The paper discusses the interrelation between displacement, resettlement, and infrastructure affected by the ethnic conflict in Manipur. The conflict between the Meitei community and the Kuki tribes began in May 2023, triggered by the Manipur High Court’s recommendation on the Meitei demand for “Scheduled Tribe” status, which led to large-scale internal displacement and the collapse of essential infrastructure. The purpose of this paper is to assess the effect of inadequate infrastructure on the internally displaced persons (IDPs) residing within the relief camps. A qualitative research design is utilised, which is based on secondary data sources, such as reports by international organizations, government documents, media reports, and academic literature. The results indicate a lack of proper infrastructure in relief camps, which contributes to overcrowding, inadequate sanitation, inaccessible healthcare, and disrupted education, proving that a planned rehabilitation plan, humanitarian support, and universal peace-building measures are highly needed to facilitate sustainable recovery and resilience among the diverse communities in Manipur.

ABSTRACT Ethnic conflicts in Ethiopia have led to widespread displacement, particularly of ethnic Amharas who have been evicted from various regions and settled in the Amhara region. This study investigates the preferences for durable solutions and the challenges that displaced persons face as they seek durable solutions to their displacement. Through a qualitative phenomenological approach, data were collected through interviews, focus group discussions, and document analysis. The data were analyzed thematically and presented in a narrative form. The research reveals a conflict between IDPs’ desire for local integration or relocation and the opposing views of regional government’s and host communities’ claim for return. This discord leaves IDPs in a protracted state of uncertainty. The study identifies various barriers to durable solutions, including gaps in legal and policy frameworks, lack of political will and complicity, resource constraints, disrupted livelihoods, exclusion from decision-making processes, insufficient recognition of displacement impacts, security risks, absence of reparatory and transitional justice, and psychological trauma. By situating these findings within structural conflict theory and the politics of othering, the study demonstrates how exclusion based on identity influences displacement trends and hinders the development of durable solutions.

This article examines the distinctive features of national identity formation in the Republic of Kazakhstan through the lens of comprehensive political science analysis. The study analyzes the complex interaction between ethnic diversity, historical legacy, state-building processes, and modernization efforts that shape contemporary Kazakhstani identity in a country uniting more than 130 ethnic groups. Drawing on the theoretical foundations of nation-building, including models of civic and ethnic nationalism, as well as empirical observations of post-Soviet transformation covering three decades of independence, the study identifies key mechanisms through which Kazakhstan implemented national consolidation while maintaining its multinational character. The work argues that Kazakhstan represents a distinctive case of a balanced approach to nation-building, where the state strategically coordinated the promotion of Kazakh ethnic identity through language policy, reconstruction of historical narrative, and demographic changes, while simultaneously supporting the principles of civic equality and institutional mechanisms of minority representation. The analysis demonstrates that this approach, illustrated by the constitutional distinction between Kazakh ethnic and Kazakhstani civic identity, contributed to relative stability and allowed the avoidance of ethnic conflicts that affected other post-Soviet states. The research findings indicate that Kazakhstani national identity represents a synthesis of civic and ethnic dimensions, characterized by strategic state policies within institutional structures that are oriented toward gradual national consolidation with observance of the principles of civic equality.

Manipur Ethnic Conflict: Causes, Trajectory and Way Forward

ABSTRACT Scholarship on racialisation and racial capitalism shows how racial logics organise capital accumulation and sovereign power. Yet applying these analytics to postcolonial contexts – where social difference goes by other names, and states and majorities carry their own histories of racial domination – reveals their limits. This article rethinks both concepts through a study of sovereign violence against Baloch populations in Pakistan. Racialisation and racial capitalism unsettle dominant accounts that frame this violence as ethnic conflict, security failure, geopolitics, or human rights violations. Instead, they situate these practices within historically produced racialised hierarchies tied to global accumulation, exposing how Euro-American assumptions obscure race-making outside the metropole. Postcolonial states are not only racialised; they also enact violent hierarchies. This double racialisation must be theorised conjuncturally, not separately. An incomplete, externally disciplined sovereignty positions the postcolony as a mediator of global capital in sites of unrealised accumulation, unleashing state violence. This demands an account of multi-scalar racial regimes that include racialised sovereigns and the forms of domination they enable – a rethinking crucial for antiracist internationalism.

