STRATEGIES DES ACTEURS FACE A L’ENREGISTREMENT DES CONVENTIONS DE VENTE DES TERRES A L’AGENCE NATIONALE DU DOMAINE ET DU FONCIER AU BENIN / STAKEHOLDERS’ STRATEGIES WITH REGARD TO THE REGISTRATION OF LAND SALE AGREEMENTS AT THE “AGENCE NATIONALE DU DOMAINE ET DU FONCIER”, BÉNIN

Dans une logique de sécurisation foncière en République du Bénin, l’Etat a créé, conformément au code foncier et domanial, une agence d’enregistrement des conventions de vente des terres et de délivrance du certificat foncier. En raison de l’application de la loi des finances à partir de janvier 2020, les propriétaires terriens ont été contraints d’enregistrer leurs actes fonciers jusqu’au 31 décembre 2019, période de grâce après laquelle les enregistrements devront être payants. Cette réforme foncière, au lieu d’être favorablement accueillie par toutes les catégories sociales, se voit opposer des stratégies de contournement de la part des propriétaires terriens. En postulant que les stratégies mises en avant pour contourner le dispositif légal d’enregistrement des conventions de vente des terres sont co-construites avec les acteurs institutionnels habilités à appliquer les textes, ce papier tente d’analyser cette situation paradoxale. Pour y parvenir, l’observation participante et l’entretien individuel semi-structuré réalisé avec 10 acteurs sélectionnés de façon raisonnée ont été utilisés. Les données empiriques collectées ont été traitées à l’aide de l’analyse de contenu et de la triangulation. Les résultats, analysés avec la théorie du contournement et du jeux des acteurs, révèlent que les acquéreurs de parcelles et les propriétaires de terres développement des stratégies de contournement du dispositif légal d’enregistrement des conventions de vente pour minimiser les coûts qu’implique l’application de la loi des finances 2020. Ce contournement est facilité par les acteurs institutionnels à charge de l’opérationnalisation de la réforme foncière ; ce qui conduit à l’inachèvement juridique en matière d’application du code foncier et domanial. With a view to securing land tenure in the Republic of Benin, the State has created, in accordance with the land and state code, an agency for the registration of agreements for the sale of land and for the issuance of the land certificate. Due to the application of the finance law from January 2020, landowners were forced to register their land deeds until December 31, 2019, a grace period after which registrations must be paid. This land reform, instead of being favorably received by all social categories, is opposed by circumvention strategies on the part of the landowners. By postulating that the strategies put forward to bypass the legal system for registering land sale agreements are co-constructed with the institutional actors empowered to apply the texts, this paper attempts to analyze this paradoxical situation. To achieve this, participant observation and semi-structured individual interview carried out with 10 actors selected in a reasoned manner were used. The empirical data collected was processed using content analysis and triangulation. The results, analyzed with the theory of circumvention and the game of actors, reveal that the purchasers of plots and the owners of land develop strategies of circumvention of the legal device of recording of the agreements of sale to minimize the costs involved application of the 2020 finance law. This circumvention is facilitated by the institutional actors responsible for the operationalization of the land reform; which leads to legal incompleteness in the application of the land and state code. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0873/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Continuously Non-malleable Codes in the Split-State Model

Non-malleable codes (Dziembowski et al., ICS’10 and J. ACM’18) are a natural relaxation of error correcting/detecting codes with useful applications in cryptography. Informally, a code is non-malleable if an adversary trying to tamper with an encoding of a message can only leave it unchanged or modify it to the encoding of an unrelated value. This paper introduces continuous non-malleability, a generalization of standard non-malleability where the adversary is allowed to tamper continuously with the same encoding. This is in contrast to the standard definition of non-malleable codes, where the adversary can only tamper a single time. The only restriction is that after the first invalid codeword is ever generated, a special self-destruct mechanism is triggered and no further tampering is allowed; this restriction can easily be shown to be necessary. We focus on the split-state model, where an encoding consists of two parts and the tampering functions can be arbitrary as long as they act independently on each part. Our main contributions are outlined below. We show that continuous non-malleability in the split-state model is impossible without relying on computational assumptions. We construct a computationally secure split-state code satisfying continuous non-malleability in the common reference string (CRS) model. Our scheme can be instantiated assuming the existence of collision-resistant hash functions and (doubly enhanced) trapdoor permutations, but we also give concrete instantiations based on standard number-theoretic assumptions. We revisit the application of non-malleable codes to protecting arbitrary cryptographic primitives against related-key attacks. Previous applications of non-malleable codes in this setting required perfect erasures and the adversary to be restricted in memory. We show that continuously non-malleable codes allow to avoid these restrictions.

