ABSTRACT In this forum, we examine the progression of authoritarian governance in Bangladesh, tracing its origins from the nation’s liberation in 1971 to the Hasina regime’s collapse in August 2024. Drawing from historical accounts and analysis of contemporary sources, we interrogate how Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s nationalist movement, pivotal in the struggle for independence, simultaneously laid the foundations for centralised control and authoritarianism. The consolidation of power became a defining feature of Mujib’s leadership and that of his daughter, Sheikh Hasina, as her government increasingly reflected her father’s approach, resulting in political repression and the erosion of democratic institutions. We argue that the intergenerational transmission of power, intertwined with broader geopolitical shifts, reflects the complex dynamics of post-colonial state-building, where the legacies of liberation movements are often entangled with authoritarian governance. By contextualising these developments within South Asia and foregrounding our approach in subaltern geopolitics, we unveil the intersections of nationalism, leadership, and authoritarianism, contributing to broader discussions on state violence, power, and resistance on a regional scale. The regime’s collapse in 2024 marks a revolutionary moment of reflection on the cyclical patterns of power and governance in Bangladesh’s political history; another liberation emerged from resistance, and a new generation mirrored the call for independence.

J. Dlamini, Dying for Freedom: Political Martyrdom in South Africa, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2024), 152pp., ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-6107-0 How to begin. On 15 July 2019, former South African president Jacob Zuma appeared before a judicial commission of inquiry set up to investigate allegations of widespread graft in the public sector during his tenure in office. Although implicated in acts of malfeasance by several witnesses, the former president told the commission's chairperson, the then Deputy Chief Justice, Raymond Zondo, and the journalists assembled in the Braampark Forum building in Johannesburg, that he was the victim of a smear campaign dating back to the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) in 1990. As the party's intelligence chief in 1990, Zuma said he had caught wind of a plan to oust him involving enemy agents operating on home soil in league with intelligence agencies 'from big countries.'1 They wanted to get rid of him because he had obtained a list with the names of apartheid-era double agents who had infiltrated the ANC. Zuma proceeded to allege that Ngoako Ramatlhodi, a comrade in the liberation movement who served as a cabinet minister in his administration, was one of those spies. Ramatlhodi, Zuma alleged, 'was recruited when he was a student in Lesotho to be a spy', and that he had 'known for years what he [was]'.2 Ramatlhodi denied the accusation and dared the former president to take a public lie-detector test.

ABSTRACT Scholars of the Women’s Liberation Movement have documented the gradual shift within WLM scholarship and broader feminist culture towards a more empathetic approach to infertile women, and a more open-minded attitude towards the potential offered by assisted reproductive technology in the 1980s. This article seeks to illustrate how one community of feminists—the contributors to and readers of the British WLM periodical Spare Rib—came to shift their attitude towards infertility and its treatment across the course of that decade. The article draws on existing scholarship on epistolary cultures within the women’s movement, as well as work on the emotional regimes of second wave feminism, to argue that a genuine dialogue emerged within the columns of Spare Rib in the 1980s that helped the magazine’s readers to develop a broader consciousness and empathy around infertility. It argues that the productive conversation over infertility and its treatment that took place in Spare Rib offers an illustrative model of how attitudes and perspectives can evolve within social movements like the WLM.

This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the scientific activities of Ravil Usmanovich Amirkhanov (1946–2006) – Doctor of Historical Sciences and Honored Scientist of the Republic of Tatarstan, whose works significantly influenced the study of the history of Tatar society and the experience of intercultural communication. The research of his scientific heritage allows for a deeper understanding of the evolution of Tatar identity, the mechanisms of national self-consciousness formation, and the specifics of historical and cultural interaction. The scientific works of R.U. Amirkhanov cover a wide range of research areas and represent a significant contribution to the development of historical science, cultural studies, and sociology. Among the key aspects of his scientific activity, the following can be highlighted: 1. History of the Tatar periodical press, where R.U. Amirkhanov analyzes the evolution of printed publications as an important instrument for shaping public opinion and transmitting cultural values; 2. National liberation movement and public ideas of the Tatar people, within which he examines the ideology and strategy of the struggle for national self-determination, as well as analyzes the influence of enlightenment and reformist movements on the transformation of Tatar society; 3. Problems of cultural dialogue and interethnic interaction, where particular attention is paid to the study of mechanisms for the coexistence of various ethnic groups and cultures in a polyethnic space; 4. Biographical method as a tool of historical analysis, which the scholar uses to study the life and activities of prominent figures in Tatar history, such as Rizaeddin Fakhreddin and Ahmed-Zaki Validi. The research of R.U. Amirkhanov has enriched the historiography and cultural studies of the region, contributed to the popularization of historical knowledge, and made a significant contribution to the study of problems of national self-determination and intercultural interaction. The scientific biography of R.U. Amirkhanov demonstrates the consistent development of his professional competencies. The scientific heritage of the scholar maintains its relevance and significance in the modern scientific community. For citation: Tukhvatulin A.Kh. Scientific Heritage of Ravil Usmanovich Amirkhanov: Contribution to the Study of Tatar National Identity and Intercultural Interaction (Dedicated to the 80th Anniversary of his Birth). From History and Culture of Peoples of the Middle Volga Region. 2026, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 167–178. https://doi.org/10.22378/2410-0765.2026-16-1.167-178 (In Russian)

