Linda Wood Reporting From the Eleventh session of the open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights

 

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The eleventh session of the OEIGWG took place from 20 to 24 October 2025 in room XVI of the Palais des Nations. Recordings of the discussions are available on UN Web TV. These sessions have been a marvelous experience in both the brilliance and tragedy of these sorts of exercises at a time of substantial change.  In some respects the Treaty effort represents the accumulation of  an extraordinary amount of good intentions and positive moral reasoning. It does represent a plausible application of the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, though not the only one. Yet that choice is the issue; it suggests the fulfillment of a political desire that extends back to the 1970s, combining  the essence of the now ancient New International Economic Order with the techno-bureaucratic legalism of the failed Norms project  the taste for which might have reached its zenith just as COVID augured in a new age. But perhaps most tragic is the embrace of a retro approach that both celebrates a state system that is otherwise ideologically problematic onto which is delegated  the duty to fulfill international legal obligations all the while rejecting the plausibility of private law and markets as a space for the generation of useful collective action. And of course the real tragedy is  the quite naive view--taken as something like holy writ--the the best object for the regulation of system of economic production, and of the nexus of relationships within which they are organized, through a focus on one, but not all of its components. The regulation of multinational enterprises has always most usefully served a a metaphor, or better put as the avatar representing a complex polycentric system of organizing economic activity; it is to the regulation of that system and its relationships, rather than of one of the objects  through which that system acquires its form and power, that will will eventually have to confront if what one wants to do is to privilege human rights (however defined) as a factor in the production of human undertakings. 

But that is politics, a politics that will, like other political projects before it be tested in the fires of negotiation of a final treaty text and then in the trench warfare of implementation within a system in which States can be compelled to a far less extent than the enterprises that are the object of all of this drafting.

 And thus back to the work of the OEIGWG, now starting its second decade of work. These OEIGWG treaty drafting sessions have been quite marvelously reported by Linda Wood, who has been doing a remarkable job of both engaging with and chronicling this quite interesting process (see the most recent here, here and here). So I am again delighted to pass along this marvelous reporting from Linda Wood

It was an interesting and busy week at the 11th session of the LBI.
There were new States that attended and presented for the first time.
The draft report on the eleventh session of the open-ended intergovernmental working group on transnational corporations and other business enterprises with respect to human rights is found here.
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/igwg-transcorp/session11/igwg-11th-report.pdf
The OEIGWG Chair-Rapporteur 2026 Roadmap for the implementation of HRC Decision 56/116, including the intersessional thematic consultations towards the 12th session is here;
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/igwg-transcorp/session11/igwg-11th-proposed-2026-roadmap.pdf
The updated draft legally binding instrument to regulate, in international human rights law, the activities of transnational corporations and other business enterprises with States updated texts on Articles 12-24.
https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/igwg-transcorp/session11/igwg-11th-textual-proposals-lbi.pdf
The paper received 14 October 2025, Articles 4-11, was discussed at the LBI. However, States only gave general comments and wanted more time to consider this paper. It was agreed that all States and non-State stakeholders can make submissions by 1 February 2026. The contributions on the thirteen Chair-Rapporteur’s suggested redrafting of selected provisions of Articles 4 to 11, will be posted on the working group’s website.
* * * 
The first intersessional thematic consultation, to be held in February 2026, will be focused on: Articles 12 to 24 of the Updated draft legally binding instrument, including on the textual proposals submitted by States during the eleventh session.
The second intersessional thematic consultation, to be held in April 2026, will be focused on: Article 1 (Definitions), 2 (Statement of purpose) and Preamble.
The third intersessional thematic consultation, to be held in June 2026, will be focused on: Art. 3 (Scope) and a general overview of the text and the way forward.
Building E at the Palais des Nations is undergoing renovations as part of the Strategic Heritage Plan (SHP). The usual rooms were not available. There are also the ongoing funding issues.
The room used for the 11th session of the OEIGWG was smaller and did not have the same capacity as the 10th session, in 2024. The numbers of people who wanted to attend, were limited and changes were made to the registration process. This resulted in some who wanted to attend, being unable to.
The joint statement on behalf of Change The Law Limited and The Responsible Contracting Project for 16.1., Implementation, was presented.
Links to recordings;
1st Meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1u/k1ulns1or9
2nd Meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1k/k1kb5l3uis
3rd meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1b/k1baa85czq
4th meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1z/k1zspjijyk
5th meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1b/k1bo9mov3p
6th meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k14/k14bssvpqx
7th meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1n/k1nnub555j
8th meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k19/k19fenjwhb
Meeting 24 October 2025 with states only, there is no recording available.
9th meeting https://webtv.un.org/en/asset/k1s/k1s5u0806u
As previously mentioned, I believe some states require the additional support that an NGO can help with. Please contact your Mission in Geneva to see if you can assist.

