Libya and China have had diplomatic relations since 1978 when Libya recognized China as one of the countries with which it wished to establish connections. Since then, relations between the two countries have been rather friendly and based on mutual economic and strategic interests. Due to the political and military crisis in Libya in recent years, China has become more active in the region, seeking to mediate between the various parties and increasing its economic presence there.

One must accept the complexity of modern society as a multifaceted influence that will direct the future of all social organizations. Technology has brought the people of the world into almost instant communication. Biomedical science has conquered most infectious, acute diseases and has provided several medicines for the successful maintenance therapy of chronic diseases. The lifestyle of some people as smoking and drug addiction remains a strong factor in their achievement of the health goals of the good life. Universally, economic (...) inflation and international business have created an economic interdependence among nations and dealing with the economic problems of one country must take into account this interdependence. When one views the future within this technologic-social-economic framework, he has difficulty sorting out certain directing influences that may shape the future of pharmacy practice in Libya. (shrink)

Where it was once a term of art employed by a handful of likeminded countries, activists, and scholars, but regarded with suspicion by much of the rest of the world, RtoP has become a commonly accepted frame of reference for preventing and responding to mass atrocities.

In recent decades, methodological reflections addressed—sometimes from different points of view and with conflicting positions—the historiographical meaning and value of iconographic documents, and in particular of photography. Historians of Africa have played a role that can be defined as pioneering both in this debate and in the use of photographic material as a source for their studies. For this reason, since the 1970s publications on “African” photographic collections have multiplied. The Italian archival heritage in this area—which largely concerns Italian former (...) colonies—has long been forgotten and in some cases even reduced to bad conditions by neglect and disinterest. The most significant photographic collection on Africa in Italy is undoubtedly the one kept in the Central National Library in Rome, which some time ago inherited the library and archival materials of the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient (IsIAO) that includes several photos. In this paper, I will focus on the Libya fund, that is made up by different types of photographic material: photographic plates on glass (negative and positive), printed photographs, slides and other material. Being the first description and analysis of this fund, the chapter raises questions about the use of photographic material for the study of the history of Libya as well as of the Italian colonial period at large. (shrink)

In 1949 more than 35,000 Jews lived in Libya, but close to ninety percent had left before Libya attained its independence in 1952._ Jewish Life in Muslim Libya _combines historical and anthropological perspectives in depicting the changing relations between Muslims and Jews in Libya from the early nineteenth century up to the middle of the twentieth century. Harvey E. Goldberg shows that the cultural and religious worlds of the Jewish and Muslim communities in Libya were (...) deeply intertwined in daily life and largely remained so despite political and social changes under successive Ottoman and Italian rule. He documents the intricate symbolic linkages of Jews and Muslims in different periods and in a variety of settings. His accounts of traditional Jewish weddings, of mock fights between Jewish teams that took place in early nineteenth-century Tripoli, and of the profession of street peddling demonstrate that, despite age-old images of Jews as outsiders or infidels, Jews were also an essential and familiar part of the local Islamic society. Goldberg's narrative continues through the British Military Administration in Libya, a period which saw growing Libyan nationalism and, in 1945, three days of riots in which more than 130 Jews were killed. Goldberg reflects on how these events both expressed and exacerbated a rupture in the social fabric linking Muslims and Jews, setting the scene for the mass emigration of Libyan Jews from their homeland. (shrink)

The hospital in Gharyan, Libya, operated by Romanian staff from 1975 until the late 1980s was a space of entangled medical governance: it relied on an expat community that adapted socialist public health to postcolonial conditions, and it was a centre of postcolonial sovereignty and agency that tested Romanian modernity and challenged the personnel's constructions of the self (professional, civilisational, ethnic, etc.). This article employs the concept of governmentality to explore public health as a really existing phenomenon produced by (...) people manifesting personal, local, national, and global ideas about government. The hospital in Gharyan was a site of multilayered contestation. The institution constituted a terrain of continuous wrangling between socialist and postcolonial state policies fuelled by development priorities and shifting global health paradigms. The Romanian staff produced a distinctive form of whiteness premised on representations of the local population as ‘backward’ in relation to socialist codes of rationality, pathology, and emancipation. Simultaneously, Libyan agency challenged Romanian raced representations. Socialist medicine transplanted into the postcolonial context proved a transactional reality adapting to evolving constructions of knowledge, subjectivity, and politics. (shrink)

