State Actors Research Articles

Effectiveness of demographic policy measures in addressing population decline in contemporary Russia

Demographic policy is one of the key tasks of almost any state at the present time. It correlates with the solution of pressing problems in the economic and social spheres, directly depends on the state of healthcare, education, migration policy and other factors and directly affects the socio-economic development of both individual regions and the country as a whole. Many Russian and foreign researchers believe that demographic indicators very accurately reflect the socio-economic and political situation of the state. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that for the progressive socio-economic development of any country, positive demographic dynamics are necessary. The main sign of the negative demographic situation that has developed in modern Russia and a number of countries, primarily European, is the growing scale of depopulation (population extinction). The purpose of this work was to analyze the existing demographic policy of Russia and compare demographic trends in Russia and other countries. The work uses methods of statistical data analysis, comparison of statistical indicators of fertility, mortality, natural population decline, migration, marriage rates in Russia and the Republic of Srpska, methods of retrospective analysis, research of the institutional environment created by the action of state and national programs “Demography”, “Providing accessible and comfortable housing and public services for citizens of the Russian Federation”, “Strategy of socio-economic development for the period until 2024”, Presidential decrees, etc. Research has shown that despite measures taken to overcome the demographic crisis, Russia’s population continues to decline. According to the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation (Rosstat), as of 1 January 2023, 146.45 million people lived in Russia. By 1 January 2046, according to a Rosstat forecast published in October 2023 the country’s population will decrease to 138.77 million people. To solve demographic problems in the Russian Federation, a national project “Demography” was developed and approved. The government has allocated more than 3 trillion rubles for its implementation. However, it is not possible to completely overcome the negative trend. The authors proposed a number of economic and ideological measures within the framework of agglomeration, migration, and family support policies that can be used within the framework of socio-economic development strategies and national programs aimed at overcoming the demographic crisis.

The Reality of The State's Responsibility for Victims of Natural Disasters in The Perspective of Human Rights

This study critically examines the state's role in fulfilling its responsibilities towards victims of natural disasters from a human rights perspective. It aims to analyze the nature of these responsibilities, their conceptual framework, and the factors influencing their effective implementation. Using a philosophical approach alongside qualitative research methods like interviews and direct observations, the study seeks to deepen understanding of how state actions intersect with humanitarian principles. Key findings emphasize the importance of grounding state responsibilities in humanitarian values to uphold human rights and preserve the dignity of affected individuals. This perspective is particularly relevant in Indonesia, where Pancasila principles underscore the state's role in disaster response and recovery. Despite these principles, the study identifies persistent challenges such as inadequate disaster mitigation policies, insufficient community protection measures, and complexities in inter-governmental coordination. To enhance the implementation of state responsibilities in disaster management, several recommendations are proposed. Firstly, integrating humanitarian considerations into criteria for determining national disaster status is essential to prioritize human rights in decision-making. Secondly, regional governments should allocate resources in their budget planning for both proactive disaster prevention and effective post-disaster response tailored to local vulnerabilities. Additionally, the study advocates for improved disaster mitigation policies, including comprehensive public education on disaster impacts, strict building regulations, and robust disaster risk zoning frameworks. Addressing these recommendations can align state actions with humanitarian principles, thereby improving the protection and well-being of communities affected by natural disasters.

Hierarchy in the Politics of Migration: Revisiting Race, Ethnicity, and Power in the Migration State

