Winning Essay of IX Price Enrique Ruano Casanova: Grameen Bank: The Bank of the Poor. The Impact of a Tool to Vanish Poverty and to Empower Women

Abstract

The secession project of part of Catalan society involves reflecting on how they have behaved and currently behave those states created by secession as well as the de facto ones, which have not been internationally acknowledged, with regards to the human rights of the minorities being created in them. In countries such as Estonia and Latvia we can find rare cases where a Russian nationality is unacceptable for those subjects with a lack of knowledge of the local language; Eritreans living in Ethiopia were banned in Eritrea on their way back under suspicion of support of the new state. In Macedonia constituencies were manipulated not to let Albanians win the power. This is just to name but a few examples. Since there is no general international law which guarantees the new states’ compliance with treaties regarding human rights created by the source state the only resource to assure the validity of such treaties is international surveillance bodies taking action. As for such states with a wording on the lines of «a tenet of acquired human rights» which tends to avoid legal void, it should be the European Court of human Rights or the Human Right Committee of the UN. Regarding de facto entities such as Nagorno-Karabaj, Transnistria or the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a play on rules would avoid such responsibility void and will presume that of the State which owns sovereignty. Having said so such presumption disappears (positive international duties permitting) if one part of the territory is taken by the army of another state, in which case the latter becomes the responsible one. Upcoming authorities could also be claimed responsible if they do not act guided by the other party’s effective control. Such practice proves to be an extremely delicate legal case for the validity of the human rights of the upcoming minorities in both secession states and entities and such case must be corrected, particularly within a European regional frame in order to prevent it from happening again eventually in parallel secession processes such as the one happening in Catalonia.