Lifelong learning is becoming part of the philosophy of professional education. Continuing medical education is the responsibility of all personnel who are responsible for the delivery of components of the healthcare delivery system. Continuing education is becoming increasingly obvious for medical universities, hospitals, and health care providers. Pharmacists who practice in a community pharmacy and hospital, and who are participating in residency recognize that the traditional role of the pharmacist is changing. Over the last decades, a host of new services (...) have been identified as a function of the pharmacist [1]. A review of these services revealed a personal commitment to continuing education. It is the absolute need to develop a level of competence that will improve patient care. In Libya, pharmacists working in the community practice setting are pharmacists with a diploma of pharmacy or with a Bachelor of Pharmaceutical Science, Master of Science, and Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm D). The main objective is that the graduates possess the knowledge and skills needed to optimally mange the pharmaceutical services [1, 2]. Patient's expectations from pharmacists are that the medicine should be effective, safe and affordable. (shrink)

If the Libyan intervention goes well, it will put teeth in the fledgling RtoP doctrine. Yet, if it goes badly, critics will redouble their opposition, and future decisions will be made more difficult. Libya suggests that we can say no more Holocausts, Cambodias, and Rwandas--and occasionally mean it.

The moral permissibility of the intervention in Libya largely turns on two fairly tricky assessments: whether the situation was sufficiently serious at the time the intervention was launched and what the predominant purposes of the intervention were.

Can state sovereignty justify privileged receiving countries exercising authority over non‐members in a third country to safeguard their own interests? Under the current migration governance of the EU, state sovereignty is manifested in migrant interdiction, interception and detention policies employed to prevent unauthorized migrants from reaching the EU, and even from attempting to embark on cross‐Mediterranean journeys. While reinforcement of the Schengen region's external borders is a key aim of the EU's internal migration politics, collaboration with third countries regarding migration (...) control has, in the last decade, become a key feature of its external migration policy. In close collaboration with third countries, the EU has managed to curb the outflux of migrants from transit and sending countries. In effect, irregular migrants are prevented from exiting as well as from entering. This article explores the justifiability of such practices, by questioning commonly invoked models of justification such as the sovereignty “model”, with a special focus on partnership agreements regarding migration control between the EU and Libya. (shrink)

In March 2011 Jean-Luc Nancy published an article entitled ‘What the Arab Peoples Signify to Us’ in the Libération newspaper. The article supported the NATO-led military intervention in Libya that followed the anti-government protests of 15–16 February 2011. It is in the name of ‘political responsibility’ that Nancy makes his intervention. I want to explore the question of ‘political responsibility’ in light of Nancy’s work, and his Libération article in particular. I do this by first assessing one of the (...) distinguishing features of the uprising in Libya: the emergence of the National Transitional Council. By setting Nancy’s response against Derrida’s work on spectrality and his critique of the founding declaration we can more clearly appreciate the scope that Nancy’s account of responsibility entails. I suggest that Derrida’s logics of spectrality help not only critique Nancy’s response but also understand the conditions that make his account of political responsibility possible. (shrink)

Collected documents, working papers and the fieldnotes of scholars who worked in Africa, as well as their life trajectories presented through biographic and autobiographic writings, are a rich resource for the social history of Africa. This chapter draws from the personal archive of Ester Panetta (1894–1983), one of the first Italian anthropologists to work and live in Africa in the first half of the twentieth century. After her Arabic and colonial studies at the Oriental Institutes in Naples and in Paris, (...) she lived in Libya until the outbreak of the Second World War, when she came back to Italy as a refugee from Italian Africa. Her ethnographic studies and personal writings, recently deposited at Florence State Archives, are a unique resource for a social history of Northeast Africa. Personal archives of scholars who devoted their life in studying African societies have a twofold interest for historians of Africa. From one side, they preserve documents that can be analysed to explore African societies. On the other hand, they are sources revealing the researcher's relationship with the Africanist discipline and the societies studied in that historical period. Personal archives are, thus, particularly rich documents for a focus on Africa in entangled and global history. (shrink)

