ABSTRACT Multilateral institutions committed to the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda have adopted a range of different approaches to integrating gender in counterterrorism and prevention and countering of violent extremism (CT/PCVE) policies. Why and how have their approaches varied so widely? We employ feminist-informed critical frame analysis to explore gender in CT/PCVE multilateral policies across eight institutions. The study uncovers multiple, often contradictory, framings of gender within and across these institutions. Policies primarily concerned with security, frame gender relations as synonymous with the inclusion of women, and a useful resource for enhancing the effectiveness of interventions. Conversely, policies explicitly focused on gender equality, exhibit a binary approach. Both types of policy overlook gender diversity and intersectional factors, such as ethnicity, class and sexuality. Our analysis substantiates the failure to advance evidence-based CT/PCVE policymaking, underscoring the need for a more holistic engagement with gender mainstreaming.

ABSTRACT This study assessed the effectiveness of multilateral educational technology policies across five Latin American countries during 2015–2025 using panel data analysis. A Technology Integration Index measured higher education digitalisation outcomes while multilateral policy alignment scores quantified intervention intensity from World Bank, UNESCO, and Inter-American Development Bank programmes. Fixed effects regression analysis of 55 country-year observations showed that each unit increase in policy alignment corresponded to 2-point improvements in technology integration scores. World Bank programmes generated larger effects than UNESCO or IDB interventions, with policy effectiveness increasing during the post-COVID period. However, countries required alignment scores above 4.5 to experience measurable benefits, indicating that substantial multilateral commitment was necessary for observable technology integration improvements in Latin American higher education systems.

This study examined political communication as a diplomatic tool for global peace and sustainable development, with a focus on international cooperation and advancing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Motivated by the evolving nature of diplomacy in the digital age, the study addressed the limited understanding of how political communication shapes diplomatic efforts toward long-term peace and sustainability amid global challenges such as conflict, inequality, and climate change. The objectives were to examine diplomatic communication strategies, assess their effectiveness in advancing peace, and analyse their role in promoting sustainable development, while the research questions focused on identifying key strategies, their diplomatic impact, and effectiveness. The study is significant for policymakers, diplomats, and international organisations seeking to strengthen communication for peace and development. Its scope covered global diplomatic practices, particularly media engagement, public diplomacy, and digital diplomacy. Anchored in agenda-setting theory, which explains how media influences public attention rather than opinions (McCombs & Shaw, 1972), the study adopted a mixed-methods approach combining surveys and interviews with diplomats and international communication experts. The findings revealed that political communication significantly influences peacebuilding and the promotion of the SDGs, with media engagement and public diplomacy playing critical roles. The study recommended strengthening media partnerships, expanding public diplomacy, leveraging digital platforms, and promoting multilateral policy dialogue, concluding that political communication is essential for achieving global peace and sustainable development.

Agriculture’s “4.0” transition increasingly relies on artificial intelligence (AI), IoT sensing, robotics, and decision-support. This review synthesizes Q1/Q2 scholarship, multilateral policy, and national AI strategies to assess how AI is changing farm stewardship and what guardrails align innovation with equity and sustainability. Methods combine a systematic literature review, comparative policy analysis (FAO, OECD, India’s #AIForAll, Rwanda AI Policy), NLP-assisted meta-synthesis of agri-AI discourse, theological analysis of stewardship texts (Gen. 1:26–28, Gen. 2:15), and case illustrations (precision irrigation, UAV spraying, mobile advisory). Results show AI improves resource-use efficiency and foresight (e.g., precision irrigation; targeted drone spraying) while introducing risks of dependency, opacity, and data-extractive business models. We propose a multi-level governance scaffold—farmer-centric data rights, explainability thresholds, context-appropriate human oversight, and compute-energy budgeting—mapped to Responsible Innovation (AIRR) and Value-Sensitive Design. We translate stewardship into measurable design constraints (e.g., water-withdrawal and biodiversity “red lines,” local-language interfaces, offline capability). Policy implications include numbered-style impact assessments, mandatory farmer representation on regional AI councils, and adoption equity metrics. Properly governed, AI can act as a tool of care for households, communities, and creation rather than a driver of technocratic consolidation.