Links to the documents on the OEIGWG website follow below along with the I have attached the Chair Rapporteurs suggested redrafting of selected provisions (arts. 4 to 11) of the updated draft legally binding instrument. 

Ready for Pre-Ordering: "Legal Imaginaries of Crisis and Fear Dark Constitutionalism" (Martin Belov, ed., Routledge 2026)

 

 

I am delighted to pass along the announcement of the publication of a set f brilliant essays in Legal Imaginaries of Crisis and Fear: Dark Constitutionalism (Martin Belov, ed., Routledge 2026). In its website the work is described as follows:

This book explores the epistemological, semiotic, semantic, and heuristic dimensions of the dark emotions in constitutional and international law. We are living in times of crisis and emergency where negative emotions and dark feelings are abundant. As these have come to form the intellectual and socio-legal context for the performance of constitutional and international law, this book explores their place – especially the politics of fear, but also anger, hate, despair, and crisis – in our current constitutional polycrisis. Focusing on this ‘dark constitutionalism’, the book draws together an international and interdisciplinary range of scholars to consider the place of emotive semiotics in collective meaning making, the constitutional politics of emotions, and emotional approaches to global challenges in a time of crisis, emergency, and transition. The book thereby develops a compelling analysis of the use of negative emotions in the shaping of contemporary constitutional imaginaries, and with it a novel account of the rise of dark constitutionalism. This book will appeal to researchers and scholars working in the areas of legal theory, legal philosophy, constitutional law, international law, and socio-legal studies.

 The Table of Contents follows below. 

The draft of my contribution, Revolutionary Constitutions and their Constitutionalism: The Internalisation of Fear as Process and the Performance of Crisis in the Service of Stability, may be accessed HERE. The PPT of my presentation of that contribution may be accessed HERE. The abstract of the contribution also follows below. 

Reflections on the Victory Speech of Mayor Elect Mamdani; The Politics of Virtual Archetypes, of Avatars and Icons, Becomes Better Defined

 

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I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life. But let tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few. New York, tonight you have delivered. A mandate for change. ​​A mandate for a new kind of politics. A mandate for a city we can afford. And a mandate for a government that delivers exactly that. (Transcript of Zohran Mamdani’s Victory Speech)

 

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The man, Zohran Mamdani was elected to the mayorship of New York City on 3 November 2025.  He delivered a speech to celebrate his victory. The lines above perhaps represent the most revealing element of a speech that was meant, as all political speeches are meant to do, to reveal the avatar and icon that are now no longer contained within the human person, but which have now become the form of humanity only barely contained within the body of a person (Avatars, Icons, and Adversaries--Full Text of Vice President's Harris's Remarks at the Democratic National Convention). In the process, the transformation of the human into an idea defined within the confines of the virtual space of the avatar  that serves as a conduit to the virtual as icon, also invites an equally compelling transformation of the physicality of the spaces over which that avatar-icon (in human form) has a measure of authority into a virtual reality of itself, a representation of the idea of itself that is encased in physical form but that is itself the avatar of a signification that melds together all of its parts into a singular object--one form, one will, one purpose,one idea ("And while we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together.") (Transcript of Zohran Mamdani’s Victory Speech).  Yet there is ego in avatar, and there is a structure to the dialectic routing for which ikons serve as doorway. Mayor elect Mamdani, like Kamala Harris last year, and following a pattern now deeply embedded in culture, constructs his avatar from out of privileged shards of personal history, which are then fused into an identity that assumes a form useful as icon as a function of the inherent ideas embedded in and thorough the representations of avatar. 

