In many African societies, gender roles and sexuality are intensely scrutinized, policed, and often enforced. Frequently, this situation results in perceived deviations being characterized in very strong terms. Many Africans across religious and denominational boundaries seem united in their opposition and criticism of same-sex relationships. In the twenty-first century, criminalization of same-sex relationships has witnessed an uptick across the continent. In Nigeria, same-sex union was criminalized in 2014, an act that witnessed massive support from Protestant, especially Pentecostal, Christian communities. Prominent Pentecostal leaders spearheaded the campaign in support and defense of the anti-gay laws in the country. Reasoned opposition to a practice based on religious faith, doctrine, and scriptural prescriptions is an integral aspect of the protection for the practice of religion. However, there is a palpable tension in the debates around rights to free sexual expression as a fundamental element of legally protected human rights and the equally constitutionally embedded right to religious practice, expression, and exercise. At what point, therefore, does the respect for the free exercise of religion and religious expression come into conflict with the respect for, and protection of, minority rights such as claimed rights to sexual expression such as many LGBTQI persons are increasingly contesting? Framed differently, is the verbal and non-verbal promotion of hatred, violence, indignity, and insult or giving offence to a segment of the population based on sexual orientation a part of free religious expression? How do the Pentecostal arguments against same-sex relations in Nigeria approximate to hate speech, defined as a verbal attack on a person or group of persons based on their attributes such as gender and sexual orientation, religion, or ethnicity? To analyze these and related issues, this essay examines the arguments used by the leader of the largest Pentecostal organization in Nigeria—and by far, the most important Pentecostal voice in the country—in the wake of the legal prohibition of homosexuality in Nigeria in 2014.

This paper discusses the future of migrants with acute heart problems and without permanent permission to remain in the country where they are seeking asylum. What does the country they have traveled to owe them? Specifically, what healthcare services are they entitled to? This may seem a niche problem, but numbers of migrants with acute heart problems could increase in the future. Besides, similar problems could be raised by, for instance, traumatized migrants with acute needs for healthcare services for other serious conditions. The paper identifies the issues and some positions on them. Arguments for and against these positions are explored. This particular set of problems in healthcare ethics creates several challenges, at both national and international levels, concerning access to transplantation, public willingness to donate organs, optimal use of organs, justice and fairness, and potential conflicts of law, politics and ethics, as well as issues revolving around interaction and communication (or lack of it) between agencies and professions.

This paper intertwines the two historiographical concerns of migration and colonialism by exploring the case of Italian rule in North Africa from 1922 to 1943 and by adopting the analytic ground of the environment. The role played by the environment in targeting and shaping specific social groups, forming and grounding specific policies, creating and preventing social and natural transfers, has been overshadowed until now, particularly in relation to Italian colonialism. This study articulates the Fascist agricultural enterprise in Libya around the watershed event of the colony's 1932 pacification. To illustrate its development, it looks at the environment-making processes and transfers entailed in the transformation of the Italian colonial project. This reconstruction contributes to the environmental history subfields of migration and colonialism and invites historians to further explore the first decade of Italian rule in Libya and not to limit historical explorations to the lens of settler colonialism.

This article offers an analysis of the encounter between the two natural environments of the Italian Po Plain and the Argentinian Pampa Gringa through the migration of Italian rural workers. Notably, we focus on the migration micro-histories of Emiliano-Romagnoli, who moved from Italy to Argentina during Italian Great Migration Era (1870–1955). Building on oral histories gathered in Italy and Argentina between 2005 and 2007, these micro-histories show how place-based landscapes of Italianness hybridised with the local landscape of the South American plains through Italian migrants’ embodied memories, labour, and socio-environmental transformation practices. By focusing on Po Plain migrants’ memories and experiences of the lowlands of northern Italy and the Argentinian pampas, we aim to offer a micro-historical perspective on the environmental history of migration.