Migrants and refugees face hostile publics and organized political interests, and contend with new and evolving forms of surveillance, deportability, and political violence. Researchers show that these political dynamics are fundamentally shaped by the politics of race and ethnicity. Yet, even as this work is increasingly abundant, it has not always been taken up by mainstream accounts of migration. In this article, we revisit scholarship on the politics of international migration, bringing together a collection of — sometimes disparate — research to explore how scholars can forge new lines of inquiry regarding the relationship between migration, race, ethnicity, and power. To do so, we evaluate three types of relationships at the core of migration politics: the relationship between migration and the state, the migration-related demands of domestic publics on the state, and how migrants interact and contend with the state. Across these relationships, we examine how ethnoracial hierarchies draw on, legitimize, and reinforce uneven distributions of political power, disparate deployments of state action and violence, and projects of nation- and state-building. Combining the intellectual prowess of distinct fields and approaches, we draw on productive convergences and tensions between existing and emerging frameworks and analytic starting points across disciplines to map future research trajectories in the multidisciplinary study of immigration, citizenship, asylum, and racial and ethnic politics. We conclude with a note on the politics of knowledge production–whereby some accounts of migration have been privileged over others–and point to important epistemological and methodological interventions for advancing research on the politics of migration.

A framework for designing a degradation-aware controller based on empirical estimation of the state–action cost and model predictive control

Controlling the machine’s state of health (SoH) increases the accuracy of the remaining useful life estimation and enables the control of the failure time by keeping the system operational until the desired maintenance time is reached. To achieve system reliability through SoH control, the system controller must consider the impact of its actions on other parameters, such as degradation. This article proposes a structure for designing degradation-aware controllers for systems with available physical models. A system using this approach can learn autonomously, irrespective of the system’s physical structure and degradation model, and opt for control actions that enhance the system’s reliability and availability. To this end, first, a method is proposed to compute the cost associated with the actions taken by the controller. Second, a new cost function is introduced that incorporates the costs associated with degradation into the cost function utilized in model predictive control. In the third step, dynamic programming and deterministic scheduling are used to calculate the optimal action based on the defined cost function. Finally, the proposed control method is validated through simulation, demonstrating its ability to effectively manage machine degradation and achieve optimal performance according to production and maintenance plans.

Needing: An Active Inference Process for Physiological Motivation.

Need states are internal states that arise from deprivation of crucial biological stimuli. They direct motivation, independently of external learning. Despite their separate origin, they interact with reward processing systems that respond to external stimuli. This article aims to illuminate the functioning of the needing system through the lens of active inference, a framework for understanding brain and cognition. We propose that need states exert a pervasive influence on the organism, which in active inference terms translates to a "pervasive surprise"-a measure of the distance from the organism's preferred state. Crucially, we define needing as an active inference process that seeks to reduce this pervasive surprise. Through a series of simulations, we demonstrate that our proposal successfully captures key aspects of the phenomenology and neurobiology of needing. We show that as need states increase, the tendency to occupy preferred states strengthens, independently of external reward prediction. Furthermore, need states increase the precision of states (stimuli and actions) leading to preferred states, suggesting their ability to amplify the value of reward cues and rewards themselves. Collectively, our model and simulations provide valuable insights into the directional and underlying influence of need states, revealing how this influence amplifies the wanting or liking associated with relevant stimuli.

Examining the Legality of the Use of Force in International Law

This article examines the legality of the use of force in international law. The article revealed that faith in the UN may weaken when it fails to act in contexts where its Charter requires or implies it should, or when its actions fail to achieve the intended results. As a result, it is critical for the UN’s integrity and vitality that it is willing and able to act in circumstances that warrant its intervention. If there was a successful alternative to meeting global aims, it would deter states from taking matters into their own hands. This leads to the conclusion that we can welcome illegal but clearly justified action, or what we might call ‘legitimate’ action, under certain specified circumstances. The article proposes several broad areas where the UN could rationally undergo reform. As the maintainer of peace and security, it would be unwise for the UN to engage ‘with incomplete and incremental change.’ The UNSC needs ‘greater credibility, legitimacy, representation, effectiveness, and enhanced capacity and willingness to act in defense of the common peace.’ Therefore, the article advocates for the development of a legal doctrine of humanitarian intervention. A suggested criterion is the existence of a supreme humanitarian emergency, the use of force as a last resort, and the achievement of a positive humanitarian outcome. If the UNSC can identify these criteria for lawful humanitarian intervention, it would be wiser to authorize force. The use of force would then be under central control, as opposed to unilateral state action with a potentially undefined mandate. Keywords: International law, Justification, Legitimacy, UN Charters, Use of force.

