SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Department of Law at Stockholm University:

Postal Address: Juridiska institutionen, Stockholms universitet, SE-106 91 Stockholm
Visiting adress: Universitetsvägen 10 C, Södra huset, Frescati
Phone: +46 (0)8 16 20 00
Fax: +46 (0)8 612 41 09
Web page: http://www.juridicum.su.se/jurweb/

Contact person: Associate Professor Sideek Mohamed, Researcher in European Integration Law, room C 724, phone: +46 (0)8 16 32 47

Research at the department connected to South Asia

Dr Sideek Mohamed is a Senior Researcher in Financial law at the Faculty of Law. His main area of interest is in the field of EC banking and financial law, but he is also engaged in legal resarch in the field of financial and business laws in the Russian Federation and Asian countries in general.

He plans for a research project on South Asia regarding ”Legal and Financial Aspects of the Integration of South Asian Banking”, with focus on Sri Lanka and India. The aim of the project will be to study the legal and institutional structure of the banking markets in the SAARC region, where Sri Lanka and India will be taken as case studies. In this process, it is proposed to highlight the similarities and differences of the legal and institutional structures relating to the banking market and to examine whether such laws could be harmonised as a means to integrate or at least co-ordinate the operations of this vital sector of the financial market in the SAARC region.
The possiblilties for a removal of visa requirements between Sri Lanka and India, and freely using Sri lankan currency in India and vice versa, are also matters that Sadeek wants to cover in his proposed research project.
In South Asia Mohamed has research links to the Law Faculty, University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Professor Emeritus G S Bhalla, at the Centre for Economic Studies & Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, and Dr Tareg Chaudri who had his doctoral degree in law from Stockholm University but now is attached to a private University in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Dr. Katak Malla defended his doctoral dissertation on ”The Legal Regime of International Watercourses: Progress and Paradigms Regarding Uses and Environmental Protection”, on Friday 25 February 2005. Faculty opponent was Phoebe Okowa, Senior Lecturer at Dr. Queen Mary University, London, UK. The thesis deals with the law of international watercourses that are shared by two or more States, the legal regimes of which have evolved significantly, especially in the past two centuries. The developments of and paradigm shifts in the legal regimes for the multiple uses and environmental protection are studied through an examination of different sources of international law since the early 19th century. The thesis deals with the Himalayan Drainage Basin (which includes Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, India and Bangladesh) and focuses on environmental conflicts, social movements and water issues. The PhD thesis is now available on the web, go for the full text document (as a pdf-file)

Katak Malla also teaches on International Watercourse Law, and has been engaged with the Masters Course on International Environmental Law at Stockholm University since 1998, besides lecturing on Nepal at Study Circle Stockholm since 1995, and teaching Nepali and running Nepal course for Sida at Sandöskolan 1995-1996.
Besides this he is the Vice President of the Sweden Nepal Society (Sverige Nepalföreningen).
Katak Malla participated in the Natural Sciences group at SASNET’s October 2000 conference for South Asia researchers in Sweden, where he took part in the discussion. Go for the discussion!

Parul Sharma, Master of Law graduate from the department in 1999 with a dissertation titled ”Comparative study in Human Rights and the Capital Punishment in India, China and the USA. Case study: India”. It was carried out with financial support from Sida and a field study scholarship from the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Humanitarian Law.
She proceeded with doctoral studies at the National Law School of India University (NLS) in Bangalore, where she has written a PhD thesis titled “Childhood Protection and Child Rights; Lex ferenda; Breaking the Cycle of Violence within the Child” now being in the final evaluation. From 2004 Sharma shared her time being both a full-time researcher at NLS and a guest researcher at the Law Department at Stockholm University. Since August 2008, she is working as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Advisor, Group Assurance, Sandvik AB in Sandviken, Sweden.

Over the years, Parul Sharma has published a large number of research papers in the fields of Human Rights and International Law. Articles have been frequently published in magazines such as “Combat Law – The Human Rights Magazine”, “Tehelka, the People’s paper”, “India Together”, “Journal for Sustainable Development”, “Asian Journal on Criminology”, and “Griffin's View Journal on International and Comparative Law”. She has also been involved in conducting a large number of training programmes for professionals and Non-Governmental Organisations working on Human Rights issues, at different locations in India.
Between 2000 and 2006 Paul Sharma worked as a human rights adviser to Delegation of the European Commission to India, Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives and Sri Lanka, and in 2006 she was appointed Legal Expert with EPLC, the European Public Law Centre, based in Greece. EPLC organises and executes training or post-graduate programmes, prepares studies, and is involved both in the preparation and execution of a number of EU projects. Sharma has headed an advanced EPLC course in ”Good Governance and Human Rights in EU Law”, focusing on programmes in Asia.

Parul's work has foremost been about capacity building, training and information to companies, non-governmental organisations and government institutions on issues such as Human Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility. She has above thirty published articles on various topics such as child and women's rights, and human rights.
Since 2004 she has been the General Secretary of Jhamghat, a group working for the benefit of street children in New Delhi. She is also Director of Care House Foundation Sweden, an NGO working for social justice through corporate social participation. It is active in India with projects to combat hunger, child labour and to provide social justice for children. More information (as a pdf-file).
Recently Parul Sharma established a new consultancy agency, based in Stockholm, specialised in various legal and socio-economic aspects concerning the South Asian region. It is called South Asia Experts-Sweden, SAE–S. The agency assists companies and businesses, NGOs, and educational institutes in Human Rights, Child Rights, Corporate Social Responsibility, Labour laws and standards, Competition Law, Intellectual Property Rights, and other similar aspects related to India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Pakistan.

On Wednesday 10 September 2008, Parul Sharma led a SASNET lecture at Lund University, on ”A Globalised South Asia and Human Rights”. It drew an audience of more than 40 people (mostly students from the Masters programme in Asian studies at Lund University’s Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies (ACE), and Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Humanitarian Rights (RWI). More information about the seminar.

ELSA/ALSA India Project

The ELSA/ALSA exchange programme is run at the department. The programme, also called the India Project, is an exchange project between ELSA Sweden (the European Law Students’ Association branch at Stockholm University) and the Asian Law Students' Association (ALSA) at Panjab University in Chandigarh, India. ELSA/ALSA was initiated by Parul Sharma in 1998, and has included frequent exchange journeys by Swedish and Indian law students. The purpose of the programme is to contribute to legal education and to increase mutual understanding between Sweden and India, and to provide an opportunity for law students to learn about other legal systems in a continous exchange programme. The contact person for the India project is Ida Lindholm, ELSA Stockholm. She was responsible for a visit by four Indian law students to Sweden in February 2005. More information (as a pdf-file).
A group of Swedish law students then visited north India for a month in April-May 2005, a journey coordinated by Jonas Cullemark. In the Fall 2006 Indian students will again come to Sweden.