Media institutions play a central role in shaping public perception and understanding of conflict and peace processes across Africa. Through language choice, framing, and narrative construction, the media can either escalate tensions or contribute meaningfully to conflict management and resolution. This paper examines the nexus between media, language, and conflict management in Africa, with particular emphasis on the power of narrative in constructing social realities, mobilizing identities, and influencing political behaviour. Anchored in framing theory, peace journalism, and critical discourse analysis, the study interrogates how dominant and alternative media narratives shape perceptions of “self” and “other” in contexts of ethnic, religious, and political conflict. Drawing on qualitative discourse analysis of selected print, broadcast, and digital media texts from conflict-affected African societies, the paper demonstrates that sensationalist framing, inflammatory language, and ethnically-coded narratives often reinforce polarization and legitimize violence. Conversely, peace-oriented narratives, characterized by inclusive language, contextual reporting, and solution-focused framing, have the potential to de-escalate tensions and support dialogue and reconciliation. The paper further highlights the under-explored role of indigenous languages and vernacular media in either amplifying conflict narratives or fostering communal consensus and moral restraint. The paper contributes to scholarship by moving beyond the conventional focus on media as a driver of conflict escalation to foreground its normative and practical role in conflict management. It argues that effective conflict transformation in Africa requires deliberate narrative interventions, ethical journalism, and the institutionalization of peace-oriented communication frameworks. By situating African experiences within broader debates on media, discourse, and peacebuilding, the paper offers theoretical and policy-relevant insights for scholars, media practitioners, and conflict management institutions seeking to harness the power of narrative for sustainable peace. Keywords: Media, Conflict, Narrative Framing, Peace Journalism, Language and Discourse, and Conflict Management

ABSTRACT Ethiopia is one of the most populous nations in Africa inhabited by culturally diverse communities under consecutive unitary regimes. Since the 1990s, it was restructured into a federation of ethnic states where the Amhara State is one of these states named after ethnic Amhara. The Kemant are a minority ethnic group within the state, and the two groups have been in a violent conflict that claimed the lives of hundreds of persons. This study investigated the causes of the conflict that has been raging them. The study adopted the instrumentalist theory of ethnicity as a framework and data were collected using sample surveys and in-depth interviews. The findings reveal that the two ethnic groups are highly integrated with no experience of exclusion in social and economic lives, and the recent conflict is mainly a result of political maneuvering contrived by political elites rather than due to primordial cultural differences.

Correction to: Social disintegration and ethnic conflict: analyzing the Adivasi-Bodo tensions in Assam

ABSTRACT The Southern Interconnection, a natural gas pipeline designed to link Bosnia and Herzegovina with Croatia’s network and facilitate access to global liquefied natural gas markets, has become a subject of intense political debate in the country. Despite Bosnia and Herzegovina’s marginal natural gas consumption, the United States invested unprecedented diplomatic capital in supporting this infrastructure project. Yet this external pressure encountered a structural constraint: Bosnia and Herzegovina’s ethnic power-sharing system, which institutionalized veto capacity and enabled a single political party to obstruct the project for years. Integrating Neoliberal Institutionalism, Great Power Competition, and Fragile State theories, this study demonstrates that ethnic veto systems transform rational infrastructure projects into distributional conflicts. Through process-tracing of US diplomatic engagement, the analysis reveals that it succeeded not through initial normative pressure, but by resorting to coercive and transactional strategies – bypassing the veto player through coalition-building and pivoting to a foreign private-sector solution. American diplomatic pressure has successfully advanced the Southern Interconnection, but the mechanism of this success reveals fundamental limits to external power – it cannot resolve the ethnic distributional conflict or ensure project sustainability without continuous external commitment, thereby entrenching a capacity trap and necessitating the subsequent accommodation of veto player interests.

Broadly stated, diversity has a double-edged effect on development, both hindering and facilitating. It hinders development due to problems of plurality, such as incompatibility of interests and policy disagreements. On the other hand, diverse views, values, and problem-solving methods can foster creativity and innovation. An inclusive institution that values diversity and transforms differences into an asset, and one that contributes to mutual thriving, is crucial for multiethnic settings. A system based on shared identity and complementarities can be instrumental for this purpose. The mounting ethnic hostilities among six ethnic groups in the Konso-Derashe-Alle area, caused mainly by resource and administrative issues, worsen an already poor socio-economic condition of the people in the area. Despite the growing enmity, the groups share vast sociocultural and economic values and complementarities on which a cooperative system can be built. While the shared identities include shared myth of origin, inter-ethnic clan identification, and transethnic common norms of governance among others, the complementarities include common local markets, specialization-based economic transactions, and common resource niches. Given these, the study concludes that the groups in the study area are tied through shared values, common fate, and economic interdependence. To this end, the study recommends a shared society system, an inclusive system that fosters shared and complementary spaces for the groups’ mutual economic thriving and interdependence.

