This article is an overview of the structure of the Bahamian financial system. After the financial crisis in the United States, the Bahamian financial structure showed fragile growth. Tourism, the main source of income for the domestic economy, weakened owing to the U.S. crisis. The increase in oil prices was the key reason for the destroyed infrastructure. However, amidst the vulnerabilities, the banking sector showed stability with high capital and liquidity and sustained challenges; the insurance sector also showed significant improvement. The current financial framework needs to be strengthened, and the mission recommends several reforms to handle financial shocks.

This book focuses on the complex issues of tourism development, governance and sustainability in the long-standing popular island destination, The Bahamas, where tourism remains one of the primary fiscal industries. The book achieves this by looking at the impacts of mass tourism development from social, economic and environmental perspectives; panarchy and resilience; assessing sustainability; moving towards a blue economy; impacts of climate change and innovative alternative tourism offerings to ensure sustainable tourism – a welcomed but challenging essential contemporary focus of the tourism industry. It further looks at how development, governance and sustainability come together in the aftermath of a recent natural disaster, hurricane Dorian, which proved to be a strong catalyst for action, innovation and change in The Bahamas. Given the complexity of these key concepts and The Bahamas as an established popular tourism destination archipelago which relies so heavily on the industry, this book offers significant insight for other tourism regions and will therefore be essential reading for upper-level students and academics in the field of Tourism research.

The Bahamian economy began a tepid recovery in 2010, following a sharp recession in 2008 and 2009 in the wake of the global financial crisis. Real GDP grew by about 1 percent. The rebound was driven by the trade, hospitality, transport, and government services sectors. Executive Directors welcomed the gradual recovery of the Bahamian economy. They also called for steadfast implementation of reforms to place public debt on a sustainable path, build fiscal buffers, and enhance medium-term growth prospects.

Sports Law has quickly developed into an accepted area of academic study and practice in the legal profession globally. In Europe and North America, Sports Law has been very much a part of the legal landscape for about four decades, while in more recent times, it has blossomed in other geographic regions, including the Commonwealth Caribbean. This book recognizes the rapid evolution of Sports Law and seeks to embrace its relevance to the region. This book offers guidance, instruction and legal perspectives to students, athletes, those responsible for the administration of sport, the adjudication of sports-related disputes and the representation of athletes in the Caribbean. It addresses numerous important themes from a doctrinal, socio-legal and comparative perspective, including sports governance, sports contracts, intellectual property rights and doping in sport, among other thought-provoking issues which touch and concern sport in the Commonwealth Caribbean. As part of the well-established Routledge Commonwealth Caribbean Law Series, this book adds to the Caribbean-centric jurisprudence that has been a welcome development across the region. With this new book, the authors assimilate the applicable case law and legislation into one location in order to facilitate an easier consumption of the legal scholarship in this increasingly important area of law.

This book shows six different realities of same-sex families. They range from full recognition of same-sex marriage to full invisibility of gay and lesbian individuals and their families. The broad spectrum of experiences presented in this book share some commonalities: in all of them legal scholars and civil society are moving legal boundaries or thinking of spaces within rigid legal systems for same-sex families to function. In all of them there have been legal claims to recognize the existence of same-sex families. The difference between them lies in the response of courts. Regardless of the type of legal system, when courts have viewed claims of same-sex couples and their families as problems of individual rights, they have responded with a constitutional narrative protecting same-sex couples and their families. When courts respond to these claims with rigid concepts of what a family is and what marriage is as if legal concepts where unmodifiable, same-sex couples have remained outside the protection of the law. Until forty years ago marriage was the only union considered legitimate to form a family. Today more than 30 countries have granted rights to same sex couples, including several that have opened up marriage to couples of the same sex. Every day there is a new bill being discussed or a new claim being brought to courts seeking formal recognition of same sex couples. Not all countries are open to changing their legal structures to accommodate same-sex couples, but even those with no visible changes are witnessing new voices in their communities challenging the status quo and envisioning more flexible legal systems.

The fifth edition of this highly praised study charts and explains the progress that continues to be made towards the goal of worldwide abolition of the death penalty. The majority of nations have now abolished the death penalty and the number of executions has dropped in almost all countries where abolition has not yet taken place. Emphasizing the impact of international human rights principles and evidence of abuse, the authors examine how this has fueled challenges to the death penalty and they analyze and appraise the likely obstacles, political and cultural, to further abolition. They discuss the cruel realities of the death penalty and the failure of international standards always to ensure fair trials and to avoid arbitrariness, discrimination and conviction of the innocent: all violations of the right to life. They provide further evidence of the lack of a general deterrent effect; shed new light on the influence and limits of public opinion; and argue that substituting for the death penalty life imprisonment without parole raises many similar human rights concerns. This edition provides a strong intellectual and evidential basis for regarding capital punishment as undeniably cruel, inhuman and degrading. Widely relied upon and fully updated to reflect the current state of affairs worldwide, this is an invaluable resource for all those who study the death penalty and work towards its removal as an international goal.