Is it time for a European Convention against Racial Profiling?

Four years after the murder of George Floyd and the global Black Lives Matter protests, racial profiling not only remains prevalent in law enforcement practices in- and outside Europe, but takes on new forms in the wake of technological developments enabling large scale data analysis and the use of algorithmic risk profiles. A few years ago, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) first dealt explicitly with the issue of racial profiling in the twin cases of Basu v. Germany and Muhammad v. Switzerland. More recently, the ECtHR held in Wa Baile c. Suisse that Switzerland had violated the prohibition of discrimination by subjecting the applicant to racial profiling at Zürich train station, as part of a police action to apprehend persons without a valid residence permit. 1 While these judgments, especially in Wa Baile, go some way towards securing international State accountability for racial profiling, they also illustrate the difficulties of fighting such profiling as a form of structural discrimination under the ECHR. Meanwhile other human rights bodies, at the European and international levels, have both acknowledged the structural nature of racial profiling and published numerous policy guidelines and recommendations for positive State action to ensure non-discriminatory law enforcement. Yet, to date all of these instruments remain at the level of soft law. Despite the ECtHR's recent efforts, European human rights law thus does not impose legal obligations on States to actively prevent and combat racial profiling. This column signals this gap, and considers some of the pros and cons of adopting a European Convention against Racial Profiling.

Multiexperience-Assisted Efficient Multiagent Reinforcement Learning.

Recently, multiagent reinforcement learning (MARL) has shown great potential for learning cooperative policies in multiagent systems (MASs). However, a noticeable drawback of current MARL is the low sample efficiency, which causes a huge amount of interactions with environment. Such amount of interactions greatly hinders the real-world application of MARL. Fortunately, effectively incorporating experience knowledge can assist MARL to quickly find effective solutions, which can significantly alleviate the drawback. In this article, a novel multiexperience-assisted reinforcement learning (MEARL) method is proposed to improve the learning efficiency of MASs. Specifically, monotonicity-constrained reward shaping is innovatively designed using expert experience to provide additional individual rewards to guide multiagent learning efficiently, with the invariance guarantee of the team optimization objective. Furthermore, a reward distribution estimator is specially developed to model an implicated reward distribution of environment by using transition experience from environment, containing collected samples (state-action pair, reward, and next state). This estimator can predict the expectation reward of each agent for the taken action to accurately estimate the state value function and accelerate its convergence. Besides, the performance of MEARL is evaluated on two multiagent environment platforms: our designed unmanned aerial vehicle combat (UAV-C) and StarCraft II Micromanagement (SCII-M). Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed MEARL can greatly improve the learning efficiency and performance of MASs and is superior to the state-of-the-art methods in multiagent tasks.

A multi-objective genetic algorithm based on two-stage reinforcement learning for green flexible shop scheduling problem considering machine speed

The consumption of energy and resources in the manufacturing industry has garnered significant attention due to the increasingly severe environmental issues. Green shop scheduling research is focused on optimizing economic and environmental indicators within the current manufacturing model. This paper specifically addresses the flexibility of job-shop scheduling problem considering machine speed (CMS-FJSP), as different machine speeds during the production process can impact energy and resource consumption. The objectives of this study include minimizing the makespan, total energy consumption, and tool wear. To tackle this problem, a multi-objective genetic algorithm that incorporates a two-stage reinforcement learning approach is proposed. In light of the characteristics of the problem, a three-layer encoding approach is suggested, which encompasses machine allocation, operation sequencing, and machine speed selection. Additionally, a decoding method that integrates energy-saving strategies is proposed to enhance the optimization process. To improve the quality of the population, three distinct initialization methods have been developed. Furthermore, a parameter adjustment strategy informed by two-stage reinforcement learning is introduced. This strategy incorporates a state set and action set tailored to the unique characteristics of two-stage reinforcement learning, alongside corresponding reward mechanisms. In 30 test cases, the proposed algorithm demonstrates superior uniformity and convergence compared to five classical algorithms. In a practical case within a hydraulic component production workshop conducted at a hydraulic component company, the proposed algorithm generates 26 scheduling schemes with different focuses, achieving a 14.39% reduction in makespan, a 2.13% decrease in energy consumption, and a 10.65% reduction in tool wear.

