To cover recent developments on the Right to Water and Sanitation, this blog launches "RTWS Update". The updates will contain news, issues, viewpoints and events related the right to water and sanitation. If you are not yet familiar with RTWS, please have look at the right to water web page here.

Insights into the most efficient partnerships, alliances, contracts and agreements adapted to today’s economy are why this Power Forum is a must-attend event for all exploration companies from Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Russia, Africa, the Middle East, Caspian Sea and other oil-rich regions. The forum brings together the institutions, regulators, commercial and state actors, all who are directly involved in actual contracts and sharing agreements, to shed light into business-critical and contract-related issues around the various relationships, fiscal models and risk management must-haves in today’s petroleum exploration and development, including production sharing, joint operations, joint ventures, service contracts, international boundary disputes and oil & gas accounting.

The UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science at the University of Dundee will be holding a workshop with a focus on land use and water management. Following is the release I received from the organizer: 

"The University of Dundee’s UNESCO Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science is takes a leap into the world of online conferencing for the celebration of World Water Day next month, on the 22^nd March.  This event will be broadcast live via the internet, both through live audio-visual and a transcript of proceedings in real time.  Global participants to this free online event will be encouraged to provide immediate feedback to the conference speakers and organizers and to share comments with one another through an online forum facility.  The focus will be on the work of the UNESCO Centre in the Tweed valley, in particular the interface between land use and water management.  Comparisons will be made with other UK river valleys, in particular the Dee and the Thames.  The conference will showcase global water issues and the multidisciplinary work of the UNESCO Centre in promoting the importance of water law and hydrological science in helping to achieve more consensual and informed water policy and practice.  World Water Day was inaugurated in 1993, since when it has been a focus globally for action on water issues, including promoting fair and equitable access to transboundary watercourse and groundwater resources of freshwater."

Google had recently acquired Aardvark, a social tool designed to post and answer question or consultations. The idea is pretty much like Ask Yahoo or Google Answer, except that Aardvark can search the right person in answering your question (that is, based on your profile). I have asked this question for example, and the answer is not bad. So, now I will ask another question in Aardvark. My question would be: how much is the average sallary in London for lawyers with around 4 years of experience?

I will update in another post if I have received favourable answer.

One of my colleague leads a Creative Commons Project in Indonesia. Tempo reported that the activists are campaigning the license to law enforcement institutions, before submitting them later to the central government. 

I really hope that their efforts will materialize. I have noted in my last posts that some trivialities under our copyright law might hinder the application of CC in Indonesia.

According to an Aceh legislator:

However, a council member from the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), Moharriadi Syafari, said the bylaw would come into effect 30 days after it was passed regardless of the governor’s refusal to endorse it.

Syafari advised people who are against the bylaw to apply for judicial review to the Constitutional Court. “If a revision is to be made by the zAceh legislature, it has to wait for a year. That’s the rule,” he said.