Under the ongoing negotiations regarding the updating of the international convention on the simplification and harmonisation of Customs procedures, known as the ‘Revised Kyoto Convention (RKC)’ at the World Customs Organization, a group of countries (the EU, China, Japan New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland) and private sector companies (Nissan, Renault and Fonterra) have elaborated a proposal for the updating of the of Annex K of the RKC on rules of origin.
The present Annex K of RKC dates back to 2000 and is the only multilateral text on rules of origin. This consultative meeting has been organised by UNCTAD and EUI under the existing platform and annual round-table of experts on rules of origin, to discuss the technical aspects of the proposal, with a wide range of private sector representatives and practitioners.
This initiative aims at bringing together Government representatives and firms to discuss trade facilitating and innovative solutions to rules of origin and related administrative procedures.
N.B. This event is by invitation only.
Organisers:
Bernard Hoekman (European University Institute)
Stefano Inama (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development)
Roman Bruehwiler (Swiss Customs)
Throughout countries of the so-called global South, rates of naturalisation are low – even where there are large populations of immigrants. And outside South America only few countries automatically include second generations of immigrant origin through ius soli rules. GLOBALCIT has just concluded its 15th GLOBALCIT Forum in which 15 authors discussed a proposal by Bronwen Manby to unblock access to citizenship by empowering local communities to naturalise foreigners. We want to build on the insights from this debate in a webinar that looks into the broader question of how important access to citizenship is in the global South compared to other legal statuses and documents, such as birth certificates or permanent residence permits. The webinar will also ask what is the best strategy for closing citizenship gaps and how strongly success depends on national contexts.
To receive the ZOOM link to attend the webinar please REGISTER ONLINE by 30 November.
Organiser:
Prof. Rainer Bauböck (RSCAS – Global Governance Programme)
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Multicultural citizenship, a system of group-differentiated rights for minority cultural groups, is now a common feature of most domestic legal orders in Europe. The conventional view, widely reflected in practice, suggests that ‘strong’ rights of this sort – notably including the public promotion of a given group’s language, religion, and/or other cultural practices – should be restricted to so-called ‘old’ or ‘national’ minorities, such as the Germans in Denmark, the Slovaks in Hungary, and the Catalans in Spain. However, the increasingly long-standing presence of distinct cultural groups of immigrant origin, such as the Turkish community in Germany and British Asians in the United Kingdom, raises the question of whether, and to what extent, these latter groups should also be granted stronger forms of multicultural citizenship. This paper addresses this question by reference to the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, a central pillar of the international minority rights regime in Europe. Previous scholarship has already explored, in abstracto, the question of whether this treaty should in general be applied to immigrant-origin groups, with some speculation de lege ferenda as to the kinds of rights they might be able to claim. This paper sheds new light on these issues by examining, in concreto, the existing practice in respect of the only two states parties that have so far actually opted to apply the Framework Convention to minorities of immigrant origin: the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. The paper offers a systematic analysis of the scope of protection afforded to immigrant-origin groups under the treaty, as interpreted by the two states themselves, as well as by the Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention, the quasi-judicial body responsible for monitoring state compliance. Overall, the paper demonstrates that, while presenting a mixed and somewhat inconsistent picture, these interpretations appear to hint at a strengthening of multicultural citizenship for immigrant-origin groups in Europe.
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The Israeli Citizenship law of 1952 states that East Jerusalemites, with Permanent Residency Status, are able to apply for Israeli citizenship in accordance with a number of conditions. Inter alia, these conditions pertain to the length of time lived in Israel prior to the application; having acquired a level of Hebrew language; and that the applicant swears an allegiance to the State of Israel. Historically, Palestinians in East Jerusalem have chosen not to apply, on the grounds that it serves as a way of legitimising the settler colonial acquisition of Palestinian land by the Israeli state, and because this could ultimately reduce the likelihood of a future Palestinian state coming to fruition. Scholarship within the anthropology of citizenship tends to focus on reading citizenship applications as an aspiration to be included in a political community. While this literature highlights some of the subversive or insurgent ways that people in different contexts under different kinds of state manage to do so, the Palestinian context tells a different story. Based on an ethnography conducted in a refugee camp in East Jerusalem, this paper examines the ways and reasoning through which Palestinian refugees, who are Permanent Residents in East Jerusalem are seeking Israeli citizenship. Through an analysis of access to healthcare and social welfare, it is argued that there is little intention among these East Jerusalemites to participate in Israeli political communities, and nor is there anything subversive about the way Palestinians go about making their claims to the Israeli state. Rather, these decisions and processes are tactical and pragmatic. The Israeli state routinely operates against its non-citizen Palestinian permanent residents through planning regimes in Jerusalem to incrementally exclude them from the demographic of the city. The author argues that is this tactical pragmatism and individual determination, rather than a revolutionary consciousness, that work as the driving factors behind the emerging kinds of political and social change enacted by refugees in East Jerusalem by seeking Israeli citizenship.
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Globally, though to different extents, naturalisation remains of significant relevance to immigrants as this allows them to access rights restricted to nationals. However, not every state adopts the same rules to condition naturalisation and states with similar eligibility conditions sometimes have very different implementation practices. Focusing on residence-based naturalisation, this presentation takes policy differentiation seriously and aims to build up a systematic, comparative explanation for policy-variation in a global perspective. To assess the extent to which naturalisation policies vary an index is developed that allows determining how inclusive or exclusive individual countries are. This index looks both at the legal dimensions of naturalisation (eligibility requirements, procedural guarantees for applicants, protections against denaturalisation, etc.) and at its implementation dimensions (documentation to provide, use of discretion, levels of bureaucracy involved, etc.). The policy index should serve as an empirical starting point to test different theories explaining policy-variation in naturalisation in a more comprehensive manner than was the case in previous investigations, including theories that claim the existence of a ‘political regime effect’ in naturalisation policies or an impact of colonial legacies on the degree of inclusion of these policies.
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