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This reframing might then be useful in understanding the text of the victory speech that Mayor elect Mamdani projected out to the idea, the significance, of the masses in dialectics with which engagement is inevitable. And in this case, that engagement was undertaken in the shadow of another avatar-icon, the current sitting President of the United States ("After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power." (Transcript of Zohran Mamdani’s Victory Speech).). What is signified now, what produces the cognitive cages within with a virtual dialectics may  be undertaken, has escaped the human and encased  itself within the idea of itself--an idea that is itself the incarnation of the premises and understanding of the reality of things that in virtual spaces acquire not just value but produces judgment in the virtual with consequences over the bodies and spaces that house these avatars.  One no longer speaks about Mayor elect Mamdani the man, or President Trump, the man, or New Yok, the city, or its inhabitants, as humans. One speaks now only to the ideas and reality ordering spaces that is housed (for the moment) in the body of Mayor elect Mamdani, and President Trump, and the idea of the City of New York as well as that organism that represents the collectivity of the humanity of New York as a singularity, the body of which resides now within the avatar of the mayor elect. 

 

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Once framed in this way, and beyond the usual bromides that are required textual performances within the expectations built into victory speeches of this sort at this stage of the historical development of the U.S., engagement with Mayor Elect Mamdani's  speech given in celebration of his electoral victory becomes a richer experience. One is interested, for this purpose, not in the specific manifestation of the politics of the Mayor elect (though that will be the language and meaning-verse through which his dialectics with opposing political avatars will be undertaken), but in the underlying transformation of the forms and fundamental structures through which politics is rationalized. That transformation suggests a melding, in a modern version of its medieval forms, of the physical bodies of representatives with the idea of the thing they represent. They are not in that sense and in this Republic, leaders, but rather representatives--something that our avatars sometimes forget in the process of their transformation from human to something greater in the virtual spaces of ideas and signification. In the process, one encounters a move toward a politics that is no longer human. The idea of the human--as a singularity and more importantly as a collective object, now drives politics in ways that technology has made possible. It is from that cognitive foundation that one can, without  more, humanize Mario Cuomo (the opening quote) and at the same time reduce that humanity to something that no longer has significance in the virtual space that matters. In the holographic representation of the physical, the physical itself becomes a secondary object--one driven by its virtual self--both digitized and digitalized, operating within the parameters not of human expectations but of the coding inherent in the triumph of cognitive systems that then shape not just the virtual presentations of these political objects, but also, and only indirectly related,  the physical spaces in which they are to be manifested.  

 

It in in these spaces that the idea of Mayer Elect Mamdani will confront the idea of President Trump within the virtual landscapes of New York City, and perhaps beyond. The full text of Mayor Mamdani's speech (courtesy of the New York Times) follows below. It is from that text that one acquires a better sense not just of the well understood ideology that serves to frame the reality within which the incoming administration will function (defined as a variant of American "democratic socialism" the nuances of which are worth extracting), but also the way that this ideology is framed by the construction of identity avatar into which humans now pour themselves and in the process become something different, something virtual--a signification of their "selves" only partly represented by their bodies that are both expressions of that ideology and its consequence, and that shape both--in virtual space. 

 

 

On the Death of Richard (Dick) Bruce Cheney (January 30, 1941 – November 3, 2025)

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Richard (Dick) Bruce Cheney, who, among the many actions, occupations, and activities that marked the outward appearance of his life, served as the 46th vice president of the United States from 2001 to 2009 under President George W. Bush, died on 3 November 2025. 

There may be a temptation to remember the man that was Mr. Cheney through the prism of those actions and life events for which his was most famous, reducing his life to those instants when he achieved great heights in political life and in service, as he saw it, to the Republic (eg here).  I prefer to remember the man at that gloriously fecund moment of his life when he set himself on a personal and public path the end of which was marked on 3 November 2025. And, perhaps, there is no better measure of that moment that when the future vice president of the Republic served as vice president of the C Club of Casper College which he attended in 1963 (for a semester, having attended Yale University for several semesters before then and the University of Wyoming afterward).  Perambulations through youth ought not to invite judgment other than that they tend to set the cognitive parameters against which a person sometimes understand and measure themselves. It is not until the end of a life's path, though, that one may look at on those moments that form the person, moments that may well augur the future course for which a younger person may be unknowingly preparing. It is in contemplation of those vagaries of the stuff that forms the person, and the wonder with which a life's course meanders from birth to death, that magical combination of circumstances and active engagement of a life force within them, that one remembers the man, celebrates the life, and draws from it what lessons one can.