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate Libyan journalists’ perspectives regarding the media laws Articles 37,132, 38 and 46, which address media freedom in the new Libyan Constitution of 2017. Design/methodology/approach Focus group discussions were done with 35 Libyan journalists, 12 of them from the Constitution Committee, while 23 of them reported the update of the constitution in the Libyan Parliament. Findings The results of the study indicated that there were media laws articles that did not conform to (...) the international laws and United Nations treaties, which the Libyan Parliament committee approved. Another finding from the journalists was the Constitution should provide and guarantee press freedom, while media laws articles approved to put a paragraph about “censorship” in the press and media as a tool to silence government opposition. In addition, journalists indicated future constitution should redraft Article 38 to conform with Article 19 of the “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” to support the “principles of freedom of expression and information” without control. Moreover, Article 46 needs to be changed and linked to the “provisions of international law on the right of information access” to improve the access and dissemination of information in the media. Practical implications Redrafting the constitution articles in the future can be summarised as follows: First, the Libyan Constitution should provide and guarantee press freedom without any censorship and include clear articles to protect journalists in conflict zones. Second, Articles 37,132 and 38, about “freedom of information and publication,” need to be redrafted to link with Article 19 of the “International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” to support the principles of freedom of expression and information, and the use of this right must not be subject to prior control. Third, Article 46 needs to be changed and linked to the provisions of “International law on the Right of Access to Information” to improve access and dissemination of information in the media to protect confidentiality sources. The most important articles should be implemented (freedom of information and personal information act) because after the Arab Spring revolutions, there was a transitional period in societies and a change in the constitutions of Tunisia and Egypt. They developed legal articles about media freedom so that Libya resembles other Arab countries. From that point, the journalists recommended that all information should be protected from government interference to ensure transparency, combat corruption and protect independent journalists. These articles will open the way to add more development articles to media freedom rules in the Journalists’ Syndicate. Fourth, there are also various types of threats encountered by journalists in their work. In pursuit of their right and freedom of expression, they recommended that Libya must establish an independent self-regulatory media that are free from political and economic influence. Fifth, journalists need licenses for them to work through the syndicate. The new syndicate should play an active role to safeguard the rights of journalists, activists and media entities to carry out their work and end the self-censorship. Sixth, the constitution should also add articles to end the impunity and change the articles in the penal code. Overall, the journalists covering the conflict and war are encountering threats, violence and imprisonment. As a result, Libyan journalists must seek new legislation to defend independent journalism and freedom of expression in their deeply divided country. In addition, they need to have a strong central authority to defend journalists and journalism in wartime, where journalists are regularly threatened, abducted and sometimes killed. Also, the Libyan Journalists Syndicate should stress the importance of the media’s self-regulation to guarantee their rights to freedom of expression, grant their readers’ respect and minimise government’s interference. Finally, they need to develop new laws to grant media freedom from regulations and restrictions, as well as defend and promote democracy, the citizens’ right to be informed, as well as their right to discuss and disseminate information. There is also the need to implement articles in the constitution, articles about the protection of political speech, which would be specific enough to differentiate between what is legally permitted and what may be ethically offensive. Originality/value This study will help the new Libyan parliament after the legislative elections on 24 December 2021 to amend the media laws articles in the constitution. (shrink)

