In the December issue of the Bulletin of the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization, we bring an interview with Christian F. Rostbøll, Professor of renowned Copenhagen University, on the relationship between freedom of expression and religious tolerance. Bulletin is available here.

In the November issue of the Bulletin of the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization, Petr Přibyla interviews Anja Mihr, Associate Professor of renowned Utrecht University, on the relationship between human rights and democratization. Bulletin is available here.

It is a great pleasure to present you a new issue of our biannual Bulletin. The highlight of the issue is the interview with one of the most influential world philosophers of the last decades - Peter Singer. Moreover, we inform about new human rights development in the Czech Republic. The English issue of the CCHRD Bulletin is available here.

Publication presents study of gender in psychotherapy and counselling using mainly social constructionism as a theoretical point of departure. Main goal is to contribute to discussion about how gender perspective might be applied in the psychology, both on theoretical and practical level. The book can be ordered here.

Czech organised crime has not yet received in-depth academic treatment, one of the reasons being that it has never been a conspicuous and easy-to-define phenomenon. The present book represents a "qualitative" reaction to this state of affairs in social scientific research. The book can be ordered here.

In the October issue of the CCHRD Bulletin, Martin Kopa writes about his experience as an intern with the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Our member Monika Mareková has been serving as a UN youth delegate and even held a speech in the UN General Assembly in New York and chatted with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. You can read all about her experience in our Bulletin. The current issue of the CCHRD Bulletin is available here.

The book aims to introduce urban planning from the perspective of urban sociology. It attempts to find out why urban planning is so seldom studied in sociology, points out the interconnections between the two disciplines, and gives arguments for a more substantial research on planning in urban sociology.

September issue of the CCHRD Bulletin features the second part of the exclusive interview with Peter Singer, a well known professor at Princeton University, concerning euthanasia, abbortion or animal rights. You will also find some firsthand human rights news from Luxembourg written by Helena Bončková. The current issue of the CCHRD Bulletin is available here.

New issue of the Czech Journal of Political Science (3/2011) features the English study „The Unclear Border between Internal and External Security in the European Union: Impact of the Lisabon Treaty" by Tomáš Weiss. The section of articles comprises the text „The Term Crisis in the Political Sphere: An Attempt Towards Conceptualisation" by Juraj Laššuth; the text „Institutions as the Key to EU Communication Policy?" by Michaela Kozlová and Petr Kaniok; or the article „The European Commission Register of Interest Representatives: Expectation and Reality" by Markéta Pitrová and Veronika Zatloukalová. In the section of Materials you can find the text by Pavla Dočekalová „Efforts Towards Settlement of the Transdniestrian Conflict: The Role and Activities of the OSCE". As usual, you can find reviews of three selected books in the issue.

In the summer double issue of the CCHRD Bulletin we would like to highlight an interview with Peter Singer, a well known philosopher and professor of bioethics at Princeton University, who gave an exclusive interview to our intern Petr Přibyla during his visit at Melbourne University. You can find the first part of the interview concerning global poverty, humand rights, and other issues here.

New issue of the Czech Journal of Political Science (2/2011) features a study by Lukas Linka and Tomas Lacina "What Influences the Unity of the Czech Parliamentary Party Groups?". The section of articles comprises the English text "Territorial and Participatory Aspects of the Development of Local Democracy in Slovenia"; the text by Milos Brunclik "Cause of the Rise of Radical Right-wing Populism in Sweden"; the text "Consolidation of left in the Czech Party System: International Relations or Processes" by Miroslav Mares.

The book Coalition Government in Central Europe (1990-2010) builds on existing scholarly literature dealing with the issue of governments and governing in (mainly) Western European countries, and explores this topic in the context of the four Central European countries with a history of Communist regimes. Consisting primarily of four case studies, the volume focuses on the impact of particular political and party systems on the character of government(s). The book can be ordered here.

