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Disaster mutual assistance (DMA) or mutual aid is a reciprocal arrangement between organizations that permits and prearranges one company to access resources from another company to recover from disaster impacts faster. As a practical tool to access response resources quickly, DMA can be an important element of an effective emergency management process, but the decision to provide (or not to provide) DMA is challenging and involves a number of factors. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a study conducted to identify DMA decision criteria and their weights based on electricity companies operating in North America.

The authors employed a combination of Delphi and analytical hierarchy process (AHP) methods. Delphi method identified the decision criteria that should be considered before electricity utilities enact their DMA agreements. A standard AHP calculated the weights of identified DMA criteria.

In total, 11 criteria were identified and classified into three main groups: responding criteria, requesting criteria and disaster criteria. Of the 11, “Emergency Conditions” within the responding criteria group, “Extent of Damage” of the requesting criteria group, and “Size of Disaster”, associated with the disaster criteria group, had the highest weight. Three other factors (“Work Safety Practice”, “Natural Hazards” and “Availability of Resources”) carried a noticeable weight difference, while the remaining factors were weighted relatively lower.

At present, a decision to provide mutual assistance is highly subjective, based on “gut feel”, and dependent on interpersonal relationships between the requestor and the provider. However, mobilizing and dispatching electricity industry crews is a risky and costly operation for both requesting and responding companies and requires careful assessment for which a cost-benefit threshold has not been developed. This cost-benefit perspective is often frowned upon owing to the intended altruistic nature of DMA agreements and its influence on decision makers. The developed criteria in this study are intended to assist electricity companies in making a more informed and quantifiable decision when deliberating a request for mutual assistance. These criteria may also be used by assistance-requesting companies to better identify electricity companies that are more likely to provide assistance to them.

This study contributes to the literature by examining the current state of DMA in electricity utilities, identifying decision criteria and weighing such criteria to enable electricity companies in making more objective decisions, thereby, increasing the overall effectiveness of their disaster management process.

This paper discusses international regulations in criminal law. Several definitions of ‘limited legal aid’ are considered. The system of the various criminal treaties, together with their additional protocols, qualifications and explanations, is interpreted. The paper also looks at the separate customs treaties and EEC Regulation 1468/81. Finally, these treaties and the Additional Schengen Treaty of 19th June, 1990, are discussed.

As communities grappled with a slew of concurrent disasters in 2020, grassroots mutual aid regained prominence, providing lessons for a more equitable approach to emergency management. Within emergency management, “mutual aid” has come to mean the specific legal mechanisms by which governments, non-governmental organizations, and private sector entities share resources. However, the term “mutual aid” has a much longer history of functioning outside of government and emergency management circles. With a recorded history in Black and Creole communities dating back to the mid-1700s, it has been widely used within communities of color for centuries. To see grassroots mutual aid in practice, the authors present a case study of Imagine Water Works’ Mutual Aid Response Network (MARN) in New Orleans, which was developed in 2019 and responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and a record-breaking Gulf Coast hurricane season in 2020. Utilizing Facebook as a platform, the MARN’s “Imagine Mutual Aid (New Orleans)” group saw its membership grow by 5,000 members from March 2020 to March 2021. Within the first week of Hurricane Laura’s landfall, the group welcomed evacuated individuals from Southwest Louisiana and quickly facilitated thousands of requests for support, providing food, housing, clothing, medical devices, emotional support, emergency cash, laundry services, and personalized care for those in non-congregate shelters, as well as locally informed flood and hurricane preparedness information for subsequent storms. Grassroots mutual aid sheds light on root causes and existing gaps within emergency management and provides a model for autonomous community care.

This paper provides a detailed analysis of the various means available to US authorities for obtaining foreign evidence and other types of international assistance in money laundering cases. The means analysed here include mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs) and similar processes; multilateral treaties; tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) and tax treaties (for a narrow range of money laundering offences); court‐sponsored procedures for taking foreign depositions, including letters rogatory; the use of unilateral compulsory measures, such as subpoenas, for obtaining foreign evidence, and the use of FinCEN and Interpol resources. The initiatives of the G7, the Financial Action Task Force and the OECD regarding international cooperation in money laundering matters are also briefly treated.

The global cooperation and cooperation between nations at differing stages in anti-money laundering (AML) is critical. To improve the effectiveness of international cooperation in AML, it is essential to diversify international cooperation mechanisms and improve the capacity of law enforcement officers in the field of preventing this crime. This paper aims to provide a comparative analysis of mutual legal assistance (MLA) and extradition within the AML legal framework in Palestine and Malaysia. It investigates the gaps and weaknesses in Palestine’s AML legal framework and offers recommendations to address them.

The present paper is solely legal. The method adopted in this research paper is qualitative research with an emphasis on the doctrinal mechanism. As a result, it concentrates on procedures, protocols, legislation and policies.

