from a developing country is injured or dies in a clinical trial conducted by a first-world sponsor. We submit that this scenario, which operates at the interface of developing world ethics, human rights advocacy and international law, is instrumental in examining how conflicts of laws may interfere with the goal of promoting global social justice. Protecting human subjects in international clinical trials requires a range of solutions, including capacity building within developing countries to establish or improve regulatory oversight mechanisms, professional education to foster ethical conduct by investigators and political pressure to promote socially responsible corporate practices. As this chapter will contend, it is also vitally important that legal systems in first-world jurisdictions protect subjects from developing countries and permit access to justice in first -world courts to enable them to obtain compensation.