June issue of the CCHRD Bulletin features several interesting texts. Jan Lhotský from Faculty of Law, Masaryk University, writes a report from Geneva from a perspective of a direct participant in the negotiations of the UN Human Rights Council. Another promising article is an interview with Dr Zaid Eyadat, professor of political science and international relations at the University of Jordan, who had recently taught a course on islam and human rights at the Faculty of Social Studies. The bulletin is available here.

The book named Selected Security Threats and Risks in the 21st Century reflects and discusses increasingly important issues. The authors of particular chapters present the texts that deal with security phenomena of the modern times. They aim to provide the reader with the most  precise and understandable explanations of these complex problems. The book can be ordered here.

Following the tradition of past successful Symposiums, editors of Global Politics decided to focus this time on recent popular uprisings in the Arab World. It is our great pleasure to publish the answers of Sheila Carapico, Marek Čejka, Katarina Dalacoura, Jack A.Goldstone, Hilal Khashan, Fred H. Lawson, Karim Mezran and Yezid Sayigh from institutions like George Mason University, London School of Economics, Johns Hopkins University, King's College London or American University of Beirut.

May issue of the bulletin features number of interesting texts, the most unusual probably being the article on the human rights activism carried out by ex-president of the International Automobile Federation, Max Mosley, who made a complaint to the ECHR on Great Britain stating that it had not protected his privacy after his sexual encounters had been revealed by the press. The topic of May issue is nonetheless Robert Fremr's candidacy for the International Criminal Court. The process of candidacy as well as the chances of Czech candidate are being discussed in the interview by Ľubomír Majerčík with Renáta Klečková from the Czech MFA's Department of International Law. The Bulletin is available here.

The publication Political Economy of International Relations aims to apply the optics of the International Political Economy as a scholarly discipline on wide and extremely complex topic of interrelation between political power and economic flows. This discipline falls under the field of international relations and is mostly defined by its research subject, which is the dynamic relationship between politics and the state, on the one hand, and economic flows and the market, on the other, within the environment of international relations. The book may be ordered here.

April issue of the Bulletin published by the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization is now available. It features the interview with Jan Kaminek on his observation mission in Sudan, text by Petr Schmied, current director of the People in Need mission in Cambodja, on his studies at Oxford Brookes University and other topics. Also, Hubert Smekal published in this Bulletin his text on the reaction of the EU to the revolutionary developments in the Middle East. The Bulletin is available here.

It is our great pleasure to present you the second issue of the Czech Republic Human Rights Review. While we publish our newsletter on human rights from all over the world in Czech monthly, you will find an overview of main developments in the Czech Republic and Slovakia in the English bulletin bi-annually.

The Centre for Human Rights and Democratization has only been established recently, yet we are the first institution of its kind in the Czech Republic, publishing on the topic and organizing conferences and seminars. If you are interested in human rights developments and questions both in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, we would be happy to assist you with our expertise. The Review is available here.

This collection includes fifteen essays dealing with the issue of the right to privacy. The authors attempt to analyze in legal terms those situations when our comfort and well-being comes at a fairly high cost: We are monitored by surveillance cameras, we leave a trace of which websites we have visited while browsing the internet, our mobile phones allow continuous signal tracking, databases of personal information are being created, satellites keep track of our car's location, we subject our bodies to security screening, and so on. The book may be ordered here.

The Czech Journal of Political Science (1/2011) features a study by Petr Kratochvíl and Ondřej Šimon "The EU as an Actor: The Study of Recognition as a Dimension of EU Actorness". The section of articles comprises the English text on the Czech organized crime written by Tomáš Šmíd and Petr Kupka "Czech Organized Crime: Structural Development and Activities of Czech Organized Crime", text written by Jakub Charvát named "The Electoral Bonus Mechanism and Greek Variant of Electoral Reform in View of Results of Elections to the Czech Chamber of Deputies", and the paper on "The CDU/CSU Approach Towards EU Enlargement: Do the CDU/CSU Form One Entity in the European Parliament?" by Michal Vít and Petr Kaniok. The article "Trends in the Development of Public Diplomacy in Today's Foreign Policy" by Lukáš Novotný is available in the section of materials.