Perhaps there is no better measure of the man, Richard (Dick) Cheney, than in the way he remembered a colleague, former President Gerald Ford, in remarks delivered at the former President's state funeral  in December 2006. 

Nothing was left unsaid, and at the end of his days, Gerald Ford knew how much he meant to us and to his country. He was given length of years, and many times in his company we paid our tributes and said our thanks. We were proud to call him our leader, grateful to know him as a man. We told him these things, and there is comfort in knowing that. Still, it is an ending. And what is left now is to say goodbye.

That was tribute enough for the former President; and it is tribute enough for the person who delivered them in his own time.  And so in memory of both, and to mark the passing of the former vice president  I include below the full text of the "Vice President's Remarks at the State Funeral of Former President Gerald R. Ford" (30 December 2006) which in offering a tribute to the former President also permitted a look at the spirit of character of the man who gave the remarks. 

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Reflections on 石英, 智能社会”研究三题 【构建中国哲学社会科学自主知识体系】[ Shi Ying, Three Research Topics on "Intelligent Society" (Constructing an Independent Knowledge System for Chinese Philosophy and Social Sciences)]; 国务院关于深入实施“人工智能+” [Opinions of the State Council on Deepening the Implementation of the "Artificial Intelligence+" Action; ]; and 以“人工智能+”开启中国特色智能化发展新篇章; [Opening a New Chapter in China's Intelligent Development with "Artificial Intelligence+" (High-Tech Department NDRC]

 

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The term "artificial intelligence" has acquired a protean quality--it is at once fetish, invocation, curse, and shorthand for a range of hoped for or feared transformation not just in social relations in the physical world, but for the transformation of the mechanics of ordering reality through which social relations may be conceived and manifested.  All political and normative organs, especially those created to express and manage human social relations in accordance with whatever cognitive model they mean to manifest, believe that, having created artificial intelligence in their own image, they can, with nothing more than the flip of a textual legal-institutional switch, bend that construct to its will and enslave to as an instrument of to do with as they wish. 

An yet that fundamental premise--that humanity is at the center of all of its creations, and thus centered in control-- is only the beginning rather than the end point of analysis. That is because while humans share this notion of humanity at the center of things, human collectives express this, construct its meaning and realize that meaning through the collective organs that they establish for that purpose, in vastly different ways. Those "ways" in turn, are an expression of quite distinct ordering premises bound up in ideology--the political-economic models through which human collectives rationalize the world around them (in normative and utilitarian ways). It is the materialization of that rationality, bounded in turn on the generative human conceit, that produce the structures of hopes, fears, desires, approaches and solutions that are proffered up within a spectrum of "good" to "bad", vales that themselves reflect both the fundamental conceit and their specific rationalizing premises built into collective orders (eg here). 

And so it is with that most peculiar creation of humanity, constructed out  of generative conceit in our own image--generative intelligence and its ecologies of tech enhanced computation.  Three of the most interesting ordering regimens to have emerged both reflect and further refine three of the most significant conceptual cages for human cognitive collective building--(1) liberal democratic ordering; (2) Marxist-Leninist ordering; and (3) anarchist-fractured autonomous ordering. The first obsesses about risk impacting behaviors that adversely affects rights holders and the self-actualization of individuals organized as identity collectives. If the first em,beds risk aversion as the primary principle of governance the second embraces risk taking as the organization of collectives around markets the protection of the integrity of which provides the only basis for managing behaviors. The third starts form the opposite end of the spectrum--the collective rather than the individual--adds a purpose to collectivization (the realization of a communist society)and devotes its primary energy to the development necessary to direct all human activity towards the deployment of productive forces along a Socialist path toward its communist goal. If the first fears risk, the second embraces it, and the third embeds risk within a more complicated balancing in which risk is not the center but a factor in its analytics of development (in the Chinese sense--modernization). 