Economic Statecraft of Small States in Response to Great Power Strategic Rivalry-Take Malaysia as An Example

The foreign economic statecraft of state actors in International Relations (IRs) have often attracted much attention and discussion among scholars, but most of the existing research focuses on the economic statecraft choices of great or medium-sized powers, and there is a lack of discussion on the economic statecraft of small state actors. From the perspective of International Political Economy (IPE), this paper takes Neoclassical Realism (NCR) as the theoretical basis and adopts case studies and process tracing to analyze how Malaysia has responded to the competition of great powers such as the United States, China and Japan with different economic statecrafts. The results show that small states, like great power, possess the ability to implement different economic statecrafts, and the ability threshold, initiative, and rationality of goals are the conditions that shadow whether small countries can implement economic statecrafts. State favorability at the system level and interest preferences at the unit level jointly shape the three modes of economic statecrafts that small states use to cope with great power competition, including: offensive economic statecraft, defensive economic statecraft, and composite economic statecraft. Depending on their relative relationship and status with great powers, small states flexibly apply different economic statecrafts to realize the goals of foreign economic development and maintain national security.

Bucking the Trend: Civil Society and the Strengthening of Environmental Rights in Latin America and the Caribbean

Abstract In 2021, environmental procedural rights were strengthened in Latin America and the Caribbean when the legally binding Escazu Agreement came into force. This new treaty seeks to implement Principle 10 of the 1992 Rio Declaration, which promotes access to information, participation, and justice in environmental matters. The treaty is empirically and theoretically surprising: it bucks the growing trend of informalization in regional and international cooperation and is more highly legalized than institutional design theory would predict. Applying an interpretivist logic of inquiry and drawing on interviews with twenty-three participants in the negotiations, I argue that this outcome can be explained by an alignment of structural conditions that facilitated an alliance between ambitious state and nonstate actors and enabled their influence throughout negotiations. Applying theories of political opportunities and mobilization structures, I show how a network created by the World Resources Institute influenced the agreement’s design and helped secure a high degree of obligation and precision in Latin America’s first environmental treaty.

The Involvement of the Pechenegs in the Ethnopolitical Processes of the Southern Russian Steppes

Examining the involvement of the Pechenegs in the ethnopolitical processes of the Southern Russian steppes is crucial for understanding the formation of the ethnic and political map of Eastern Europe during the 10th and 11th centuries. The impact of the Pechenegs on the political situation in this region remains significant for historians and ethnologists. The purpose of this study is to analyze the role of the Pechenegs in the ethnopolitical processes of the Southern Russian steppes from the mid-10th century to the mid-11th century. The research focuses on the Pechenegs' contributions to ethnopolitical changes and their interactions with other peoples and states in the region. The study utilizes the works of prominent historians such as N. M. Karamzin, P. A. Golubovsky, S. M. Solov'ev and G. Manuku-Adameshteanu, as well as research by Turkish and Hungarian scholars. The analysis is based on primary sources, including chronicles and archaeological data, as well as secondary historical materials. The study addresses the origin of the name "Pecheneg" and their early homeland. Historians like Tatishchev, Karamzin, and Solovyov present different views on the origins and initial territories of the Pechenegs. Tatishchev associates the Pechenegs with the Sarmatians, while Karamzin and Solovyov identify them as Turkic peoples. The research examines the Pechenegs' influence on ethnopolitical processes in the Southern Russian steppes, including their conflicts with the Bulgars, Hungarians, Khazars, and the Rus state. Golubovsky and Manuku-Adameshteanu highlight the Pechenegs' significant impact on the Hungarians and other regional peoples. The article also explores the Pechenegs' settlement in modern Hungary and their roles as both vassals of the Kievan state and independent political actors in the region's political life. The article concludes that the Pechenegs played a significant role in the ethnopolitical processes of the Southern Russian steppes during the 10th and 11th centuries. Despite losing their political power by the mid-11th century, they had a considerable impact. Further research is needed to fully understand their role in the history of Eastern Europe.