War constitutes a profound psychological crisis that disrupts individual mental health, collective identity, and intergenerational well-being. Beyond physical destruction, armed conflict produces enduring psychological sequelae, including trauma-related disorders, affective dysregulation, and disruptions in sexual and relational functioning. Forced migration and undignified treatment of the women victims of sexual assaults by the combatants, in particular, represent a permanent and major mental health stressor, as refugees transition from immediate survival threats to chronic insecurity, loss and trauma-related psychopathology, a journey from certain death to uncertain life. Conflict-related sexual violence and gender-based violence constituted pervasive forms of trauma during the war and were inflicted by actors on both sides of the conflict. The Pakistan Army, together with its collaborators and Razakars, perpetrated systematic sexual violence against girls, women and other noncombatant civilians in East Pakistan, resulting in profound and enduring psychosexual trauma. At the same time, segments of the Mukti Bahini were also implicated in acts of sexual violence, targeting family members of Pakistan Army personnel and civilians labelled as collaborators or perceived opponents of the liberation movement. These violations underscore how sexual violence functioned as a weapon of war, producing long-term psychological, sexual and intergenerational consequences that extend beyond the immediate context of armed conflict.

Abstract This study takes seriously Octavia Butler’s Parable series as an unfinished treatise of processual social philosophy. My analysis highlights Butler’s skillful weaving of a wide range of processual traditions, from the mystical atheism in the Chinese classic Daodejing , to the kinship worldview in Africana processual-relational ontologies, to the practice of relational nondomination inspired by womanist philosophies. It further demonstrates how Butler’s art of storytelling enfleshes this philosophy of relational nondomination into a collaborative, decentralized liberation movement: by inventing a fictional religion, Earthseed, Butler formulates a processual atheist theology that unshackles human imagination from the substance metaphysics–informed question of how to build a better society with flawed building blocks such as selfish human beings or selfish genes. In doing so, Butler’s processual social philosophy raises a paradigm-shifting inquiry: how to build a friendlier future with new patterns of collective actions, relations, and organizations despite flawed human beings. After all, if nature selects not only genomes or biological individuals but also relations or holobionts, then Butler’s social evolutionary theory encourages us as humans to self-select into new patterned relationalities among ourselves and our lifeworlds. Simultaneously, Butler skillfully assembles what Brook Ziporyn terms “compensatory” and “emulative” atheisms. The Books of the Living (a collection of opening verses from the chapters of the Parable series), as the seed of an atheist experiment, has the concrete yet conditional purpose to cohere people—that is, to start Earthseed in other solar systems. It likewise enacts a global mimesis of purposelessness—a self-conscious masking of its ontological indeterminacy as an open-ended interstellar travel adventure and a womanist story of how humans can leave the nest and grow up to break the cycle of violence and domination and start a new cycle of noncoercive co-becoming. This atheist experiment calls into being a Buddhish womanist subjectivity of nonduality-cum-nondomination, reconceiving of subjectivity and agency as an emergent phenomenon interconditioned among an infinite yet dynamic network of human and nonhuman, sentient and non-sentient factors. The Parable series convinces readers the truth of its philosophical insight and the viability of its vision through the art of storytelling and thereby has initiated many cautious yet hopeful collaborative liberation movements intending to lead humanity out of the dualistic epistemic trap of “either we need ‘more God’ or ‘less religion’,” which Ziporyn identifies as a dilemma endemic to academic conversations. By taking seriously the Parable series as a philosophical treatise, this study contributes to two trends shaping a broader effort: first, to decenter academia as the main site for doing philosophy; and second, to turn to relational-processual ontology in quantum physics, biology, feminist anthropology, and social justice organizing by opening a new subfield—processual social ontology.

