Since Russian President Vladimir Putin announced his support for a plan to recruit fighters from abroad to join the Russian army in early 2022, foreigners have fought in Ukraine as part of Russian forces. Many of these fighters are mercenaries in the commonly understood sense of that term. That is, they are fighters who have gone, intentionally, to fight for Russia in return for significant payment. Although these fighters have often found themselves in Ukraine with little to no training and without their promised salaries, this article is not primarily concerned with them. Instead, it is interested in those fighters who arrived in Russia without knowing that they would be sent to the conflict, or who did not know that they were going to Russia at all. The article argues that such ‘forced fighters’ who are misled or tricked into taking part in an armed conflict should be given protection beyond that given to other combatants, specifically that they should be offered repatriation to their countries of origin. It argues that international humanitarian law is unable to effectively capture the position of these fighters or provide adequate protection to them. It suggests, rather, that the law on modern slavery can provide a way to understand and reconceptualise the position of these fighters—as victims of servitude and human trafficking—and that this body of law can deliver the remedy of repatriation to them.

I aim at dissolving Saul Kripke’s dogmatism paradox by defending the idea that, with respect to any particular proposition p known by a subject A, it is not irrational for A to ignore all evidence against p. Here my defence of the dogmatic attitude depends on the crucial assumption – and this is an assumption made by Kripke himself in the setting of the paradox – that A wishes above all else to avoid gaining a false belief or losing a true one. An appendix briefly examines the possibility of a knowledge version of the paradox, as opposed to Kripke’s original true-belief version.

Powers pervade the natural world, from a flame’s power to burn to a plant’s power to grow. Certain powers seem to be special in being two-way. A two-way power is a single, unified power to do something or its opposite. Whereas a plant’s circumstances determine that it will grow, I seem to have the power to raise my arm or refrain from doing so: it is up to me whether or not to raise it. If this is right, then this power of mine is a two-way power.

To this day, Wajid ‘Ali Shah (1822–1887), the last nawab of Awadh, is remembered either as a hedonist and political failure who was forced to surrender his kingdom to the British East India Company or as a musical genius and important patron of the arts. However, few accounts engage with his personal religiosity and public acts of Shī’ah piety. This article examines Wajid ‘Ali Shah’s own scholarship and poetry, and considers his mourning practices and investment in rites relating to Muharram. By focusing on the era of his exile in Calcutta (1856–1887), I explore how these rituals integrated the nawab into the public life of the city. More broadly, this article considers his court’s activities as a case study to explore the history of nineteenth-century Shī’ah sound art practices and examine how instrumentation, oratory, and processions were understood by contemporary Muslim scholars of religion, the arts, and music.

This article introduces the LGBTQ+ Special edition of PS. It traces major developments of queer scholarship in political science beginning with Kenneth Sherrill’s 1973 paper, “Leaders in the Gay Activist Movement: The Problem of Finding Followers,” which was the first paper presented at an APSA annual meeting on a queer topic. As part of the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Professor Sherrill’s first paper, this introduction describes the efforts scholars made in their work and in the American Political Science Association to legitimate LGBTQ+ scholarship during the past half decade.

The campaign for reparations for colonial violence, slavery, and exploitation is now becoming a global phenomenon, as claims are being pursued in different jurisdictions and international forums.1 Each of these claims has its own specific legal character because of various factors including the forum in which it is brought, the applicable law, and the identity of the plaintiffs. Nevertheless, many reparations claims are based on appeals to international law, to developments in international human rights law and international criminal law, and specific prohibitions on slavery and genocide. It would appear intuitive that international law would provide remedies to the blatant injustices that are the subject of these claims. Slavery and exploitation have been denounced in the Durban Declaration2 and genocide and crimes against humanity including apartheid and other such practices are listed in the statute of the International Criminal Court.3 International law, however, has been largely a creation of the European powers; and historically, the law has facilitated rather than remedied colonial violence.4 It is unsurprising then that many claims for reparations encounter some basic legal obstacles.5 This is hardly coincidental. A legal system that is based on conquest will not readily permit an inquiry into its imperial origins, far less remedies for the injustices it permitted, indeed, mandated.