The Malaysian AML legal framework offers a clearer and more comprehensive framework for MLAs and extradition than the Palestinian AML legal framework. This framework is supported by laws that meet the basic requirements to support the issues of AML international cooperation. Both countries agree that the absence of a “bilateral or multilateral agreement” is not considered a reason for rejecting international cooperation in the field of AML with foreign countries. Moreover, the Malaysian AML legal framework divides the roles well between the law enforcement agencies and the competent authorities competing to Palestine.

This paper would be beneficial for the Palestinian legislative, policymakers and law enforcement agencies to make international cooperation, especially with MLAs and extradition effective.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role private action has played in overcoming the collective action problem posed by Hurricane Katrina.

The paper analyses the post‐Hurricane Katrina situation with regard to commercial and civil society.

The paper argues that private recovery efforts within commercial and civil society challenge this assumption. Mutual assistance, commercial cooperation, and the redevelopment of key community resources help to overcome collective action problems by reducing the high costs of an early return and by signaling the potential for widespread recovery to individual actors. Though most redevelopment plans assume that a large‐scale government response is the only way to overcome the collective action problem.

Even in the absence of a government‐led reconstruction effort, the strategies described in the paper offer Gulf Coast residents tools for solving the collective action problem presented in the wake of catastrophic devastation.

The purpose of this paper is to find Batak Toba society’s local wisdom of mutual cooperation in Toba Lake area: a linguistic anthropology study.

This research employed qualitative paradigm. As a qualitative research, it employed four methods of data collection, namely in-depth open-ended interview, direct participatory observation, focus group discussion which is often abbreviated as FGD, and written documents. In-depth and open-ended interviews were applied to obtain data from the informants who understand the local wisdom of mutual cooperation, the traditional expressions as the collective memory of mutual cooperation, and the terms of mutual cooperation in Batak Toba society.

Based on the research findings, Batak Toba society has terms for gotong royong (mutual cooperation). They are marsirimpa or marsirumpa (cohesive, in unison, and together). It means that the basic rule of gotong royong (mutual cooperation) in Batak Toba society is the cohesion, synchrony, and togetherness. In other words, gotong royong (mutual cooperation) in Batak Toba society is working cohesively, in unison, and together, which is practiced in the life cycles, livelihood cycles, and public works.

This paper presents a new and significant contribution to the social and economic activity, especially socio-anthropology. People do not consider the implementation of mutual cooperation anymore. They forget that marsirimpa (the local term for mutual cooperation) can be used as a non-material capital to improve the socio-economic development. Marsirimpa can improve the social activity because its main principles are based on the “solidarity” and “harmony.” This research gives contribution economically to the people in the research area (Tippang village) compared to the neighboring area (Bakkara village). People in Tippang village get better income because they believe that many works, for instances, irrigating, paddy planting, until paddy cutting should be done together; they do not need to spend money for workers. Each clan has its own representative to manage irrigation. The activities of land digging and paddy cutting are collectively done. In relation to social anthropology, the tradition around the research area is still maintained because it makes people value the social interaction.

Floods are among the most significant and frequent hazards to affect communities in the downstream part of the Ba River in Western Viti Levu, Fiji Islands. They often leave in their wake displacements and death putting thousands at risk of sliding into poverty. Using the recent 2009 and 2012 floods, we examine how social capital aids in post-disaster response and recovery among residents in five selected villages in the downstream communities of the Ba River. Data were collected from a questionnaire survey administered to 97 households and semi-structured interviews with a further 20 respondents. It is conventionally believed that moving supplies, aid and expertise into flood-affected areas offers the best path to effective response and recovery. By contrast, our results indicate that residents of downstream communities in Ba District are using four approaches to create and deploy social capital among them to facilitate disaster response. The patterns of social capital used for effective response include practices of search and rescue, information, mutual assistance and commercial cooperation. Such strategies help to build resilience at household and community levels and reduce risks of loss of life and costly damage to property. The findings can be used to generate policies concerning the integration of social capital as a component of flood disaster response and recovery mechanisms.

This paper aims to critically analyse the existing framework on assets tracing and recovery in Nigeria. It will thereafter provide analysis of the asset and recovery measures of advanced countries such as the USA and the UK. The results from the analysis will yield maximum insight and help the Nigerian Government to make better policies and laws on assets tracing and recovery.

This paper will rely on primary and secondary data drawn from the public domain. It will also rely on documentary research.

This paper determined that the Nigeria asset recovery scheme is likely to be more effective if Nigeria adopts the approach of the UK and the USA.

This paper will suggest new ways for assets tracing and recovery. The suggested approaches/methods are being used in advanced countries such as the UK and the USA.

Previous research papers have extensively discussed the problems faced with assets tracing and recovery from a prohibitive and investigative standpoint. This paper will discuss the topic from a preventive standpoint with little focus on investigative mechanisms.