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The first has settled on a risk centered rationalization of the conceptual spaces for the generation, creation, development, interconnection and autonomy and autonomy of tech enhanced autonomous decision making and generative intelligence; and not just tech (eg here). Liberal democratic collective spaces like to have things done for them, but they also like to see themselves in control, especially of those who serve them, whether these servants take physical or virtual form. In the process the generative ordering of collectivity has become risk aversion. and they have become absurdly risk averse. That has become the principal ordering premise of the organization and operation of the entirety of liberal democratic society.  One grounds its ordering on the elaboration of rights, spaces, behaviors, identities the condition and forms of which must be preserved at virtually all costs.  Regulation, and systems, are all a function of the prevention, mitigation, and remediation of adverse impacts on these behaviors, identities, conditions and autonomous. Politics revolves around the generation of those things  that are the objects of impacts analysis; and the state (as well as non-state sectors) may operate only as a function of avoiding negative impact. Politics, then, becomes a function of defining categories of things, behaviors, conditions, etc. the impacts of which become the core of regulatory supervision. And those behaviors, conditions, expectation, innovation that produce negative impact (as these conditions and effects are also measured, itself another critical element of norm and technical-standards politics) may be regulated or suppressed (unless that is inconvenient, of course; eg here).  That, in essence, is the spirit of instruments like the EU AI Act, and various variations within the liberal democratic sphere. The EU and UN elites have embraced this approach with vigor that resembles in some respects the zealotry of those who have "found" religion (eg here, here, here here, here, here). It was a sensibility that the Biden Administration also shared (here).

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The second takes liberal democratic spaces, as well as those spaces uncomfortable with the warm embrace of liberal democratic ordering projected form out of developed States in anther direction. This approach to generative and tech enhanced innovation, use, and projection, is grounded on the protection of autonomous decision making rather than on collective risk management. It tends to be aligned with markets driven collective formation and operation, one in which the managerial role of the State recedes before the aggregated iterative activities of autonomous individuals pursuing their own agendas, bumping up against each other, and in the aggregate producing inductive, a sense of the collective expectations, behaviors, values, and protections of the market spaces within which such autonomy is protected and operates. Here markets rather than the State take pride of place--the State itself can be reconstructed as the aggregation of a layered set of operating instructions for the maintenance of the good order of market spaces and the protection of its principles--transparency, protection of rights in property and against fraud and deception, and fairness as a collective principle. This is a space in which autonomous and generative intelligence may be developed and deployed in an environment in which producers may assess, and bear the risks of whatever it is they develop. It is a system that can operate only where the State can tax these activities enough to maintain capacity to police and operate organs in which people may resolve disputes in ways that affirm collective expectations, and one that can discipline behaviors that threaten the integrity of this iterative, inductive collectivity. It is also one in which the role can be undertaken not just be the State but by non-State actors: indigenous communities, like minded collectives, and the like. The Americans tend to  long for  this position  as an ideal but tend to practice something like a markets Leninism (eg, here, here, here, here, here, here).

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The third, and for my purpose today the most interesting variation is presented by the engagement of Marxist-Leninist cognitive cages with tech based and generative intelligence. Both Marxist-Leninist and liberal democratic cognitive cages center the State as the virtual personification (incarnation really) of the people whose collective constitution is necessarily privileged over the individual, to which quite different spectra of behaviors may be tolerated (and regulated in different ways). Liberal democracy encourages a managed individual self-actualization; Marxist-Leninist States encourage collective actualization through which individual self-actualization may be realized. At the center of the engagement of Marxist-Leninism with tech enhanced analytics and decision making, as well as with generative intelligence, is the fundamental principle of development. Socialist modernization is the one key principle, and the one core element, of the integrity of the system and the fiduciary obligation of the vanguard of social forces organized as a Communist Party through which the masses may be brought forward from their less developed state to one in which it is possible to combine both material wealth and cultural readiness, for the establishment of something like a classical communist state of being. Tech and AI, then, are productive forces, all productive forces are pwned by the State, the use and development of which is a central concern for the exercise of leadership and guidance by the Communist Party vanguard in accordance with core principles of Socialist democracy (Whole process people's democracy in China). That gives tech based and AI generative system both a strong political dimension (the innovation of which is a key element for Socialist modernization grounded in high quality production) and a methodological one (tech and AI as a necessary element of modernization the risks of which must be understood as a function of the benefits for collective modernization). Risk, then, is a secondary element to the development of high quality production, and high quality production is valued as a function of its contribution of modernization as that may be assessed  as against the goals of forward movement along the Socialist Path that shapes both production and the cultural development of the human (and collective humanity) preparing it for successful transitioning to Communist social organization. (see, eg here, here, here, here, here, here).