In order to understand the foreign policy of Georgia and the Russian Federation, and especially the regional policy, the study of the national security strategies adopted by the government is of great importance. It is essential to understand how geopolitical developments have affected the strategy of both countries. In the article, we analyse the national security strategies of Georgia and the Russian Federation, their priorities and the changes that have taken place after geopolitical developments. In the course of scientific work, we have set ourselves the following goals. • To study the national security strategies of Georgia and the Russian Federation, • To analyse the changes that took place after the geopolitical developments, which were included in the strategies of the two countries, • To analyse the strategic approaches of both countries for national security and multilateral policy. • During the study, we used the method of document and content analysis, as well as the historical comparative method. • Based on the goals set before us, we reached the following conclusions. • The National Security Concept of Georgia does not fully represent the situation that exists in the politics of Georgia. • The main changes in Georgia’s strategies are related to Russia, but it does not fully represent the current realities. Current changes in Russia’s national security strategies are mainly related to geopolitical developments • In strategic approaches, Russia considers relations with the South Caucasus at the regional level. Many of Russia’s strategic approaches have lost their relevance after the developments related to Ukraine in 2022.

This article explores how Washington's and Islamabad’s ever-changing friendship-and rivalry-directly shapes Afghans shaky digital defenses. It shows that geopolitics, mixed with either close cooperation or deep distrust between these two powers, spills over and weakens, or occasionally strengthens, cyber resilience in the vulnerable third neighbor. Using liberal and neo-liberal institutionalist lenses, the study situates Afghan cyber fragility within a broader history of regional strategy and uneven international institutions. The paper ends with long-term, multilateral policy ideas, urging the three countries to build a formal trilateral framework that partners them on training, information-sharing, and joint incident response.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has played a critical role in shaping global economic norms, policies, and regulatory frameworks since its establishment in 1961. The OECD has evolved into a multilateral institution that seeks to promote economic cooperation, trade liberalization, and sustainable development. Over the decades, its membership has expanded to include key economies beyond its original Western-centric base, reflecting its strategic adaptation to shifting geopolitical and economic realities. Türkiye, as a founding member, has actively contributed to the OECD’s agenda, particularly in addressing the Global North-South divide and fostering inclusive international dialogue. This commentary examines the OECD’s role in global governance, analyzing its institutional strengths, limitations, and the strategic engagement of significant countries like Türkiye. The study explores how the OECD navigates contemporary challenges such as digital transformation and artificial intelligence regulation while assessing Türkiye’s positioning within these multilateral policy frameworks.

This paper examines Croatia's involvement in (extended) deterrence strategy as a critical component of NATO's collective defense strategy and its broader implications for regional stability, particularly in bilateral relations with Serbia. The research aims to analyze how Croatia's NATO membership has influenced its strategic positioning and contributed to the development of its security policies. It also explores the impact of the Ukraine conflict on NATO's strategic priorities and Croatia's alignment with these objectives. The research draws on a comparative analysis of Croatia's national security and defense strategies from 2002 to 2017, reflecting a transition shaped by NATO and EU integration. The study demonstrates how Croatia has integrated its national defense strategy with broader Euro-Atlantic frameworks. Special attention is given to Croatia's contributions to NATO missions and its political and logistical support for Ukraine. These engagements illustrate Croatia's commitment to NATO's objectives, including bolstering collective security and deterrence measures against potential threats, notably from Russia. This includes military assistance amounting to €181 million and alignment with EU sanctions against Russia. Despite these efforts, internal political disagreements, such as debates over training Ukrainian forces, reveal Croatia's challenges in balancing national interests with alliance obligations. The research highlights the exacerbation of the "security dilemma" between Croatia and Serbia, driven by differing security policies and the broader geopolitical consequences of the Ukraine conflict. Fueled by the Ukraine conflict, this dilemma is analyzed through the lens of arms races, strategic doctrines, and contrasting geopolitical alignments. The paper suggests that these dynamics aggravate existing mistrust and challenge regional stability in the Balkans. Croatia's NATO-driven deterrence strategy contrasts sharply with Serbia's military neutrality and strategic partnership with Russia, intensifying regional tensions and arms races. These dynamics underline the risk of destabilization in the Balkans if such tensions are not managed through sustained diplomatic efforts. The research offers a critical perspective on how national security strategies interact with multilateral policies, providing new insights into the regional consequences of global strategies like NATO's deterrence framework. It underscores the need for Croatia and its neighbors to prioritize long-term strategic goals and regional cooperation to mitigate the risks posed by evolving security challenges. The findings emphasize the need for balanced approaches that reconcile national interests with allied obligations to ensure sustainable regional stability.