After more than four decades since its reunification since 1975, Vietnam has achieved remarkable results in social and economic development. With the rapid speed of recent modernization, society has loosened numerous old values related to the family and promoted individual freedoms. Marriage and family affairs, including divorce, have modernized with liberal characteristics. The paper examines the trends of divorce and reasons for divorce using statistical data from the Vietnam People's Supreme Court and from the government's annual population statistics. The analysis compiled and analysed a database of every divorce case at six urban and rural districts in Can Tho province. The analysis highlights changes in the reasons for divorce in the South in comparison with previous divorce studies in the North of Vietnam, discussed in relation to modernization, individualism and gender equality. The analysis is supported by interview data with thirty male and female divorcees.

Priorities in Medical Research (PMR) was published in 1988 by a select committee of the House of Lords. The report ushered in an era of NHS research and development (R & D) that lasted from 2001 to 2006. The inquiry's origins lay in concerns about academic medicine in the United Kingdom, yet PMR gave relatively little attention to this subject. Instead the report focused critically on the disconnect between the Department of Health and the NHS in R & D. This, the committee argued, had led to the neglect of research into health services and public health. To sidestep the report's unwelcome proposal for a National Health Research Agency, the department eventually grafted R & D management onto structures created as part of wider NHS reforms. The Medical Research Council successfully pursued a strategy of keeping the committee's attention away from sensitive aspects of its own programme. The final focus of PMR was shaped by an alignment between committee members with an industrial view of research and champions of health services research. The actions of the various actors involved are interpreted using elite models of the state, and the applicability of these models is critically examined.

The distribution, density and percentage contribution of pack ice seals during ship-board censuses in the marginal sea ice zone beyond the Lazarev Sea in spring 2019 are presented. Adult/juvenile crabeater seals (n = 19), leopard seals (n = 3) and Ross seals (n = 10) were sighted during 582.2 nm of censuses along the ship’s track line in the area bounded by 00°00’–22°E and 56°–60°S. Antarctic fur seals (n = 21) were only encountered on the outer fringes of the pack ice, and Weddell seals were absent due to their primary use of fast ice and inner pack ice habitats close to the coast. Crabeater seal sightings included juveniles (n = 2) and another four groups of 2–3 unclassified crabeater seals, singletons (n = 5), single mothers with pups (n = 3) and a family group (n = 1 triad). Only one leopard seal attended a pup, while no Ross seal pups were located. The survey was likely of insufficient effort, in both extent (north of 60°S) and duration (18 days), to locate seals in considerable numbers this early (late October/early November) in their austral spring breeding season.

In this article, I offer a reading of On Liberty II which focuses on the structural features of the argument that Mill presents. Mill's argument, I suggest, is grounded on an appeal to the value of truth, and is divided into three sub-arguments, treating true, false and partially true opinion respectively. In section 1, I consider what constraints the teleological orientation of Mill's argument places on the case he makes, before examining in section 2 what the division of Mill's argument into three exhaustive sub-arguments tells us about the nature of ‘discussion’ as Mill uses the term. I go on, in section 3, to suggest that although On Liberty II does not offer a defence of free speech in the broad sense in which the term is often now used, we should be optimistic about the chances of finding such a defence in On Liberty III.

The article focuses on the actions of the High Council for Immovable Historic Works and Monuments (HC), which was active from 1951 to 1983 as the sole decision-maker in issues of historic preservation for all historic structures and sites in Turkey. The HC archives reveal a historical and political framework for understanding the context within which the HC operated. Expert knowledge, especially in the conservation of historic cities, has been a powerful instrument, although the use of this instrument depended on the political context. The HC extended its authority in the 1950s, operating under a conservative autocratic government. In the 1960s and 1970s, on the other hand, when central power was lacking and society was dominated by political violence, chaos and economic instability, the HC could reinforce and exercise its power to raise standards in historic preservation in line with the international conservation movement.

The Rookery of London's St Giles-in-the-Fields became the city's most notorious slum by the eighteenth century. This article asks why? Why there, why then and why for so long? Building on existing research about urban development and the failure of local government, by considering the geography, economics and legal influences acting upon the space and the people who interacted with it over the long durée, it becomes clear that the Rookery of St Giles-in-the-Fields was always high risk because of happenstance of geography, but that a lack of leadership from its owners and a system of urban upkeep that distributed responsibility too widely led to its longevity and the depth of its misfortune.