In 1911, the prominent Italian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ernesto T. Moneta and, with him, a number of Italian “pacifists” actively supported the invasion of Libya (carried out) by the Italian army. On the columns of “La Vita Internazionale”, journal edited by Moneta since 1898, Italian “pacifists” not only agreed that it was good and convenient for Italy to conquer a part of North Africa, but showed an enthusiasm they had never manifested before in support of pacifist initiatives. The (...) question is why an ardent pacifist and wise intellectual, as Moneta was, renounced so easily his pacifist ideals to support a bloody war and a harsh repression of the Arab rebels, as the one which followed the defeat of the Turkish army. To answer this question, the essay analyzes the articles published by Moneta and other contributors on “La Vita Internazionale” and discusses them with regard to both the international political events occurred during the first decade of the 20th century and the dominant ideologies of the time (namely irrationalism and anti-individualism). The essay concludes that Moneta's agreement with the colonialist war has been prepared and made possible by a number of pre-war ideological and political influences which had transformed his democratic and peace-oriented ideas of nation, people and state into nationalist and aggressive ones. (shrink)

Postpartum depression is a major maternal health problem after childbirth. It can start at any time within the first year after delivery and continue for several years. It is characterized by an inability to experience pleasure, anxiety symptoms, panic attacks, spontaneous crying and depressed mood. Some women with postpartum depression even have thoughts of harming their child and self-harm. This study aims to find out the status of postpartum depression and the associated factors among postnatal mothers at the first, fourth (...) and sixth month. This study is a prospective descriptive study, carried out in three major health facilities in Misurata. This study consists of a three-part questionnaire. Part 1 covers the demographic characteristics of the participants, while Part 2 explores the associated risk factors according to the variables used. Part 3 consists of the psychological evaluation of the participants. A hundred mothers (ages between 15 and 43 years) were enrolled in this study. The findings revealed that the prevalence of depression is 60.0% and 22.0% are suffering from borderline depression. Development of depression was strongly correlated with sleeping disturbances, the state of the neonate after birth, excess consumption of stimulants, less weight acceptance by mothers during pregnancy and infant illness. There was a weak relation between depression and delivery state, maternal admission to the hospital during the current pregnancy, and infant gender dissatisfaction. No correlation was found with the development of depression regarding miscarriage, maternal medical problems after delivery, previous child sex, maternal age, education, parity or neonate weight. Thus, this study shows that the chance of having a miscarriage and an unhealthy neonate increases with advanced maternal age. It also shows that caesarean section is associated with bad neonatal outcomes, more weight gain and having gestational diabetes or preeclampsia during pregnancy. Maternal sleeping problems are more pronounced in the first month, attributed to the baby's care, compared with the fourth and sixth months. The study indicates that depression is a common state of psychiatric disorders among Libyan women and should have appropriate attention by physicians and gynecologists. (shrink)

According to Bentham's utilitarian mode of reasoning, the legitimacy of an intervention was not to be valued on the grounds of the underlying intentions or the means employed, but rather in light of its (expected) consequences. What at first would seem as incoherent, arbitrary or ambivalent attitudes towards intervention were in fact consistent with his situational and pragmatic mode of reasoning. Rather than a disjuncture between ideal theory and practical reasoning, his positions on intervention reflected the inevitably local nature of (...) his principled 'moral casuistry', characterised by the attempt to reconcile self-regarding interests with extra-regarding interests. The key to this move resided in Bentham's concept of 'effective benevolence'. The 'business of the Deontologist' - and the essence of his principled moral casuistry - was that of exposing the dictates of 'effective benevolence' wherever possible, and Bentham himself took up this challenge in his writings on Tripoli and... (shrink)

This paper examines the different positions that political parties produced with the onset of the refugee influx, especially in 2013. Then, it explores how Lebanon succeeded in “securitizing” the Syrian refugee issue in 2015, after the number of Syrians fleeing to Lebanon crossed one million in 2014. It reveals how internal divisions and political deadlock contributed to the securitization process. In addition to the speeches adopted by the political leaderships and the designations that openly referred to the transformation of the (...) Syrian refugee into an existential threat, it also indicates that after the securitization process in 2015, political discourses emerged that constantly called for the return of Syrian refugees to their homeland. It reveals how Lebanon’s history, its relationship with Syria, the presence of Palestinian refugees since 1948 on its lands, and the fight against any attempt at naturalization affected Lebanon’s response to the Syrian refugee issue. This paper also examines the demographic and sectarian dimension, which mainly contributed to the securitization process, in addition to the economic difficulties that Lebanon was suffering from. (shrink)