All of these streams of understanding in Marxist-Leninist engagement with tech and AI are evident in three documents that may be worthwhile to read. The is first, 石英, 智能社会”研究三题 【构建中国哲学社会科学自主知识体系】[ Shi Ying, Three Research Topics on "Intelligent Society" (Constructing an Independent Knowledge System for Chinese Philosophy and Social Sciences)]. It focuses on a Socialist engagement with the thinking about AI and tech- based production from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. That engagement, in turn, may be better understood by reference to two official pronouncements: The first is 国务院关于深入实施“人工智能+”行动的意见 (国发〔2025〕11号= [Opinions of the State Council on Deepening the Implementation of the "Artificial Intelligence+" Action; State Council Document No. 11 [2025]]; and the second is 以“人工智能+”开启中国特色智能化发展新篇章; 发布时间：2025/08/26 [Opening a New Chapter in China's Intelligent Development with "Artificial Intelligence+" (Published: 2025/08/26; Source: High-Tech Department National Development Reform Commission].

The State Council Opinions frames the issue for analysis:

In order to deeply implement the "Artificial Intelligence+" action, promote the extensive and in-depth integration of artificial intelligence with all sectors and fields of the economy and society, reshape the paradigm of human production and life, promote a revolutionary leap in productivity and a profound transformation of production relations, and accelerate the formation of a new form of intelligent economy and intelligent society characterized by human-machine collaboration, cross-border integration, and co-creation and sharing, the following opinions are hereby put forward. [为深入实施“人工智能+”行动，推动人工智能与经济社会各行业各领域广泛深度融合，重塑人类生产生活范式，促进生产力革命性跃迁和生产关系深层次变革，加快形成人机协同、跨界融合、共创分享的智能经济和智能社会新形态，现提出如下意见。]

The NDRC essay then situates the State Council Opinion within its operational development in and as modernization of both economic, cultural and human developmental. 

As another strategic deployment by the state to promote technological revolution and industrial integration following "Internet+", the "Opinions" leverages China's three core advantages: a complete industrial system, a large market size, and rich application scenarios. It constructs a spiral development paradigm of "innovation driving application, application promoting innovation," accelerating the full-chain restructuring and deep coupling of artificial intelligence with the real economy, comprehensively stimulating new momentum for industrial transformation, cultivating a new paradigm of intelligent economy, forging a key fulcrum for seizing the commanding heights of global intelligent competition, and building a new pattern of high-quality development driven by new-quality productivity. 作为继“互联网+”之后国家推动技术革命和产业融合的又一战略部署，《意见》立足我国产业体系完备、市场规模庞大、应用场景丰富三大核心优势，构建“创新带应用、应用促创新”的螺旋式发展范式，加速人工智能与实体经济全链重构、深向耦合，全面激发产业变革新动能、培育智能经济新范式，为抢占全球智能化竞争制高点锻造关键支点，构筑新质生产力驱动的高质量发展新格局。

The contrast with liberal democratic and markets driven anarchic systems could not be more starkly revealed. And it doesn't really matter. Each is true to its own cognitive processes and their resulting rationalization of the world within which collectives are organized to manage humans in accordance with their respective logic.  Soon, perhaps, a generative intelligence might do that better than the humans seeking to fulfill the promise of their respective cages of cognition manifested as political-economic ideologies of productive and human forces.  