This article offers a historical examination of the military co-operation between the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo) and Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) soldiers during the Zimbabwean liberation struggle. It tells us about the kinds of exchanges that shaped the liberation struggle on the battlefield across three distinct and increasingly intense phases. Based on interviews with Zimbabwean and Mozambican war veterans and veteran memoirs, the article explores the dynamic of solidarity forged between Mozambican People’s Liberation Forces (FPLM) soldiers and Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) fighters inside Rhodesia. The article argues that the multitude of military training regimes and ideologies that the rank-and-file soldiers of the two armies had experienced and adopted played out in their interactions during the war. These differences created friction, conflict and disruption, but ultimately led to the negotiation of new forms of military co-operation and strategy that shaped specifically battlefield solidarities.

This article examines what was international about Australia’s International Women’s Year, 1975. In Australia, histories of this important year and the women’s liberation movement more broadly have been largely concerned with what happened nationally. This article argues that border-crossings of all kinds are key to understanding Australia’s International Women’s Year. The author shows this through exploring three visits by very different women who came to Australia during 1975: a visit of Vietnamese women; the tour of Gisèle Halimi, the French-Tunisian abortion rights activist and lawyer; and African-American feminist Florynce Kennedy. Campbell unpicks the varying global feminisms that underpinned these visits, demonstrating that feminists extended their sightlines and sought to act beyond the nation. But she contends that where global currents did take root and bloom, this was enabled by the national context.

This article is devoted to the analysis of the scientific and publicistic legacy of Hasan Oraltay, a prominent representative of the Kazakh diaspora, regarding the history of the Alash national liberation movement. The relevance of the study is determined by the necessity to introduce into scientific circulation alternative histo riographical sources that countered the distortion of national history under the Soviet totalitarian system and ideological censorship. The authors comprehensively examine Hasan Oraltay’s activities at Radio Azattyk (Munich) and his works published in Turkey and Europe within the context of the ideological confrontation of the Cold War era. The research methods employ comparative-historical, problem-chronological methods, and content analysis. This approach enabled the identification of fundamental contradictions between official Soviet historiography and the diaspora narrative presented by H. Oraltay. The results of the study reveal H. Oraltay’s specific contributions to Alash studies: relying on European archives (Helsinki, London), hede bunked the Soviet myth regarding the alleged hostility between the “Aiqap” magazine and the “Qazaq” newspaper, demonstrated the continuity between the Alash Orda government and the Turkestan (Kokand) Autonomy, and promoted the legacy of repressed intellectuals like Magzhan Zhumabayev internationally. Furthermore, the article highlights his role in integrating the Alash topic into Western academia through publications in the prestigious “Central Asian Survey” journal. The article concludes that Hasan Oraltay’s works serve not merely as historical records but as a significant mechanism for intellectual decolonization and the preservation of national memory. His research provides a crucial resource for modern Kazakhstani historiog raphy, facilitating an objective understanding of the 20th-century political struggle of the national intelligent sia and bridging the gaps created by Soviet-era historical amnesia.

This article responds to ongoing conversations on the decolonisation of international development, with special reference to faith-based, Christian international organisations. This article argues the case for such INGOs to draw from anticolonial thought and anticolonial theological spaces in order to dismantle their foundational colonial and institutional logics. The title of the paper is taken from a sentiment articulated by the Brazilian ecofeminist theologian Ivone Gebara who argues that in order to dismantle such logics, we have to take on a critical political posture that is anti-racist, anti-sexist, and anti-elitist. What does it mean for Christian INGOs to take on this pose? I argue that we can draw from the broader concepts of anticolonial thinking and theology to provide guidance. In particular, the paper argues that faith-based INGOs can shift to be more explicitly social movements than international organisations, that they draw from a multi-centric knowledge base, centring techniques of storytelling, and also look to embrace and learn from liberation movements of the past. There is, of course, no specific toolkit or blueprint, but doing this work of dismantling necessitates a commitment to a complex and nuanced process, encompassing relationality, sharing, reciprocity, collective responsibility, mutual interdependence, community building, ethics, responsibility, and accountability.