Humanitarian intervention has always been more popular in theory than in practice. In the face of unspeakable acts, the desire to do something,anything, is understandable. States have tended to be reluctant to act on such desires, however, leading to the present situation in which there are scores of books and countless articles articulating the contours of a right—or even an obligation—of humanitarian intervention, while the number of cases that might be cited as models of what is being advocated can be (...) counted on one hand. (shrink)

This chapter examines how African multinational enterprises (MNEs) contribute to post-disaster recovery in two contrasting governance environments: the fragmented institutional landscape of Libya following the 2023 Derna floods and the centralised system of Morocco after the 2023 Al Haouz earthquake. Drawing on institutional theory, crisis governance, and innovation frameworks, the chapter analyses how firms develop capabilities such as institutional substitution, regulatory alignment, partnership coordination, and digital resilience. Based on six practitioner interviews and secondary sources, the findings show that governance (...) conditions shape distinct strategic pathways: in Libya, firms rely on informal networks, frugal innovation, and community-based legitimacy, whereas in Morocco, firms leverage formal coordination mechanisms, public–private partnerships, and compliance-driven agility. The chapter contributes to debates on African business resilience, institutional complexity, and the role of the private sector in disaster governance by identifying capability mechanisms through which MNEs influence recovery outcomes. It argues that African MNEs are not passive responders but active institutional actors whose strategies reflect—and reshape—the environments in which they operate. (shrink)

Self-medication of antibiotics is an irrational use of drugs, contributing to microbial resistance, increasing healthcare costs and higher mortality and morbidity. This study aimed to assess self-medication with antibiotics without a medical prescription in the community of Libya. This is a cross-sectional study conducted from June to December 2022 and the total number of participants was 200. The design of the study and sample size were modified according to the proficiency of pharmacists and the medical and non-medical population of (...) Libya. The questionnaire was developed in English and Arabic language and was distributed through social media platforms. The questions were used after a thorough literature search and assessing the validity and reliability. The significant signs regarding reasons for the treatment by self-medication drugs of antibiotics, because of its various drugs of antibiotic by pharmacist (n=80, 40.0%) and family (n=90, 45.0%) compared with experience and physicians by used prescription was 13 (6.50%) and significant sings regarding by nasal congestion self-medication of various antibiotics (n=100, 50.0%). This sign must be practiced based on a previous physician’s prescription. The antibiotics are often self-administered as patients feel that they will save money and time but this can lead to substantial adverse drug reactions, antibiotic resistance, treatment failure and drug-related toxicity. This study respondent's medical and non-medical public of Libya who should be relatively informed and educated about the risk of treatment by self-medication of antibiotics with the development of resistance. (shrink)

This chapter examines the military interventions in Kosovo and Libya (often advanced as successful humanitarian interventions), and argues that they did more harm than good. They escalated the level of killings (by regime and rebels), fanning nationalism in the first and sectarian militias in the second. The general explanations underpinning this analysis are that intervening powers are rarely neutral or impartial, and that military intervention changes the strategies of the target regime and of the rebelling parties. The chapter argues (...) for the efficacy of strategic non-violent action internally and preventive diplomacy externally, as alternatives to military intervention. It notes the successes of non-violent movements in both case studies, and critical moments at which they could have been supported by preventive diplomacy but were not. A second theme is sensitivity to broader ramifications of military intervention for international affairs. (shrink)

Robert Keating and Tom Murray argue that the implementation of R2P has failed despite the rhetorical consensus around R2P over the last decade. They suggest that the behaviour of the US and its NATO allies are partly to blame. These powers ignored the UN Security Council over Kosovo, which other world powers such as the BRICs took as an affront and a challenge. Normative defiance to the liberal world order was the reaction: Russia in particular became less willing to support (...) humanitarian intervention than it had been throughout the 1990s. Similarly, in Libya, NATO refused to conform to the limitations on the intervention imposed by UNSC Resolution 1973. This weakened confidence in the Security Council’s ability to manage interventions, further undermining support for such operations generally. Thus the _manner_ in which Western powers have sought to implement R2P has alienated the emerging powers on whose support successful R2P implementation depends. (shrink)