Brunei’s Sharia Penal Code Order: Punitive Turn or the Art of Non-Punishment?

In his essay, Dominik M. Müller takes an historical approach. He traces Brunei’s new Islamic criminal code back to the country’s independence in 1984, and even further, to the so-called Anglo-Mohammadan law established by the British protectorate earlier in the twentieth century, and to the Hukum Kanun Brunei before that—some version of which may have stretched all the way back to Islam’s arrival to Borneo in the fifteenth century. Müller is the first to assess the Code based on the evidence, albeit from Phase One. From 2014 to 2019, Phase One saw some application of the new Islamic Code to misdemeanors, but the degree paled in comparison with applications of the existing state Code. Looking at a twelve-month period from 2015 to 2016, Müller counts a total of 247 prosecutions under the new Code, all including fines (with the corporal punishments of the new code from Phases Two and Three not yet in effect). He puzzles over the expressions of surprise among the international media outlets at the new Code, given the long history that preceded as well as the legislative history that followed the phased introduction of the new law announced in 2013, and the minor penalties since. Müller then contrasts the international criticism with the local response: feeling under attack, an educated elite and other social media influencers in Brunei closed ranks in support of the new Code under the banner #BruneiUnited. For Müller, while none of these developments should have surprised the world, the fact that they did likely follows from the fact that Brunei is both historically relatively insular and the “academically most understudied Southeast Asian country.” If true, his observation underscores the extent to which more research is required.

MORPHOMETRIC CHARACTERIZATION OF PART OF MURICIZAL RIVER WATERSHED - TOCANTINS, BRAZIL

The aim of this study was to carry out a superficial characterization on part of the watershed of Muricizal river, in Tocantins, from estimates based on given climatic and morphometric parameters. The river basin studied here comprises an area from the monitoring station of River Muricizal, at Muricilândia pluviometric station in Tocantins state code ANA 28150000 (- 7°08’43’’ and – 48°36’37’’, altitude 193m). The pluviometric stations were: code 748002, municipality of Nova Olinda - TO, 748003 municipality of Muricilândia – TO, and code 749000 municipality of Arapoema - TO. The basin under study covers the municipalities of Muricilândia - TO (11.0%), Santa Fe do Araguaia - TO (6.0%), Araguaína - TO (70.3%) and Nova Olinda - TO (12.7%). The watershed is divided into two sub - basins, comprising the total sub - basin area of River Rio Preto (69,978.73 hectares) and part of the sub basin of Muricizal river (86.847.32 hectares), comprising a total drainage area of 1,568.26 km2. The analysis of the physiographic data is necessary, since it allows morphometric understanding about the area, such as land cover, land use, rainfall data, which is important to minimize impacts that can be caused.

Expropriation Foncière Dans Les Grands Projets D’intérêt National Au Bénin: Cas Du Projet De Développement Touristique De La « Route Des Pêches »

The land availability for the achievement of the works of national interest often requires the expropriation of buildings because the State and its communities do not arrange land reserves. It is the case of the fishing road Project that joins in the strategy of the Beninese government to value the service sector and more particularly the tourism. This project encounters for several years the obstacles of the fact not only of the implemented procedure for the land expropriation but also its size and its orientation which varied in time. The adopted approach allowed to make an inventory of fixtures of the situation and to analyze the different options to be undertaken to have a land tax secured to set up for the project. This study proposes a procedure which, while correcting the previous actions, contributes to an expropriation based on the provision of the right of the urban planning and the law 2013-01 carrying Land and State Code in the Republic of Benin in order to avoid possible conflicts which would question at first the expropriations and indirectly, the achievement of the project.