Abstract Who decides when international relations constitute diplomacy? The study of diplomacy typically draws on contributions by European and American scholars and practitioners in building an understanding of what diplomatic practice is and who conducts it. The result being that the diversity and variation in diplomatic practices from other regions are frequently omitted or marginalized in the discourse. Little consideration is given to diplomacy as an exclusionary practice, where actors on the periphery of the international system may not only be norm “takers” at best, but excluded from diplomatic engagement at worst. This article critically considers developments in African diplomatic agency, addressing its marginalization prior to, and during European colonization. The article demonstrates that Africa actively developed and engaged in diplomacy, with the emergence of African customary law and diplomatic practices, which underpinned a functioning diplomatic system with neighboring and foreign territories prior to European colonization. Yet the colonization of Africa, and the introduction of a European approach to diplomacy as an institution saw African diplomacy increasingly veiled. This article showcases African contributions to diplomacy through pre-colonial practices as well as addressing a shortfall in analysis considering African diplomacy during the period of colonization. This includes consideration of diplomatic efforts by liberation movements from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, and Ghana as they sought to engage Britain. We argue, that despite the colonial metropole’s efforts to marginalize the international activities of liberation movements, Africa’s diplomatic agency continued through their international bilateral and multilateral networks.

As a result of the revolution that took place in Russia in October 1917, the Bolshevik party came to power, which attempted to introduce a socialist system throughout the territory of the former Russian Empire. As you know, the social support of the communists was workers and peasants. In other words, the political rhetoric of the Bolsheviks was based on the slogan of liberating broad sections of the population and affirming the principles of social equality. However, such transformational efforts inevitably met with significant resistance from those social groups that previously occupied a dominant position in regional power structures. The civil war on the territory of the former Russian Empire, which began after the October Revolution and lasted until 1923, acquired the character of a national liberation movement in Central Asia. This was due to the continuation of the colonial policy of the new government, including the Bolsheviks, which largely reproduced the inertia of tsarist chauvinism in relation to the indigenous peoples of the region. In Soviet historiography, this movement was called "Basmache movement". In some regions, it continued almost until the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. At the end of 1918 - the beginning of 1919, the anti-Soviet forces practically took control of the Fergana Valley. The success of this movement, which later received the general name "basmachestvo", was due to the wide support from all strata of the local population. The movement had not only moral and material support from the common people, but also the personal participation of many common people. Even yesterday's farmers, cattle breeders and artisans, despite the lack of weapons and lack of previous experience of participation in military operations, being convinced of the justice of their struggle against the oppressors, put up active resistance and often won victories over the units of the Red Army. In Turkestan, including the territory of modern Kyrgyzstan, for the protection of the Soviet power, the Central Executive Committee of the Turkestan ASSR on July 10, 1918 decided to create a headquarters for the defense of Turkestan. Representatives of the local population were involved in defensive measures, and the formation of units of the Red Army began to be carried out on a voluntary basis. In addition, volunteer detachments of local residents began to be created in various regions to fight against publishers and protect Soviet power. The formation of national military units became an important turning point during the Civil War and contributed to the strengthening of the local population's trust in the Soviet government. One of the most outstanding military leaders to emerge from the Kyrgyz people in the 1920s and 1930s was Arstanaly Osmonbekov, a brilliant figure who made a significant contribution to the establishment and defense of Soviet power, as well as to the development of Soviet Kyrgyz statehood. The first Red Army commander, A. Osmonbekov, from 1920 onward, led the Kyrgyz Cavalry Division he created, with which he actively fought against the Basmachi. For his significant contribution to strengthening Soviet power and successful actions against anti-Soviet groups, he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner in 1923.

ABSTRACT Psychology has failed to meet an epistemological imperative. Presently and formerly incarcerated people are rarely included in psychological scholarship about the carceral system as co-constructors of knowledge. Grounded in Liberation Psychology, this research centers the wisdoms of grassroots organizers from New York’s Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP) campaign. This study aims both to critique the current parole application process and challenge traditional Western psychological research methods for studying dehumanization. Analyses and policy recommendations stem from focus group data regarding how survivor-organizers (1) understand, critique, and advocate for reforming the parole application process, and (2) evaluate and critically respond to psychological research approaches to understanding dehumanization. I weave in reflexivity by narrating trial and error, as I engage the “knots” of epistemic justice and ultimately, make the case for participatory commitments in research. Overall, the findings indicate an urgent need for both policy change and psychologists’ solidarity with liberation movements.