Defying the gravity of “dominant parent” Sino-foreign JVs Chinese state leadership and control of Eurasia Aviation Corporation, 1931–1943

In 1931, Deutsche Luft Hansa and China's Nationalist government came together to form the Sino-German airline Joint Venture (JV), the Eurasia Aviation Corporation. Eurasia plied the skies over China and beyond, as part of its mandate to project newfound state power in a global infrastructural race to prove its technocratic capabilities and modern identity. By tracing the founding, development, and dissolution of Eurasia Aviation Corporation, this paper seeks to overturn the paradigm of the “dominant parent” enterprise where the foreign side controlled the destinies of Sino-foreign JVs. Using epistles and contracts between Luft Hansa, the Executive Yuan, Eurasia, and the ministries that had purview over the Sino-foreign JV – as well as using aerophilatelic catalogues, route networks, and Chiang Kai-shek's lectures ( Chinese Citizenry and Aviation) – this paper proposes that Nationalist state actors were capable of formidable and strategic stewardship over the business that transcended the quasi-equity on paper.

Bringing agency back in: neighbourhood countries' perceptions of their hegemonic power relation with the EU and Russia

ABSTRACT Russia's current war against Ukraine takes place in the wider context of geopolitical competition in the region. The EU and Russia promoted integration projects that have, in fact, become conflicting for the “in-between” countries. Existing scholarship put forward power-based explanations for these countries' behaviour that ignored their agency. This paper brings agency back in by developing a conceptual framework that highlights the relational nature of hegemony and that includes the perceptions of the small state in the analysis of power. To illustrate the applicability of this framework, two neighbourhood countries' (Moldova and Armenia) power relations with the EU and Russia are analysed. The focus is on how the structural aspects were acted out and shaped by the two aspiring regional hegemons to understand how small state actors perceived EU and Russian hegemonic power. The findings show the different expressions the phenomenon of hegemonic power can take in practice and how these were perceived in Moldova and Armenia.

Revitalization of Fisheries Production Factors Supporting the Income of Traditional Fishermen in Tanjung Medang Village, Bengkalis

Coastal fisheries in Tanjung Medang Village, North Rupat District, Bengkalis Regency play an important role in shaping the economic characteristics and culture of its community. Physically, the North Rupat District is predominantly divided into residential areas along the inter-village roads and coastal areas that serve as the primary source of livelihood for most of its population. Now, North Rupat District has become a destination for both residents and visitors, impacting the existence of increasingly complex local economic resources and wisdom along the coastal areas of North Rupat District. Revitalization of coastal fisheries production factors is needed to improve economic life. Therefore, what model of economic development policy is needed to access traditional local economic resources to reduce local poverty? What kind of revitalization is required for traditional fishermen to utilize maritime economic resources fairly for the local population? The economic development policy for alternative marine economic resources involves integrating and collaborating the rights and obligations of state actors, private actors, and the public in maritime politics and economics. The revitalization of coastal fisheries production factors includes organizing the ecological integration of areas as traditional fishing grounds, tourism economic areas, and the originality of traditional culture across various disciplines, as well as fostering cultural integration among stakeholders and intergenerational concern among the Tanjung Medang community.