The text of the three documents,  石英, 智能社会”研究三题 【构建中国哲学社会科学自主知识体系】[ Shi Ying, Three Research Topics on "Intelligent Society" (Constructing an Independent Knowledge System for Chinese Philosophy and Social Sciences)]; 国务院关于深入实施“人工智能+”行动的意见 (国发〔2025〕11号= [Opinions of the State Council on Deepening the Implementation of the "Artificial Intelligence+" Action; State Council Document No. 11 [2025]]; and 以“人工智能+”开启中国特色智能化发展新篇章; 发布时间：2025/08/26 [Opening a New Chapter in China's Intelligent Development with "Artificial Intelligence+" (Published: 2025/08/26; Source: High-Tech Department National Development Reform Commission] follow below in the original Chinese and in English translation.

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Innovation in Warfare Goes Global--Lessons Applied to Sudan

 

 

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The war between rival factions of the Sudanese Arab elite has provided evidence, again, that the techniques and modalities of violent aspects of warfare have neither ideology nor limits--they are instruments the utility of which is a function of desire and objectives by those who use them. In the case of Sudan it appears to be used to eliminate non-Arab Black Africans from contested parts of Sudan. Racial and ethnic cleansing has become the stuff of the ordinary in the wars that have emerged below the triggering points of international (and certainly U.N.) organized outrage. That was again illustrated in the context of the all of the Sudanese city of el-Fasher to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The Wall Street Journal reported that "Sudan’s civil war is taking a jarring turn in Darfur, where an Arab-led militia is now using state-of-the-art drones and execution squads to dominate the region’s Black population. . . . The group behind the violence, the Rapid Support Forces, led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has previously been accused by the U.S. of pursuing a genocide of Darfur’s Black population. Two decades ago, its predecessor was involved in the killing of more than 200,000 people in Darfur." (Nicholas Bariyo, "Sudan Militia, Armed With Drones, Hunts Down Black Population of Darfur," Wall Street Journal 31 October 2025).  Of particular interest was the way in which dual purpose technologies have been used  in the conflict.

The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab (HRL, HUMAN SECURITY EMERGENCY: El-Fasher Falls to RSF: Evidence of Mass Killing, 27 October 2025) was a bit more circumspect: "“El-Fasher appears to be in a systematic and intentional process of ethnic cleansing of Fur, Zaghawa, and Berti indigenous non-Arab communities through forced displacement and summary execution,” the HRL said." (Yale report finds evidence of RSF mass killings in Sudan’s el-Fasher). Al Jazeera noted "The RSF, which has been fighting Sudan’s military for control of the country, killed at least 1,500 people over the past three days as civilians tried to flee the besieged city, the Sudan Doctors Network said on Wednesday. The group, which tracks the country’s civil war, described the situation as “a true genocide”. (here; "Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye and Jordan have condemned the abuses committed by the RSF in Sudan."). Goobal mass mobilizations, however, do not appear to have emerged either in the first phase years ago nor now.

 

Pix credit here

The U.N, reporting follows below.

 

Revista Española de Empresas y Derechos Humanos Núm. 5 (2025): Nº5 - Octubre 2025 Just Published

 

 

Delighted to pass along information about the publication of the latest volume of  Revista Española de Empresas y Derechos Humanos Núm. 5 (2025): Nº5 - Octubre 2025.

The volume includes some very interest9ng and powerful essays that are well worth reading. The table of contents and links to the essays follow below. The full volume of essays may be accessed HERE.

2025 Absa Africa Financial Markets Index Released

 

I am delighted to pass along the recently released Absa Africa Financial Markets Index. The Absa Africa Financial Markets Index was produced by OMFIF in association with Absa Group Limited. The pRess Release explained:

Progress despite global headwinds

The past 12 months have seen highs and lows around the world. Difficult macroeconomic conditions, compounded by a turbulent trade environment and geopolitical tensions, have created challenges for African economies. As a result, countries in this year’s Absa Africa Financial Markets Index have seen their progress hampered by global headwinds. While a third of countries were able to improve their overall scores, the remaining two-thirds saw their scores fall or remain unchanged. However, this is just the surface story. The detail shows important developments in a number of areas.