Abstract During the Pakistan military's operation in what was then East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh), the Pakistan cricket team faced intense backlash from the Bengali diaspora on a summer tour of Britain in 1971. This article examines how Bengali activists organized a campaign to halt the tour to protest the Pakistan military's atrocities in their homeland, East Pakistan, sparking a broader debate on the causes of the Bangladesh liberation movement in the British press and beyond. By exploring the dynamics of this protest, the article highlights how sport became an impactful platform for political engagement and social justice. Drawing on hitherto unused archival sources, newspaper accounts, and interviews with key people from the period, it argues that the Bengali community's protest of the Pakistan cricket tour not only amplified the cause of Bangladesh's liberation but also brought international substantiation to their struggle. Furthermore, this article situates this campaign within the broader context of the emerging global human rights and civil society movements against repressive regimes in the “long 1970s,” an era when new forms of political activism challenged oppressive regimes during this period of global transition.

Angola and Mozambique became independent from Portugal in 1975, after a decade of guerrilla fighting. During the wars of independence, liberation movements created medical services for guerrilla fighters, refugees across borders and the population of the liberated zones. They counted on extensive networks of support from socialist countries, western progressive organisations, religious groups, and the international Red Cross. These groups supplied liberation movements with medicines and medical supplies, blood donations, sent medical professionals, trained health workers, and received patients for treatment. In the years following independence, the memory of health workers from western countries was made more visible in both countries and was celebrated through books and articles. Socialist aid, albeit present in local newspapers at the time, seems to have been forgotten, as local actors or the press ensured that it was less visible. This article will interrogate this paradox of sources and narratives around the medical aid provided to Angola and Mozambique before and after independence, and how this aid contributed to the establishment of health systems after independence. Drawing upon multi-sited archival research and oral history interviews, the article examines the diversity of support networks and interrogates the reasons behind the visibility and invisibility of health aid.

With the attainment of independence across Africa, liberation movements transformed into ruling regimes. They employed various strategies, including the utilisation of liberation heritage to maintain a grip on political power. Victory against colonial rule became a justification for former liberation movements to hold on to power. Using case studies from across Africa, we argue that there is a politics of entitlement among former liberation movements, whereby liberation credentials are mobilised to legitimise political hegemony. We used a neo-patrimonialism framework to explain how liberation movements in Africa leverage historical legitimacy to build personal political capital, promote patronage systems, and justify their entitlement to state resources. Observation and media analysis, blended with an examination of secondary written texts, were used to gather data that addressed questions on how historical legitimacy is employed to entrench neo-patrimonialism. We discovered that despite the uniqueness of individual countries’ geopolitics, the behaviour of liberation movements exhibits striking similarities across Africa, entrenched in the belief that dislodging colonialism justifies perpetual political legitimacy. While there is extensive literature on postcolonial African politics, this study is unique as it contributes to the historiography of African liberation politics by analysing the methods used by former liberation movements in utilising liberation heritage as political capital.