Awjila Berber is a highly endangered Berber variety spoken in eastern Libya. The minimal material available on it reveals that the language is in some respects very archaic and in others grammatically unique, and as such is of particular comparative and historical interest. Fieldwork has been impossible for decades due to the political situation. Recently, however, several inhabitants of Awjila have set up a Facebook group Ašal=ənnax (“our village”), posting largely in Awjili. Analysis of this partly conversational corpus makes (...) it possible to extend our knowledge of the language, yielding unattested words and constructions. Examination of its grammatical features also reveals that these posters’ usage is heavily influenced by Arabic, showing language attrition absent from earlier data; even subject-verb agreement has been extensively reworked. In both respects, this study casts light upon the uses and limits of social media as a source of linguistic material. (shrink)

Libya, one of the notable African countries was engulfed in political crisis in February 2011. The protests were targeted towards the draconian rule of one of Africa’s longest reigning despots, Muammar Gaddafi who ruled Libya for forty two years without showing any sign of relinquishing power until the avoidable bloody uprisings eventually claimed his life. This paper chronicles the Libyan revolution and X-rays its philosophical importance. It is of the strong view that the greatest political challenge facing many (...) African countries today (including Libya) is the inability of its political leaders to see politics as an opportunity to render selfless service to the masses through political governance. This singularly accounts for the reason behind so many unfortunate dictatorial tendencies in governance in some of these African countries. The issue of sit-tightism in office as aptly exemplified by Gaddafi is indeed a worrisome development not only to Libya but also to some other African countries that share the same unfortunate and better forgotten political experience with her. The paper strongly believes that the Libyan revolution should indeed serve as a serious warning signal to other African leaders who share Gaddafi’s retrogressive leadership philosophy of holding tenaciously to power to the detriment of their countries and their helpless citizens whom they hold in brazen perpetual political captivity. (shrink)

The fall of Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 provided two key opportunities and dreams to be realised: my exiled father, a long-time opponent of Gaddafi, could return home after 42 years, and I could make a film exploring his relationship with Libya in exile and how it affected his relationship with me. I also hoped to be able to contribute to, and complicate, the binary history that had been feeding us by the propaganda machines of both (...) class='Hi'>Libya and the West. My father's eventual return came with complications of perseverance, survival and re-exile. In some ways the filmmaking process itself reflects these very themes. Difficulties of archival access, archival exile, and narrative survival pervaded the filmmaking process and a project that began in 2011 was completed ten years later in 2021. The film was produced with approximately 65 percent of the content coming from archival sources. Of this, 20 percent was from personal archives. The rest would, in theory, require significant financial resources. In this article, I highlight the commodification of archival materials and the constraints this places on the editing and storytelling process. These issues reflect a broader challenge for filmmakers outside the Euro-American cinematic sphere, where archival footage is often inaccessible due to high costs or logistical barriers. As a result, non-Western based filmmakers are disproportionately disadvantaged, forcing compromises in storytelling that impoverish the narratives and histories they can present. These challenges raise critical questions about the geopolitics of archives and the privilege of archival access. How can those who are burnt into the material they seek, claim ownership over their own images and historical narratives? What power dynamics are at play when footage from the Global South is held for generations by institutions in the Global North? How can one reclaim an archival history without reinforcing a paternalist relationship? What alternative approaches can be actively pursued to challenge this? With past and future in mind, restorative repatriation and a process of creative restitution can enhance our histories and provide alternative ways of accessing and contributing to history. Equal access to archives is an opening move towards a filmic restitution that can allow us to reimagine our pasts and rebuild our futures. But only if we walk through the door and keep it open for others once it is opened. (shrink)