Social disintegration and ethnic conflict: analyzing the Adivasi-Bodo tensions in Assam

Violent disputes and ethnic clashes have been a common phenomenon in plural societies over the years. Globally, these incidents of ethnic division have been manifested in power politics and control of resources, hence posing a major challenge to unity and social cohesion in these societies. In Kenya threats to ethnic diversity are predominantly ascribed to political instigation, land disputes, ethnic divisions, demonstrations, subsequent clashes, and riots, which are common occurrences during each political campaign season. Uasin Gishu County boasts of a diverse population comprising various ethnic groups has been an epicenter of ethnic conflicts in Kenya for many years. This study sought to put into perspective challenges of ethnic diversity in the county in the face horizontal inequalities which has been a major factor for ethnic tensions in Kenya. The study adopted Interpretivist philosophy. The study applied descriptive and historical research designs. The study found out that there were a myriad challenges towards ethnic diversity amid horizontal inequalities which included high levels of Politicization of ethnicity, Corruption and Impunity of Public Officers, misuse of various media and technology platforms, Institutionalized discrimination, historical injustices and marginalization. The study concluded that there was a combination of factors that made it challenging to manage horizontal inequalities and ethnic conflicts in Uasin Gishu County. These factors created ethno-political competition among major ethnic groups in the county, thereby leading to an environment in which ethnic animosity thrived over national identity and Unity hence incessant ethnic tension and violence in the county. The study recommended a multi-pronged stakeholder approach to address the challenge of horizontal inequalities.

Power-sharing regimes are often misleadingly studied as democracies even when they are a part of authoritarian or hybrid regimes. This article contrasts power sharing without democracy in the national self-determination context—with all four pillars, largely constitutionalised and territorialised—with non-democratic but incomplete, informal and flexible power sharing in ethnic and ideological conflicts. It claims that power sharing facilitates peace and stability under both democracy and authoritarianism; however, problems arise in hybrid regimes and with political change. Evidence is provided from the comparative historical analysis of power sharing without democracy in communist Yugoslavia and postcommunist Bosnia and North Macedonia.

The paper investigates Art Spiegelman’s Maus from a psychoanalytical perspective by drawing on the concepts of Thomas Ogden’s “analytic third” and Jessica Benjamin’s “intersubjectivity” to expose the trauma-driven intra-ethnic conflicts that lead to psychological othering within Jewish Holocaust survivors. The study also explores the idea of ritual morphing as practised in Spiegelman’s narrative, highlighting the unconscious alterations and psychological mechanisms embedded in the behavioural patterns of Holocaust survivors and their descendants. Drawing on Benjamin’s concept of intersubjectivity, the paper analyses the relationship dynamics between Art Spiegelman and his father, Vladek, which disrupts their father–son relationship through shared traumatic experiences. This disruption enables the recognition of their psychological and cultural differences and induces ethnic conflict between them as a Polish Jew and an American Jew. Vladek’s PTSD and Spiegelman’s inherited trauma (intergenerational PTSD) create a doer–done-to dynamic that ruptures their familial bond, intensifying underlying shame, guilt, and depression. The paper further engages with Benjamin’s theory of mutual recognition to examine Vladek’s hypervigilance, which reflects the traumatic dominance that shatters the capacity for mutual recognition, leading to a reproduction of Holocaust trauma within the Jewish community across generations.

Identity‑based conflicts often emerge from deepening fault lines in ethnic, religious, and cultural contexts. Nepal has witnessed several identity‑related incidents in recent years; however, these incidents were limited in scope and intensity, and were contained. At the same time, the country has demonstrated potential for strong ethnic, religious and cultural cohesion when genuine inclusiveness is practiced. Nevertheless, Nepal’s diversity remains fragile, marked with fault lines that could trigger potential conflict in the future. The identity‑related disputes that have emerged in the country stem from historically intertwined with emotions, institutional shortcomings, accumulated grievances and struggles over access to resources and rights. However, as demonstrated through the case studies, leadership emerges as a key driver in such conflicts. Nepal is likely to enter an era identity‑based conflict rooted in ethnic, religious or cultural divisions if political leaders continue to undermine the state institutions, ignore genuine grievances and frame narratives for vested political interests.

Ethnic federalism, a system that devolves power to subnational states drawn along ethnic lines, is a widely debated approach to managing ethnic conflict. While scholars have studied its macro-level consequences, little is known about micro-level preferences within these countries. We examine two key dilemmas of ethnic federalism: (1) the “minorities within minorities dilemma”, where many ethnic group members live outside their designated state, and (2) the “devolution dilemma,” which concerns which powers should be held by the central versus state governments. Using survey experiments among Ethiopian university students, we find no average effect of changing power distributions on support for ethnic federalism, but substantial heterogeneity: politically and ethnically intolerant respondents respond strongly to devolving state power. We further find security policy is the primary concern in debates over devolution, followed by cultural policies. Our findings highlight the importance of micro-level perspectives in understanding the stability of ethnofederal systems and the political consequences of their reform.