A post-Hegelian theory of human rights: beyond recognition and the state

This article develops a post-Hegelian social and political theory of human rights. To do this, it moves past two legacies that can be traced back to Hegel’s philosophy: his theory of recognition and his views about the embeddedness of rights within states. IR often misinterprets Hegel’s recognition theory as applying within a public world of state action. However, Hegel argues that recognition occurs before rather than within a social world. Instead, I show how and why Hegel’s analysis of Sophocles’ play Antigone is a more fruitful starting point for theorising contemporary international practices. I mobilise a Hegelian social ontology of ‘ethical life’ and a post-Hegelian critique of statism and Eurocentrism to argue that human rights should be understood as an independent field of action in which agency is embedded, rather than as a practice that is tied to sovereignty and states. Several conclusions about the ontology and epistemology of human rights stem from this analysis. Human rights practice brings forms of action and obligation into being. It enables collective (not only individual) action. It requires the exercise of humility rather than hubris. Finally, it invites a discussion of how agents can bridge external and internal perspectives to evaluate the actions that seem to be required by their practices. This critical exploration and re-interpretation of Hegel’s early work corrects IR’s tendency to use his later and more statist writings to locate and concretise the grounds for ethics.

Environmental and legal aspects of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine

The article examines the environmental and legal aspects of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine. The problems of bringing the aggressor state to responsibility for ecocide are analyzed. Having found a legislative enshrinement in the national criminal law (Article 441 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine), ecocide has not been enshrined in international criminal law. It is not recognized as a crime either in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court or in any other international legal act. As of today, Russian crimes against the environment can be investigated by the International Criminal Court as war crimes. The author of the article supports the proposal regarding the need to include the crime of ecocide in the Rome Statute. The ecological and legal aspect of the formation of an international compensation mechanism is studied, the components of which are: 1) an international register of damages; 2) compensation commission (which will consider individual applications for compensation by the Russian Federation for losses from citizens, companies and the state); 3) compensation fund (which will accumulate funds to pay commission decisions, including at the expense of confiscated Russian assets). The mechanism of compensation for environmental damage caused as a result of the armed aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine is analyzed, and ways of its optimization are proposed. The future compensation mechanism should be based on the «ecosystem services approach», which will significantly increase the amount of environmental damage that the Russian Federation will pay to Ukraine. The international practice of compensation for environmental damage caused by the aggressor as a result of military actions and temporary occupation was studied and analyzed. The author emphasized the need to reform the state environmental monitoring system. Without reliable monitoring data, it is difficult to prove a causal relationship between the illegal actions of the aggressor state and the damage caused to the environment.

Campaigning Against Women’s Rights? Britain’s Global Colonial Legacy in the Early UN Women’s Rights Agenda 1950–1962

This article assesses the impact of British colonialism in relation to UN women’s rights conventions in the 1950s and early 1960s. Building on the body of scholarship on the role of colonialism on the development of human rights frameworks at the UN, it focuses on Britain’s diplomatic engagements on women’s rights at the global level and finds that Britain’s global colonial legacy on the UN women’s rights agenda in this period was as a conservative and obstructive state actor. Britain’s lack of interest in conventions to support women’s rights, and insistence on the need for ‘Territorial Application Clauses’, outweighed any acknowledgement of the importance of establishing universal rights for women, or the importance of these rights for indigenous women within British colonies. Further still, Britain’s conservativism impacted the very contours and political weight of the conventions themselves. As well as exposing the geopolitics of British colonialism on these specific conventions, this article highlights the critical need to challenge myths surrounding British colonial benevolence and to interrogate the notion that that ‘Western’ governments such as Britain have consistently sought to export women’s rights at the UN.