The study explores an approach to the philosophy of the sacred, tracing its presence from early recorded history to contemporary socio-political structures. The sacred is examined as a fundamental component of social organization, influencing social identities, institutions, and state legitimacy. -/- A key hypothesis introduced is the genetically determined centre of the sacred in the human brain, which evolved 50,000–70,000 years ago and functions archetypally, shaping emotions such as reverence, indignation at desecration, and numinous experiences. The sacred extends beyond traditional (...) religion into secular domains, including ideologies and eschatological narratives in modern societies. -/- The study also examines the role of trust and legitimacy in state stability, challenging N. Luhmann’s theory by arguing that trust operates beyond mere communication mechanisms and requires a fourth, sacred environment to maintain political order. The collapse of modern states (e.g., USSR, Libya, Syria) is linked to failures in reproducing trust. Furthermore, the paper introduces the concept of egregores – self-reproducing sacred structures that sustain collective belief systems, vital for the autopoiesis of political entities. -/- This work expands the philosophy of the sacred, linking it to macroevolutionary processes, the structuring of social identities, and the survival mechanisms of states. (shrink)

Domestic sovereignty and international sovereignty have both been eroded in recent years, but the former to a much greater extent than the latter. An oppressed people's right to fight for liberal democratic reforms in their own country is treated as axiomatic, as the international responses to the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya illustrate. But there is a reluctance to accept that foreign intervention is always justified in the same circumstances. Ned Dobos assesses the moral cogency of this double (...) standard and asks whether intervention can be consistently and coherently opposed given our attitudes towards other kinds of political violence. His thought-provoking book will interest a wide range of readers in political philosophy and international relations. (shrink)

This study investigates the association of a broad set of variables with the ethical decision making of management accountants in Libya. Adopting a cross-sectional methodology, a questionnaire including four different ethical scenarios was used to gather data from 229 participants. For each scenario, ethical decision making was examined in terms of the recognition, judgment and intention stages of Rest’s model. A significant relationship was found between ethical recognition and ethical judgment and also between ethical judgment and ethical intention, but (...) ethical recognition did not significantly predict ethical intention—thus providing support for Rest’s model. Organizational variables, age and educational level yielded few significant results. The lack of significance for codes of ethics might reflect their relative lack of development in Libya, in which case Libyan companies should pay attention to their content and how they are supported, especially in the light of the under-development of the accounting profession in Libya. Few significant results were also found for gender, but where they were found, males showed more ethical characteristics than females. This unusual result reinforces the dangers of gender stereotyping in business. Personal moral philosophy and moral intensity dimensions were generally found to be significant predictors of the three stages of ethical decision making studied. One implication of this is to give more attention to ethics in accounting education, making the connections between accounting practice and (in Libya) Islam. Overall, this study not only adds to the available empirical evidence on factors affecting ethical decision making, notably examining three stages of Rest’s model, but also offers rare insights into the ethical views of practising management accountants and provides a benchmark for future studies of ethical decision making in Muslim majority countries and other parts of the developing world. (shrink)

Prescribing drugs for elderly patients is not an easy task since elderly patients frequently have comorbid conditions. In Libya, there are no guidelines for the management of medications used in elderly patients and no specialized geriatric health institutions. This study aims to assess the pattern of medication use among hospitalized elderly patients in Sebha Medical Centre and the drug-related problems associated with these patterns. This report is a descriptive and retrospective cross-sectional study conducted at Sebha Medical Center in 2021. (...) Potential drug-related problems were assessed based on the classification of Hepler and Strand. In this study, out of 195 participants, most patients have been given antibiotics (92.0%). The majority of patients have been prescribed anti-gastric agents, vitamins and anti-thrombotic agents which accounted for 75.0%, 62.0% and 55.0%, respectively. To a lesser extent, anti-hypertensive agents, analgesics and antihyperlipidemic were reported by 45.0%, 43.0% and 38.0%, respectively. Almost all the patients have at least one event of drug-related problem and more than three-quarters of the patients had more than one event of drug-related problems. The highest rate was untreated indications which were reported for 77.0% then followed by drug use without indication in nearly half of the events 48.0%. To fewer extent rates were reported: “in improper drug selection”, “drug interaction” and “adverse effects” which were reported for 25.0%, 23.0% and 18.0% of the total events, respectively. Almost all elderly patients have been prescribed antibiotics, analgesics and vitamins. Drug-related problems are predominantly prevalent in the clinical practice at the center. This study highlights the importance of activation of clinical pharmacist interventions at hospitals which can contribute to reducing the chance of risk of drug-related problems events among hospitalized elderly patients and ensuring rational drug prescribing in the geriatric clinical settings. (shrink)