This article focuses on the policy of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations regarding the implementation of multilateral projects in the Asia-Pacific region amidst the fragmentation of the global digital space. On identifying the directions of social digital transformation and major problems it generates, the study further proceeds to specifying its impact on ASEAN-centric formats and initiatives of multilateral cooperation to finally turn to assessing the energy dimension of ASEAN’s policies and its digital support. It has been revealed that the fragmentation of the digital sphere has a negative multiplier effect on the strengthening of conflict elements in relations between key global actors, and there are no instrumental opportunities to reduce their severity. The problems caused by digital transformation overlap with the bottlenecks of ASEAN-led multilateral projects and initiatives: the ASEAN Economic Community and the Comprehensive Regional Economic Partnership, which undermines the Association’s ability to create and enhance economies of scale to make the region an attractive space for production and commercial activities and negatively affects ASEAN’s status as a coordinator of Asia-Pacific multilateral policy dialogue and security issues.

Background: Evidence based practice is a method to improve patient outcome by replacing the outdated practice with scientifically validated methods. Barriers, knowledge and facilitator influence evidence-based physiotherapy practice worldwide. Objective: This study was to explore the barriers, knowledge and facilitator of Evidence Based Practice (EBP) among physiotherapist in India Methods: A survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire among 50 physiotherapists, 42 responses were collected. Result: Respondents concurred that EBP is essential for practice, and it is helpful in both decision making and improving patient care. The most common barriers were time and workload constraints, lack of desire, financial incentives, weakness in English, difficulty in access to search engines, Inability to apply evidence. The facilitator includes targeting funding, access to remote, supportive staff and leadership committed to innovation and skills in EBP. The knowledge is limited to a few key terms. Conclusion: Physiotherapists in India have a positive attitude towards EBP, and it is necessary to move towards minimizing the existing barriers at the individual level by adopting effective multilateral policies. Attention is needed to improve EBP knowledge. Implication: EBP is the integration of best research evidence with clinical expertise and patient values. It provides open and thoughtful clinical decision making about physiotherapy management of patients.

The article summarizes the public debt policy issues in the context of financing climate change measures, and suggests priorities and mechanisms of fiscal, debt and sectoral policies to ensure sufficient financing of the green agenda. Authors have emphasized the trilemma between achieving climate goals, maintaining fiscal sustainability, and ensuring political capacity. It has been found that even under favorable external financial conditions, climate-vulnerable countries face a constant premium to the cost of borrowing. As a result, developing countries with high levels of debt and climate vulnerability are caught in a vicious circle of growing investment needs for climate- sustainable structural transformation and significant dependence on increasingly expensive debt financing, which leads to a combination of deteriorating debt sustainability and insufficient funding for climate change challenges. Authors argue for a comprehensive multilateral policy aimed at reforming the international debt architecture and increasing the amount of available financing for climate change adaptation under a government-led framework. Achieving common goals requires a carefully calibrated combination of climate change mitigation instruments based on enhanced domestic revenue mobilization, in particular through carbon pricing, more efficient spending on transfers, green subsidies and investments, and regulatory measures. Authors propose a comprehensive approach to implementing climate change mitigation policies, including the implementation of a fiscal strategy, sectoral policies to prevent climate change, and stimulating private investment. Emphasized the importance of developing further tools for incorporating climate policy into debt sustainability analysis.