March issue of the Bulletin features number of articles, news, review of the book on the ECHR, interview with Australian student of law, and a report from a conference in Mexico, among other things. The main article is written by Hubert Smekal, current recipient of the Fulbright scholarship at the prestigious University of California in Berkeley, USA, who analyzes the Test-Achats case. The Bulletin is available here.

The book aims to narrow the gap in the Czech social science production. This gap lies in the absence of the text dealing with development of the political system in the Czech countries from the first constitutional experiments between 1848 and 1849 until the fall of the socialist regime in 1989. The authors (Balík, S., Hloušek, V., Holzer, J., Šedo, J.) strive not to double the existing historical tradition - on the contrary, they aim to analyze the development of the modern Czech politics from the political science perspective in order to conduct a classification of the phases of its development. The book can be ordered here.

Space Policy is a serious science field in the world. It covers international space law, political science, sociology, technology last but not least modern history. Economics of space is restricted only to costing and surely is not the core of Space Policy. Economic thinking and applied economic policy marginalize the role of Space Exploration in economics. Economics of Space is actually poor in economics and economic theories. This book collected the few of economics of Space and added a deeper analysis of the topic. The book may be ordered here.

February Issue of the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization Bulletin features number of current texts on the questions that are being rather overlooked in the Czech Republic, the main topic of the Bulletin is nevertheless the one of revolutions in Arab world which gains lots of media attention. In the article on the role of social networks in contemporary revolution events, Petr Přibyla tries to moderate the enthusiasm of technological optimists and turns his attention towards the real problems of the region's inhabitants. In the February issue, we also put together an outline of current scholarly articles with human rights focus. The Bulletin is available here.

The book Resource Conflicts: Selected Cases deals with a highly interesting phenomenon that has gained notoriety in the last 20 years. The issue of clashes over crude oil, water, precious minerals and other commodities certainly is not limited to contemporary developments; a deeper historical analysis would reveal that virtually all wars in history were waged because of material considerations, frequently over some kind of natural resource. Conflicts over arable soil, access to water, wood, gold and later crude oil, gas or coal thus have much longer history than the last 20 years.

In the first Bulletin of the year 2011, we would like to draw your attention to the article by Helena Bončková on a question of communist past of judges in the Czech Republic. The text deals not only with a decision of the Constitutional Court which enabled publication of the information on comunist past of the judges, but also with other circumstances of the entire debate. Among other articles featured in the January issue, there is also an interview with Pakistani fighter for human rights Mukhtār Mā‘ī who has been recently awarded a honorary PhD by a Canadian Laurentian University. Monika Mareková interviewed Ms Mā‘ī on this occasion. The Bulletin is available here.

Filip Černoch, Head of the Energy Section, published an article 'Energy Policy of the EU after Lisbon Treaty' in the Global Politics journal. The text analyzes the changes in the EU energy policy after the Lisbon Treaty. The main goal of the text is to assess whether the creation of a particular chapter devoted to energy and the fact that the energy became part of the Shared competencies resulted in a real shift in communitarization of a given area. The text is available here.

Czech EU presidency of the first half of 2009 can be associated with all kinds of adjectives. Except for one - boring. Six months when Czech Republic „stayed in the limelight" was not a boring period neither for Czech politics nor for the European Union. Gas crisis, Entropa, speech of President Vaclav Klaus in the European Parliament, Barack Obama's visit in Prague and fall of the government - this is a list of the most attractive events of the Czech Presidency. The book has been published in Czech and can be ordered here.

The book „Levels of Justice: Liberalism, Cosmopolitanism and Human Rights" pursues two general goals: First, to sketch in basic terms the debate on the issue of transnational or global justice. Second, by means of a critical exposition of the main points of cosmopolitan theories of justice, the author wishes to show that the competing and more moderate view of a global extension of principles and theories of justice is more plausible.The book has been published in Czech and can be ordered here.