CellLab-CTS 2015: continuous-time stochastic cellular automaton modeling using Landlab

CellLab-CTS 2015 is a Python-language software library for creating two-dimensional, continuous-time stochastic (CTS) cellular automaton models. The model domain consists of a set of grid nodes, with each node assigned an integer state code that represents its condition or composition. Adjacent pairs of nodes may undergo transitions to different states, according to a user-defined average transition rate. A model is created by writing a Python code that defines the possible states, the transitions, and the rates of those transitions. The code instantiates, initializes, and runs one of four object classes that represent different types of CTS models. CellLab-CTS provides the option of using either square or hexagonal grid cells. The software provides the ability to treat particular grid-node states as moving particles, and to track their position over time. Grid nodes may also be assigned user-defined properties, which the user can update after each transition through the use of a callback function. As a component of the Landlab modeling framework, CellLab-CTS models take advantage of a suite of Landlab's tools and capabilities, such as support for standardized input and output.

CellLab-CTS 2015: a Python library for continuous-time stochastic cellular automaton modeling using Landlab

CellLab-CTS 2015 is a Python-language software library for creating two-dimensional, continuous-time stochastic (CTS) cellular automaton models. The model domain consists of a set of grid nodes, with each node assigned an integer state-code that represents its condition or composition. Adjacent pairs of nodes may undergo transitions to different states, according to a user-defined average transition rate. A model is created by writing a Python code that defines the possible states, the transitions, and the rates of those transitions. The code instantiates, initializes, and runs one of four object classes that represent different types of CTS model. CellLab-CTS provides the option of using either square or hexagonal grid cells. The software provides the ability to treat particular grid-node states as moving particles, and to track their position over time. Grid nodes may also be assigned user-defined properties, which the user can update after each transition through the use of a callback function. As a component of the Landlab modeling framework, CellLab-CTS models take advantage of a suite of Landlab's tools and capabilities, such as support for standardized input and output.

Development of a Master Health Facility List in Nigeria

Introduction: Routine Health Information Systems (RHIS) are increasingly transitioning to electronic platforms in several developing countries. Establishment of a Master Facility List (MFL) to standardize the allocation of unique identifiers for health facilities can overcome identification issues and support health facility management. The Nigerian Federal Ministry of Health (FMOH) recently developed a MFL, and we present the process and outcome.Methods: The MFL was developed from the ground up, and includes a state code, a local government area (LGA) code, health facility ownership (public or private), the level of care, and an exclusive LGA level health facility serial number, as part of the unique identifier system in Nigeria. To develop the MFL, the LGAs sent the list of all health facilities in their jurisdiction to the state, which in turn collated for all LGAs under them before sending to the FMOH. At the FMOH, a group of RHIS experts verified the list and identifiers for each state.Results: The national MFL consists of 34,423 health facilities uniquely identified. The list has been published and is available for worldwide access; it is currently used for planning and management of health services in Nigeria.Discussion: Unique identifiers are a basic component of any information system. However, poor planning and execution of implementing this key standard can diminish the success of the RHIS.Conclusion: Development and adherence to standards is the hallmark for a national health information infrastructure. Explicit processes and multi-level stakeholder engagement is necessary to ensuring the success of the effort.

Policy Challenges in the Fight against Childhood Obesity: Low Adherence in San Diego Area Schools to the California Education Code Regulating Physical Education

Objective. Assess the adherence to the Physical Education (PE) requirements per California Education Code in San Diego area schools.Methods. Surveys were administered anonymously to children and adolescents capable of physical activity, visiting a specialty clinic at Rady Children's Hospital San Diego. The main questions asked were their gender, grade, PE classes per week, and time spent doing PE.Results. 324 surveys were filled, with 36 charter-school students not having to abide by state code excluded. We report on 288 students (59% females), mostly Hispanic (43%) or Caucasian (34%). In grades 1–6, 66.7% reported under the 200 min per 10 school days required by the PE code. Only 20.7% had daily PE. Average PE days/week was 2.6. In grades 7–12, 42.2% had reported under the 400 min per 10 school days required. Daily PE was noted in 47.8%. Average PE days/week was 3.4. Almost 17% had no PE, more so in the final two grades of high school (45.7%).Conclusions. There is low adherence to the California Physical Education mandate in the San Diego area, contributing to poor fitness and obesity. Lack of adequate PE is most evident in grades 1–6 and grades 11-12. Better resources, awareness, and enforcement are crucial.