This paper starts from the premise that Western states are connected to some of the harms refugees suffer from. It specifically focuses on the harm of acts of misrecognition and its relation to epistemic injustice that refugees suffer from in refugee camps, in detention centers, and during their desperate attempts to find refuge. The paper discusses the relation between hermeneutical injustice and acts of misrecognition, showing that these two phenomena are interconnected and that acts of misrecognition are particularly damaging when (...) they stretch over different contexts, leaving us without or with very few safe spaces, and they dislocate us, leaving us without a community to turn to. The paper then considers the ways in which refugees experience acts of misrecognition and suffer from hermeneutical injustice, using the case of unaccompanied children at the well-known and overcrowded camp Moria in Greece, the case of unsafe detention centers in Libya, and the case of the denial to assistance on the Mediterranean and the resulting pushbacks from international waters to Libya as well as the preventable drowning of refugees in the Mediterranean to illustrate the arguments. Finally, the paper argues for specific duties toward refugees that result from the prior arguments on misrecognition and hermeneutical injustice. (shrink)

Introducing the special issue of History of the Human Sciences on ‘Socialist Governmentality’, this article sketches out the potential of transferring Foucault’s governmentality concept to the state socialist societies of Cold War Eastern Europe. In six case studies from Poland, the GDR, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and a Romanian ex-pat community in Libya, we focus on health-related practices between 1960 and 1989–1990. Given the rather diverse scope of the special issue, this introduction aims to unfold the conceptual framework and discuss the (...) possibilities and limitations of sending Foucault across the Iron Curtain. First, it outlines some of the challenges late modernity posed to both hemispheres of the Global North: The ‘crisis’ of governability in the age of the ‘scientific-technical revolution’ and advanced welfarism seemed to call for alternative ways of governing complex societies, including a shift of responsibilities to the individual. Thus, in a second step, Foucault’s concept of the liberal ‘conduct of conduct’ is recaptured. Adaptions of his theorising for other than Western contexts are outlined, which called for inquiries into concrete, local practices of governing oneself. Following this imperative, our case studies are, lastly, situated in the multi-faceted landscape of state socialist health care and health-related self-techniques. (shrink)

This book proposes a new Ethics of Political Commemoration adapted from the Just War tradition, reflecting that remembrance is often conducted with political – and even coercive – intent. With its Ius ad Memoriam (what to commemorate) and Ius in Memoria (how to commemorate) criteria, the framework looks to guide debates that are currently inchoate so that remembrance of the past can transform relationships in the present and build a shared future. Offering a moral argument with memorable illustrations, Gutbrod and (...) Wood draw on experiences from Armenia, Georgia, Ireland, Lebanon, and Libya, while connecting to mainstream debates in Western Europe and the United States. Bringing together an ethical tradition with the practice of conflict transformation, the framework fuses two perspectives that enrich each other. The book, in providing a first systematic presentation of the ethics, seeks to engage citizens and scholars, and help those who work to transform conflicts. (shrink)

The question of military intervention for humanitarian purposes is a major focus for international law, the United Nations, regional organizations such as NATO, and the foreign policies of nations. Against this background, the 2011 bombing in Libya by Western nations has occasioned renewed interest and concern about armed humanitarian intervention and the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect. This volume brings together new essays by leading international, philosophical, and political thinkers on the moral and legal issues involved in AHI, and (...) contains both critical and positive views of AHI. Topics include the problem of abuse and needed limitations, the future viability of RtoP and some of its problematic implications, the possibility of AHI providing space for peaceful political protest, and how AHI might be integrated with post-war justice. It is an important collection for those studying political philosophy, international relations, and humanitarian law. (shrink)