The index assesses financial market development across the continent through the lens of transparency, accessibility and openness. Now in its ninth year, it provides a benchmark for market infrastructure and an opportunity for policy-makers to learn from improvements across Africa. With support from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the index covers 29 economies in the region. This equates to approximately 80% of the population and gross domestic product of Africa.

Enter your details on the right to access the report.

The most interesting focus of the findings are on those instruments and actions that reflec6ted the sensibilities and objectives of the international al financial order before 2015. Not that these are either wrongheaded or irrelevant.  It is just that since 2015 and especially in the United States since 2025, the focus of financial instruments and political objectives in both liberal democratic and Marxist Leninist States has shifted primarily toward modernization (by whatever name modernization is utilized--development, stronger national economic integration, sector security and the like). Most useful, in this respect, then, is on the growth of market variation in financial products offered--greater variation suggesting depth of market and a growing consumer taste for differentiated product. Bit the object of all of this is development and development strategies and it is hoped that this might be better focused. In that respect ESG and ESG related products are a great vase in point, one that requires a bit m ore drilling down to the essence of the product offered to get a better sense of what it is that the market considers useful or at least market ready ESG instruments. That is a small quibble in light of the quite useful information digested and presented in the report, one worth considering carefully. 

Key findings:

While many economies faced a decline in reserves adequacy in the 12 months to June 2025, countries that prioritised tackling inefficient foreign exchange regimes fared best.

In total, 18 AFMI economies now offer environmental, social and governance-related or Islamic financial products, providing crucial diversification for both short- and long-term investment.

Despite backtracks on ESG goals globally in the past year, four AFMI countries have issued green bonds for the first time this year, taking the total number to 14.

Expectations for GDP growth rose in 22 countries this year despite the more challenging economic conditions.

 The Table of Contents and the Executive Summary of the Index follows below.

 

Literary Encounter at the University of Lille Celebrating Release of Marilyn Bromberg, "Body Image Law"

 

 

I am delighted to pass along this notice of a literary encounter from my friend and colleague  Anne Wagner (Lille):

Join us for a Literary Encounter with Marilyn Bromberg at Université de Lille! The Bibliothèque Paul Duez is delighted to host Marilyn Bromberg for a special literary event celebrating the release of her new book, Body Image Law: Revolutionising Images of Thin-Ideal Women.

📅 Date: 21 November 2025, 14h30
📍 Location: Bibliothèque Paul Duez — 1 Place Déliot, Lille
🎙️ Hosts: Anne Wagner & Jean-Christophe Duhamel

Join us in person for an engaging discussion on law, body image, and social change.
Learn more about the book here: https://www.routledge.com/Body-Image-Law-Revolutionising-Images-of-Thin-Ideal-Women/Bromberg/p/book/9781041129677. All are welcome — don’t miss this thought-provoking exchange!

Book Description, Rable of COntents and Author Bio follow.

Conference: The Art of Chinese Social Media (27-28 November) School of Art, BCU, Birmingham, UK

 

 I am delighted to pass along information about the upcoming Conference: The Art of Chinese Social Media. It will take place 27-28 November at the School of Art, BCU, Birmingham, UK. The organizers describe the event this way:

Welcome to The Art of Chinese Social Media! Join us at the Birmingham School of Art for two- day filled with insights, networking, and creativity. This conference seeks to explore the artistic strategies and visual cultures generated from Chinese social media to reflect broader sociopolitical dynamics in the context of Xi Jinping’s increasing digital censorship and control. How do platforms like Weibo, Douyin/TikTok, and WeChat construct new forms of artistic practice and cultural expression within the new age of ‘digital China’ and the deglobalising world? In what ways do contemporary artists and communities remediate social media to challenge power asymmetries, and foster digital democratisation through reclaiming agency and individual empowerment?

The conference welcomes contributions that can develop disciplinary perspectives and critical inquiries on the art and aesthetics of Chinese social media in the fields of visual arts, digital media, design, performing arts, and cultural studies. Part of Dr. Shiyu Gao’s Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship research project, Emerging Surveillance Culture, which explores the intersection of expanded media art and technology in the context of ‘digital China’.

The Conference Program follows.  Registration through this LINK.