ABSTRACT Political instrumentalisation of ethnic identity remains a principal driver of insecurity in the East African Community. This article compares Tanzania’s nation-building trajectory with the persistence of instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), exemplified by the M23 rebellion. Using qualitative comparative-historical analysis and process tracing, it draws on secondary scholarship, archival sources, and triangulated datasets (ACLED, UNHCR, and the Worldwide Governance Indicators). We combine social identity theory and ethnic conflict theory to examine how institutional design and implementation shape incentives for ethnic mobilisation and state resilience. Three mechanisms help explain Tanzania’s relative cohesion: a nationally integrating Kiswahili language policy; legal regulation of political parties that limits ethnic outbidding; and subnational governance arrangements that reinforce civic nationalism. In the DRC, partial and uneven adoption of comparable reforms – amid insecurity and weak administrative capacity – has enabled politicised identity claims to be converted into armed entrepreneurship and rebellion. The analysis shows that ethnic diversity alone does not predict insecurity; instead, institutional incentives, state capacity, and implementation conditions determine whether identity-based grievances escalate into organised violence. The article concludes with policy implications for fragile, resource-rich states pursuing sustainable peacebuilding and regional stability in line with the African Union’s Agenda 2063 across the wider region.

This study offers a critical lens for understanding how intertwined processes of military politicization and political militarization entrench state fragility. Despite achieving statehood, South Sudan has consistently ranked among the world’s most fragile countries. Through content analysis of more than 120 primary and secondary sources, this study argues that the country’s recurrent crises stem less from ethnic or resource-based rivalries than from the deliberate instrumentalization of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) by political elites. Originally a liberation movement, the SPLA evolved into a politicized institution used to secure elite dominance, distribute patronage, mobilize ethnic constituencies, and control oil revenues. These dynamics contributed directly to the outbreak of the 2013 civil war between President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar, which rapidly escalated into a militarized ethnic conflict causing nearly 400,000 deaths and displacing over four million people. Despite peace agreements in 2015 and 2018, military factionalism persists, security-sector reform remains stalled, and humanitarian conditions continue to deteriorate. The paper concludes that meaningful stabilization requires depoliticizing the armed forces, demilitarizing political competition, strengthening democratic institutions, enforcing civilian oversight, combating corruption, and improving regional cooperation. These reforms are essential for addressing South Sudan’s deep-rooted fragility and supporting sustainable peace in post-conflict contexts. Keywords: Politicization of the Military, Militarization of Politics, State Fragility, Civil-Military Relations, South Sudan, Security Sector Reform, Elite Capture, Institutional Weakness.

This article examines how Soviet and post-Soviet forms of Russian nationalism used ethnic engineering – above all mass deportations and demographic reshuffling – to transform ethno-national diversity into a structural source of conflict. Building on a qualitative, historical-comparative design, the study combines close reading of Soviet constitutional and legal texts with secondary literature on deportations and “frozen conflicts” to trace mechanisms linking Stalin-era policies to contemporary wars in the post-Soviet space. Archival decrees, census data and administrative cartography are analysed through thematic coding (e.g., “collective punishment,” “demographic engineering,” “border manipulation”) and compared across key episodes such as the deportation of Chechens and Ingush, Crimean Tatars and Volga Germans. The article then connects these historical patterns to post-1991 conflicts in the Caucasus, Crimea/Donbas and Central Asia, showing how earlier deportations and territorial rearrangements created asymmetric republics, competing memories of victimhood and territorially embedded grievances. Rather than treating Russian nationalism as a purely ideological phenomenon, the analysis conceptualizes it as a repertoire of state practices that combine coercive removal, selective rehabilitation and later “protection” of co-nationals abroad. The findings challenge accounts that explain post-Soviet conflicts solely through democratization failure or great-power rivalry, arguing instead that ethnic wars in the region are rooted in a long genealogy of state-led population politics. The article concludes by discussing the broader implications for theories of ethnofederalism and for contemporary debates on how authoritarian regimes manage diversity through forced mobility rather than inclusive citizenship.

This article analyses the 2023 ethnic violence in the Indian border state of Manipur, examining the factors which contributed to the conflict. Looking at the proliferation of arms, the emergence of radicalised youth organisations, and the exploitation of the situation by armed and secessionist groups, the article highlights the implications of the Manipur conflict for India’s national security. The article argues that delayed and inadequate government response exacerbated the conflict, forcing the two warring communities—the Meiteis and Kuki—to bolster their security measures through a parallel security system. These developments pose a challenge to Indian national security in the sensitive border region and therefore require urgent government intervention. While recovering stolen arms and bolstering border security along the India–Myanmar border remains crucial for long-term peace, the article suggests consociationalism for Manipur, a governance model that has shown—albeit with certain limitations—efficacy in addressing ethnic violence in deeply divided societies.