This publication sets out the Council of Europe's legal standards for the recognition of higher education qualifications, developed jointly with UNESCO (known as the Lisbon Recognition Convention (1997)). It contains the texts of the Convention, and subsidiary texts adopted under the Convention including those relating to: international access qualifications (1999); criteria and procedures for the assessment of foreign qualifications and periods of study (2001); the provision of transnational education (2001); and the recognition of joint degrees (2004).

Which political entities should the international community recognize as member states—granting them the rights and powers of statehood and entitling them to participate in formulating, adjudicating, and implementing international law? What criteria should it use, and are those criteria defensible? From Kosovo, Palestine, and Taiwan to South Sudan, Scotland, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Catalonia, these questions continuously arise and constantly challenge the international community for a consistent, principled stance. In response to this challenge, Chris Naticchia offers a social contract argument for a theory of international recognition—a normative theory of the criteria that states and international bodies should use to recognize political entities as member states of the international community. Regardless of whether political entities adequately respect human rights or practice democracy, he argues, we must recognize a critical mass of them to get international institutions working. Then we should recognize secessionist entities that suffer from persistent, grave, and widespread human rights abuses by their government—and, under certain conditions, minority nations within multinational states that seek independence. We must also recognize entities whose recognition would contribute to the economic development of the least well-off entities. Drawing on the social contract tradition, and developing a broadly Rawlsian view, A Law of Peoples for Recognizing States will both challenge and appeal to a broad readership in political philosophy, international law, and international relations.

This new handbook provides a comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of the theoretical and empirical aspects of state recognition in international politics. Although the recognition of states plays a central role in shaping global politics, it remains an under-researched and widely dispersed subject. Coherently and innovatively structured, the handbook brings together a group of international scholars who examine the most important theoretical and comparative perspectives on state recognition, including debates about pathways to secession and self-determination, the broad range of actors and strategies that shape the recognition of states and a significant number of contemporary case studies. The handbook is organised into four key sections: Theoretical and normative perspectives Pathways to independent statehood Actors, forms and the process of state recognition Case studies of contemporary state recognition This handbook will be of great interest to students of foreign policy, international relations, international law, comparative politics and area studies. Chapter 19 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The recognition of sonic and visual patterns is discussed. Special attention is devoted to the algorithmization of processes for creating signs and arriving at solutions. Also examined are the principles of constructing algorithm-recognition machines, methods of processing descriptions, the evaluation of similarities, and other problems connected with theory and experimentation of pattern recognition. There is a bibliography of 180 titles.

The definitive work on iris recognition technology, this comprehensive handbook presents a broad overview of the state of the art in this exciting and rapidly evolving field. Revised and updated from the highly-successful original, this second edition has also been considerably expanded in scope and content, featuring four completely new chapters. Features: provides authoritative insights from an international selection of preeminent researchers from government, industry, and academia; reviews issues covering the full spectrum of the iris recognition process, from acquisition to encoding; presents surveys of topical areas, and discusses the frontiers of iris research, including cross-wavelength matching, iris template aging, and anti-spoofing; describes open source software for the iris recognition pipeline and datasets of iris images; includes new content on liveness detection, correcting off-angle iris images, subjects with eye conditions, and implementing software systems for iris recognition.

This authoritative collection introduces the reader to the state of the art in iris recognition technology. Topics and features: with a Foreword by the “father of iris recognition,” Professor John Daugman of Cambridge University; presents work from an international selection of preeminent researchers, reflecting the uses of iris recognition in many different social contexts; provides viewpoints from researchers in government, industry and academia, highlighting how iris recognition is both a thriving industry and an active research area; surveys previous developments in the field, and covers topics ranging from the low-level (e.g., physics of iris image acquisition) to the high level (e.g., alternative non-Daugman approaches to iris matching); introduces many active and open areas of research in iris recognition, including cross-wavelength matching and iris template aging. This book is an essential resource for anyone wishing to improve their understanding of iris recognition technology.

Standards are a feature of virtually all areas of trade in products and services. Yet, although standards may achieve an efficient economic exchange, they have discriminatory consequences for trading partners when governments formulate or apply them in such a way as to cause obstacles to trade, thus enrolling standards among the increasingly significant ‘non-tariff barriers’ regulated by the WTO. This unique and original study analyses the functions that standards fulfil in the market, their effect on trade, and the legal regime based on harmonization, equivalence and mutual recognition developed by the WTO to deal with standards. The author investigates the way in which both the WTO Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) and the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Measures Agreements regulate these three tools, and discusses key topics including: The definition of the concept ‘International Standard’ in the TBT Agreement. Guidelines on equivalence issued by organizations such as the Codex Alimentarius Commission, the World Organization for Animal Health and the International Plant Protection Convention. Parallels between the EC mutual recognition regime and the WTO system. This is the first work on its subject. With its detailed and practical analysis of WTO law on standards, the book is a fundamental reference for practitioners, academics and policy makers in international trade law.