The perception of how foreign direct investment will affect national security is complex and multilateral policy issues and should be considered. Today, the terms "national security," "essential security interests," and "public policies" are changing. Nowadays in evoking general considerations of protecting the security of a state, the safety of its citizens and key aspects of its way of life and in their paradigms shift. The threats associated with energy independence, cyberattacks, and the protection of a particularly important substance are related to security, so the issue of monitoring foreign direct investment in those areas is strategic.

An Assessment of the Impact of Commodity and Oil Economy on Nigeria's Multilateral Policy

This article discusses president Thomas Sankara’s multilateral policy dating back to his appointment as Prime Minister on January 11, 1983. Already, he made no secret of his anti-imperialist orientation and then became president on August 4, 1984. The ideological bases of his multilateral policy contained in the Political Orientation Speech (DOP) depended on the ideological orientations of the Revolution. Inspired by Marxism, its multilateral policy should be analyzed in the light of the so-called “Marxist” approach to international relations, which favors revolutionary class struggles. This revolutionary orientation is reflected in its foreign policy and the country very quickly makes known its course of action to the international community, the main principles of which are: revolutionary internationalism and the anti-imperialist struggle of the West. The manifestations of the multilateral policy were visible through the multilateral meetings at the sub-regional level which were opportunities for president Sankara to express himself and show his revolutionary ideas to the world. At the international level, the non-aligned summits, the France-Africa summits, the United Nations General Assembly were also places where this policy was expressed. In these forums, Thomas Sankara does not cut corners to raise the problem of debt, evils that undermine the development of the Third World, to support the class struggle and tackle major international issues. Lessons are learned at the political, economic and socio-cultural levels of its policy which serves as a substrate on which the current anti-neocolonialist struggles on the African continent are anchored. Keywords: Multilateral Policy, Thomas Sankara, Revolution, Anti-Imperialism

Arctic marine shipping development and governance in Canada: A historical overview

To facilitate evidence-based practice (EBP) in physiotherapy in Iran and guide future improvements, it is crucial to identify what barriers and facilitators exist in the current system from the physiotherapist's perspective. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the barriers and facilitators of EBP in physiotherapy in Iran. This qualitative study was conducted using a phenomenological approach from January to July 2023 in Iran. The sampling process started with a purposive approach, and then an attempt was made to identify and interview more potential samples with the snowball approach. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the collected qualitative data. 44 individuals, including 37 physiotherapists and seven faculty members, participated in this study. Several barriers and facilitators to evidence-based physiotherapy practice in Iran were found and then put into three themes: (1) individual factors, (2) practice environment factors, and (3) extra-organisational factors. The most common barriers were time/workload pressures, financial incentives, lack of motivation, weakness in English, managers' pressures, inadequate awareness among patients, infrastructure limitations, poor economic situation, Internet restrictions, inappropriateness of the educational curriculum, difficult access to scientific research, and lack of insurance coverage for up-to-date therapies. Although most of the participants had a very positive view of physiotherapy based on scientific evidence, various obstacles have prevented this approach from being well implemented in Iran. Therefore, it is necessary to move towards minimising the existing barriers at the individual, practice environment, and extra-organisational levels by adopting effective multilateral policies.

The paper aims to evaluate the impact of cultural and creative industries (CCI) finance on green economic flourishing for 16 European Union countries from 2012 to 2021. The coefficients estimated by the Arellano-Bond dynamic GMM technique confirmed that the market size coefficient of the cultural and creative industries is positive. In the case of green innovation, this variable has a positive coefficient. In addition, a 1% increase in the index of openness of the financial markets improves the green economy index of the European Union countries by 0.015%. With a 1% increase in the volume of cultural goods trade in the studied countries, the green economy index increases by 0.184%. The primary policy implications are developing green financing tools, using green cryptocurrencies in the cultural industry, developing the policy of trade multilateralism in cultural goods, promoting mutual learning of civilizations and cross-cultural literary exchange and innovation, and green government support for small and medium enterprises active in the culture industry.