The article analyzes the phenomena and processes of the struggle of the Ukrainian national liberation movement of 1941-1954 through the prism of the stage-by-stage national state formation of Ukraine. Emphasis is placed on the universally recognized and natural right of peoples and nations to self-determination, which was implemented in practice by the Ukrainian national liberation movement, primarily represented by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and the Supreme Ukrainian Liberation Council, as subjects of Ukrainian national state-building in the underground, expressing the sovereign will of the Ukrainian people as a source of power. It is proposed to introduce into historical and legal science the category (term and concept) «Ukrainian underground state» for a clear and objective interpretation and qualitative characterization of the phenomena and processes of the struggle of the Ukrainian national liberation movement of 1941-1954. In the author’s concept, the Ukrainian underground state should be understood as a set of state institutions of the civil and military Ukrainian underground, which waged an armed struggle against the anti-democratic regimes of the occupying countries and established Ukrainian national statehood underground in 1941-1954 in the process of the practical implementation of the rights of peoples and nations to self-determination. The key characteristics and description of the essential features of the given scientific term are presented. Legal emphasis is placed on the legal nature and significance for the national state formation of Ukraine of the declarative-legal Act of Proclamation of the Renewal of the Independence of Ukraine of June 30, 1941 and the creation of a state-political platform - the Supreme Ukrainian Liberation Council in 1944. A comparative analysis of the Ukrainian underground state and the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which simultaneously represented Ukrainian statehood, while having different sources of power, was conducted. The author also proposes to consider the Ukrainian underground state as one of the historical stages of the national statehood of Ukraine, alongside and on a par with, for example, the Ukrainian People’s Republic, the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic, or Carpathian Ukraine. Turning to the phenomenon of the Ukrainian underground state and the historical role of the Ukrainian national liberation movement for the restoration of Ukraine in 1991, it is emphasized that this page of our past fits absolutely naturally into the pan-European context of resistance movements to various regimes in the 20th century. In comparative analysis, the Ukrainian underground state is a unique global phenomenon that was created and functioned in particularly difficult and extraordinary conditions. Other European resistance movements, having objectively assessed their political and legal nature and achievements, taking into account their differences from the national phenomenon under study, provide grounds to argue the unconditional authenticity of the Ukrainian underground state in world history. It has been stated that as of now, the conceptual and categorical apparatus of historical and legal science, the scientific terminology characterizing the national liberation struggle of 1941-1954, require clarifications and additions. The absence of a number of categories (terms and concepts), which results in conceptual gaps, excessively complicates the objective understanding of the character, legal nature, and state content (meaning) of the underground struggle. The scientific, social, and political significance of supplementing historical and legal science with a new term is emphasized, which, in particular, is implemented in the spirit of the preamble and norms of the Law of Ukraine “On the Principles of the State Policy of the National Memory of the Ukrainian People”. A scientific basis has been created for further consolidation of the state concept of the “Ukrainian underground state” at the legislative level.

Several African states are currently being rocked by separatist or autonomist movements seeking to create independent micro-states within recognised sovereign states. These include the Movement for self-determination of Kabylie (MAK) in Algeria, the Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda in Angola, the Ogaden National Liberation Front or the Tigray Liberation Movement in Ethiopia, the National Liberation Movement of Azawad (NLMA) in Mali, the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance in Senegal and so on. While some of these movements date back to the post-independence era, others are more recent, albeit fuelled by distant causes. An example of this is Morocco, a North African country and a founding member of the Arab Maghreb Union, which faces separatism and regular harassment from Polisario, a movement that has been advocating the creation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic since 1976. A similar case study is English-speaking Cameroon, where various armed groups are calling for the creation of Ambazonia. While it is true that separatism is partly justified by the various frustrations of a population, it is also true that it represents a major risk to the stability of states. Given the current context and the issues at stake, it is almost impossible to give separatism any support. Repeated violations of human rights (rape, sexual abuse, looting, etc.), large-scale atrocities, massive destruction, violence, etc. are comparable to the methods of terrorists, and constitute a serious threat to sub-regional, regional and international peace and stability. This work is the result of the analysis of the archival, documentary and oral data collected and supplemented by neutral direct observation in the field. At the end of this reflection, four observations can be made about the Polisario and the independent movement of Ambazonia: The Polisario and the independent movement of Ambazonia have the same objective (independence); the same method of recruiting fighters (forced or voluntary recruitment among unemployed young people); the same modus operandi (use of violence), and the same approach (seeking external support to better influence geopolitical issues).

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.

In an ageing society, reducing the number of people with dementia is one of the most important health policies. In the recent years, many studies have focused on dementia prevention, with technologies, such as smartphone apps, attracting considerable attention. These apps help people to manage their lifestyle habits and support them in maintaining an optimal lifestyle to prevent dementia. However, people with migration backgrounds are often excluded from these technologies for various reasons, including digital literacy, language proficiency, socio-economic situation, and educational attainment. To successfully implement health policies, it is essential to address the social structures that prevent people with migration backgrounds from accessing these technologies. Fostering solidarity could be an effective way in achieving this goal given its significant role in movements such as the women’s liberation movement, the Black liberation movement and the disability rights movement. However, the problem is that people with and without migration backgrounds often find it difficult to recognize their similarities. People with a migration background have experienced various forms of discrimination because of their migration experience. Those without a migration background have not had such experiences. This makes it difficult to form solidarity because, by definition, solidarity requires a shared sense of similarity between the sender and receiver. This paper aims to demonstrate how people with and without migration backgrounds can identify these similarities in order to foster a sense of solidarity.