In december 2010, new issue of the Bulletin of the Azerbaijan and Caspian Studies Center has been published with focus on bilateral relations between Caspian and European countries. It analyzes these relations from many perspectives, including foreign policy, economy, but also security. Can Germany act as a mediator of the Caucasus? What are the priority areas for the Czech diplomacy towards Southern Caucasus? These are just a few examples of questions answered by the new bulletin, available here.

The last issue of the Bulletin in 2010 is focusing on the WikiLeaks phenomenon in terms of human rights. Data leaks show US embassies engagement in investigation of the events linked to the US war against terrorism. To remind the most important developments in the world of human rights during the last twelve months we also prepared a summary of the events for the 2010. Bulletin is available here.

The article analyses how the standpoints of political parties on energy related issues are formed. The effect of the process of forming these standpoints on energy policy in general in the Czech Republic, the divergence among ideologies (coming out not only from the election programs), and other factors, as well as the parties' ideological continuity in time are particularly emphasized. The text is available here.

The november issue of the Bulletin has just been published. First of all, it contains an interview with former Force Commander of UNAMIR, The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, which was conducted exclusively for the Bulletin in Canada by Monika Mareková. Another interesting text is the one written by Petr Preclík who served as an electoral observer in African Guinea and can thus offer critical view on current ethos, weaknesses and perspectives of the global democratization project. The main topic of the Bulletin is an article written by Helena Bončková named Human Rights Harvest in Luxembourg, where the author analyzes human rights judicature of the European Court of Justice of the past two months. The Bulletin is available here.

The book named "Selected Security Threats and Risks of the 21st Century" is attempting to describe and discuss some of the security threats and risks which have been gaining bigger importance over the last years. The authors of particular chapters were trying to present readable texts which are backed up by relevant informations from primary sources or literature. The topics included in the book discuss serious problems and trends of current security research. The book has been published in Czech and is available for order here.

Global Politics journal published two studies concerning the issues of energy security in cooperation with the IIPS MU. The studies were written by Tomáš Vlček, Anna Leshenko and Ivana Týčová. This rapidly expanding research topic within the international relations is and will be in future closely analyzed by the IIPS MU researchers. There is also a growing offer of the courses on these topics at the Faculty of Social Studies. Both texts are accessible at the GP website.

The topic of October issue of the Bulletin is Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to Chinese dissident Liou Siao-po. This event has provoked the discussions on the topic of human rights in China, but also on the relations between the USA and China and US foreign policy. The article by Lukáš Hoder follows up on the September Bulletin and shows the risks of excessive pressure from the US side towards China not only in human rights domain. Will pragmatic President of the USA want to risk worsening of fragile relations with China due to human rights? The bulletin is accessible here.

English edition of the Bulletin of the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization has just been published. It contains text on the Czech "opt-out" from the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, text on the dissolution of the xenophobic Workers' Party by the Supreme Administrative Court, text on the sterilization of Roma women, text on the Labsi case and other articles. You can download the Bulletin here.

IIPS Energy Section's members Filip Černoch, Hedvika Koďousková and Anna Leshchenko have prepared an analysis for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic entitled "Russian Activities in the LNG-Exporting Countries: The Impact on the Energy Security of the EU" in cooperation with Petra Kuchyňková, member of the Department of International Relations and European Studies. The analysis elaborates on the strategies employed by the Russian Federation both generally on the natural gas and LNG markets and more precisely in countries belonging to the most significant LNG producers (typically Qatar, exporters from the North African region). Moreover, the analysis presented policy recommendations which should lead to strengthening of the energy security of the EU. The conclusion is available here.

September issue of the Bulletin of the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization has just been published. The main topic of this issue is existing U.S. foreign policy under Obama from the human rights point of view. On which does the change announced by president Obama when assuming office lie? How does real foreign policy look like two years after the end of George W. Bush presidency? Traditionally, you will also find articles on international legal justice as well as on development of human rights in the European context in this issue. The Bulletin is available here in the Czech language.