During the nineteenth century, a major change took place in the trade, production, and use of mercury that altered its nearly exclusive link to silver refining in the Hispanic New World. We track the global expansion of mercury markets in chronological detail from 1511 to 1900 using historical archives on production and trade, a detailed country-by-country accounting of the pool of anthropogenic mercury from which legacy mercury was ultimately generated. The nature and profile of pre-1900 legacy mercury extends beyond silver refining, mercury production, and gold extraction, and includes alternate sources (vermilion, felt, mercury fulminate) and new regions that were not major silver or gold producers (China, India, United Kingdom, France, among others), that accounted for approximately 50% of total mercury consumed in the nineteenth century. The nature of the pre-1900 mercury market requires a quantitative distinction between legacy mercury and historic anthropogenic mercury production and use, since the chemistry of its end-uses determines the pathways and timelines for its incorporation into the global biogeochemical cycle. We thus introduce the concept of a mercury source pool to account for total historic anthropogenic mercury within and outside this cycle. Together with a critical review of previous assumptions used to reconstruct the historical use and loss of mercury, a much lower level of emissions of pre-1900 legacy mercury is proposed. A coordinated effort across disciplines is needed, to complete a historically accurate scenario that can guide the multilateral policies adopted under the United Nations Minamata Convention to control mercury in the environment.

In recent years there was a significant of international structures that are being created as platforms for multilateral policydialogue on climate change issues outside the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).Such structures are, for example, the Major Economies Forum (MEF), the Petersberg Climate Dialogue, the on CleanEnergy Ministerial and a wide variety of partnerships. There is no common definition for such formats of cooperation andconceptual ground for understanding their place in international climate governance system. This includes both traditionalinterstate cooperation mechanisms embodied by the UNFCCC, as well as non-state initiatives, climate finance institutions,formats that support a constant dialogue between states, business representatives, academia, and NGOs on climate policyissues. The aim of the study was to clarify the nature of quasi-formal climate governance, to establish a typology and assessof the dynamics of development of quasi-formal entities to better understand the processes of its formation and implementation.I describe three types of quasi-formal entities from the new dataset of quasi-formal entities created in the period from2001–2022: intergovernmental forums, UNFCCC party groupings, and hybrid partnerships. The study reveals an increasein the number of political forums and hybrid partnerships amid stabilization or even reduction of negotiating blocs within theUNFCCC. In complex system of international climate governance, quasi-formal entities are playing an increasing role inthe accumulation and exchange of knowledge and experience between states on the implementation of the Paris Agreement.

India’s urban assets and populations are highly vulnerable to a multitude of natural hazards, climate variability and environmental change. This can well impact on the entire nation, as economic output comes primarily from in and around its urban settlements. Empirical evidence from recent disasters, despite some major successes, reinforces the limited preparedness of Indian towns and cities to withstand multiple hazards such as fires, floods, extreme temperatures, earthquakes and strong winds. Unregulated growth and the quality of built environment are among a host of factors that have resulted in this vulnerability to disaster events. The research issue that this paper addresses is that of enabling the Urban Local Bodies (ULB) to implement disaster risk reduction and recovery framework(s) developed and agreed on at the national and sub-national levels. This paper highlights capacity challenges within local government for managing natural disasters amongst wider challenges of service provision. The paper draws upon empirical observations to argue that despite their best intentions ULBs are currently constrained in implementing the extensive comprehensive disaster risk & recovery approach driven by a multiplicity of national and multilateral policies. The paper provides observations from the Kosi River flooding disaster (2008) in Bihar state to illustrate this point. The paper further highlights that while this situation will not change overnight there are a number of practical opportunities to support ULBs in making an immediate start and superimpose risk reduction onto development programmes.