Cross-Border Conflicts and Social-Economic Development along the Kenya-Ethiopia Border: A Case of Northwestern Kenya

Purpose: Kenya borders South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Uganda on the western side. The border is ladened with cross-border conflict involving the Turkana of Kenya, Dasanach and Nyangatom of Ethiopia, Toposa of South Sudan, and Karamoja of Uganda. The cross-border conflicts between Kenya and Ethiopia continue to ravage the social-economic development of cross-border communities on the border of Kenya. Thus, this study focused on managing the cross-border conflict and improving economic growth on the Kenyan northwestern border and Kenya-Ethiopia relations. Methodology: The study used an explanatory research design and multistage sampling. The study sampled the targeted population of 65,218 respondents of the Turkana North constituency. A descriptive analysis of 392 respondents was used in questionnaires, focus group discussions, and observation to collect quantitative and qualitative data. Findings: The findings indicate a high prevalence of cross-border conflicts, their considerable impacts on the social and economic development of the affected areas and communities, and varying levels of effectiveness of various interventions to resolve the issue. After examining the effect of cross-border conflicts on the social economic development of the Kenya-Ethiopia border, the findings showed that locals on the Kenyan side were victims of cross-border attacks from Merille of Ethiopia, as revealed by 76% of the respondents. The study acknowledged the presence of interventions for Managing cross-border Conflicts and Social Economic Development in Turkana County, Kenya-Ethiopia Border administrative mechanisms in managing cross-border conflicts and improving Kenya-Ethiopia relations. The study concluded that the effectiveness of these strategies would enhance the capacity of Kenya and Ethiopia to alleviate the social economic growth of the people and boost relations in the region. The study evaluated measures for enhancing the interventions for managing Cross-border Conflict and Social Economic Development in Turkana County, Kenya-Ethiopia Border. The study documented the state's various actions to mitigate, reduce, or eradicate cross-border conflict in northwestern Kenya. These actions were meant to address cross-border conflict and improve the social economic development of the area. Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: Constructivist perspective to the cross-border conflict on Kenyan-Ethiopian conflict allows for a better understanding of how identity, norms, and perceptions contribute to the prevalence and persistence of the conflicts. Such perspectives provide a more nuanced approach to the issues that transcend the traditional economic and geopolitical factors to consider the cultural and social aspects of the cross-border conflict. The study concludes that the effective implementation of the disarmament mechanism on the border of Kenya and Ethiopia contributed to the cross-border conflict and enhanced the social-economic development of Turkana County, concluding that the mechanism for cross-border conflict is adequate. However, their implementation was weak due to lacking resources and goodwill. Therefore, the study recommended that Kenya and Ethiopia address the root causes of cross-border conflicts, triggers, and accelerators by promoting effective institutional policies and administrative frameworks for managing natural resources and setting up official access crossing points. Finally, Kenya and Ethiopia pool resources to boost the livelihoods of their border communities.

Traffic navigation via reinforcement learning with episodic-guided prioritized experience replay

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) models play a fundamental role in autonomous driving applications; however, they typically suffer from sample inefficiency because they often require many interactions with the environment to learn effective policies. This makes the training process time-consuming. To address this shortcoming, Prioritized Experience Replay (PER) has proven to be effective by prioritizing samples with high Temporal-Difference (TD) error for learning. In this context, this study contributes to artificial intelligence by proposing a sample-efficient DRL algorithm called Episodic-Guided Prioritized Experience Replay (EPER). The core innovation of EPER lies in the utilization of an episodic memory, dedicated to storing successful training episodes. Within this memory, expected returns for each state–action pair are extracted. These returns, combined with TD error-based prioritization, form a novel objective function for deep Q-network training. To prevent excessive determinism, EPER introduces exploration into the learning process by incorporating a regularization term into the objective function that allows exploration of state-space regions with diverse Q-values. The proposed EPER algorithm is suitable to train a DRL agent for handling episodic tasks, and it can be integrated into off-policy DRL models. EPER is employed for traffic navigation through scenarios such as highway driving, merging, roundabout, and intersection to showcase its application in engineering. The attained results denote that, compared with the PER and an additional state-of-the-art training technique, EPER is superior in expediting the training of the agent and learning a more optimal policy that leads to lower collision rates within the constructed navigation scenarios.