The relation between the EU and the Russian Federation in the energy arena is often labeled as a dependence, in a more moderate view as an interdependence. This widely accepted opinion is disputed by Tomáš Vlček, who sees the interdependent relation as disrupted and moved rather towards the dependency of Russia on the EU, definitely not vice versa. The article is available in the September issue of Mezinarodni politika magazine.

This theses connects together the sociological interest in utopia and city and urban planning. Classical social utopias are one of the main sources of the discipline of urban planning. In the work of utopist as well as later some of the architects and urban planners is often exercised the idea of the influence of ideal material environment on the social conditions of the society; it is both: planning of urban environment and planning of its society. There exists a precondition that a specific (urban) milieu is adequate for a specific type of inhabitants. In case of so called urban utopias is this type of assumption evident. The book has been published in Czech and can be ordered here.

Summer issue of the Bulletin of the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation has just been published. The topic of this issue is the study of human rights in Budapest. Aside from the articles on human rights in the Czech Republic and international criminal justice, there are thus also texts about the Total Law summer school in Budapest and about a study of Human Rights LL.M. at CEU in the same city. The bulletin is available here in the Czech language.

June issue of the Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization Bulletin has just been published. The main topic of this issue is a very interesting legal dispute between two academics, on which Hubert Smekal reports under the heading "Fighting for Academic Freedom in Paris". How much criticism is too much criticism when it comes to a book review of your colleague's book in a scholarly journal? How should an author's request for a withdrawal of the review be treated? Bulletin is available in the Czech language here.

In the study of the Czech Centre of Human Rights and Democratization, Monika Mareková and Katarína Šipulová show that Slovakia has violated its international legal obligations by the recent banishment of Algerian citizen Mustafa Labsi. The analysis is available here.

In the CCHRD analysis Helena Bončková and Hubert Smekal prove that recently negotiated "exemption" from the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union doesn't have to affect the cases from which it should protect us according to the negotiators. More precisely, the problem, on which this exemption allegedly reacts, most probably doesn't exist at all. The analysis is available here.

The Czech Centre for Human Rights and Democratization has just published May issue of its Bulletin. Aside from papers on human rights protection in Europe and worldwide, the new issue also features an analysis of human rights related topics in the programs of Czech political parties before the upcoming parliamentary elections. We would like to know your opinions concerning this issue - our Facebook page is ready to receive any feedback you may wanna share. Bulletin is available here and has been published in the Czech language.

In April 2010, Bulletin of the Azerbaijan and Caspian Studies Center has been issued. It contains articles on the EU relations towards Central Asia in the context of energy (Irena Buršová), relations between the European Union and Central Asia (Peter Plenta), regime change in Georgia (Ondrej Schütz), interview with Altai Efendiev from the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Jana Kovačovská), interview with Tim Gould from the International Energy Agency in Paris (Jana Kovačovská), article on political and security involvement of the EU in the South Caucasus conflict resolution (Valer Lomuashvili) and article on the relations between Georgia and the EU (Jan Husák). The Bulletin has been published in the Czech language and is available here.

Filip Černoch, Director of the Energy Security Section of the IIPS MU, has published an article in the E15 magazine named The Czech Republic in the Coal War. "If territorial limits concerning coal mining aren't broken, one million inhabitants of the Czech Republic will be in danger of lack of heat in five years' time," The Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic said. Was this statement a desperate appeal to politicians in hope for achieving an order in the topic, or was it just an alarming rumour? The article is available here.

Since 1989 the nature of the electoral campaigns have rapidly changed, they have also brought new aspects into political communication such as professionalization, negative marketing etc. Together with political marketing sophisticated techniques used for analyzing electoral market emerged. Of course this area caught the attention of political science. This publication is a contribution to developing research within political marketing in the Czech Republic. It focuses on Elections 2006 in the Czech Republic and brings case studies of selected electoral campaigns. The campaigns of 2006 represent a milestone in the brief campaign history in the Czech Republic. The book has been published in the Czech language and is available for order here.