We present a new camera-trap record of the Critically Endangered Chinese pangolin Manis pentadactyla in Vietnam, from a survey during January–November 2022 in Kon Ka Kinh National Park, Gia Lai Province. This record is c. 950 km south of the only other previous camera-trap records of the species in Vietnam. We obtained three camera-trap images of an individual M. pentadactyla at 1,600 m altitude, highlighting the potential importance of this Park for M. pentadactyla in Vietnam. We confirmed the identification through expert consultation and morphological analysis. This record suggests that the range of M. pentadactyla extends into central Vietnam. Further research and conservation efforts in Kon Ka Kinh National Park are required, to safeguard this enigmatic species and its habitat.

One of the 84 plant species endemic to Jeju Island, South Korea, is Salix blinii H. Lév. We surveyed its habitat to obtain quantitative information on the population demographics of S. blinii, and thus to re-evaluate its conservation status and recommend in situ conservation strategies. We recorded 365 individuals in three valleys, above 1,200 m, on Mt Halla, of which 34 were flowering individuals capable of sexual reproduction. Although the population size is limited, the high proportion of small individuals suggests ongoing recruitment. Vegetative reproduction is presumed to play an important role, as it does for other Salix species that grow in valleys or along intermittent streams. Salix blinii is currently categorized as Vulnerable, based on criterion D2, on the IUCN Red List, but we reassess it as Vulnerable based on criteria D1+2 based on the number of mature individuals recorded. Although Mt Halla is designated as multiple large protected areas, small-scale protected areas within these larger areas need to be designated for more effective in situ conservation of S. blinii.

Historically, conservation has focused on species, ecological communities, systems and processes, rather than on individual animals. Even among advocates for compassionate conservation, the focus on animal welfare or animal rights only relates to conservation activities. However, in recent years the idea of managing ecosystems primarily to improve wild animal welfare has been gaining traction among animal ethicists and animal welfare researchers. Managing ecosystems for animal welfare is generally antithetical to management to support ecological and evolutionary processes, since essential features of those processes, such as predation, privation and competition, are sources of animal suffering. Our aim in this paper is not to defend the proposal that ecosystem management should focus primarily on improving wild animal welfare. It is, rather, to situate this proposal in relation to concerns about wild animal welfare expressed by the public and conservation biologists; to connect it to the rise of subjectivist theories of animal welfare; to introduce the ethical arguments used to support elevating the importance of individual wild animals; to explain the advocacy context; to outline potential implications for conservation; and to review critiques of taking a wild animal welfare focus in ecosystem management.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report, sea-level rise will continue for thousands of years. Many small island States and low-lying coastal States are already experiencing sea-level rise together with landward regression of coastal areas. This raises several legal questions, such as whether States are obligated to revise existing baselines, outer limits of maritime zones and charts. This article examines the legal lacunae in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) concerning the legal consequences of sea-level rise on baselines and maritime boundaries, including islands and archipelagos. It provides an overview of the work of the International Law Commission on sea-level rise in relation to international law. It traces the evolution of States’ views within the Sixth Committee between 2018 and 2024 and the UN, as well as the recent Advisory Opinions on climate change of the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the International Court of Justice. It concludes by noting how the legal lacunae in UNCLOS have been clarified, leaving to be determined the next steps in implementing the convergence of States’ interpretations of UNCLOS and customary international law in favour of preservation of baselines and maritime boundaries despite the physical effects of sea-level rise on coastlines.

This article addresses the gaps between ethnographic archives and community members who are often deprived of accessing their own materials. In reflecting on results from collaborative research with a Nepalese immigrant community in Alberta, Canada, where we created a Digital Community Archive (DCA), I draw attention to the benefits of combining strategies from applied ethnomusicology and Participatory Action Research (PAR). I propose a new model for archiving in ethnomusicology, the Community Collaborative Participatory Archive (CCPA). This model can improve ethnomusicological archival practice by focusing on collaborative, egalitarian, and grassroots participation, shared roles, and authority in the archival creation and development process.

The death of Mahsa Jina Amini at the hands of the Iranian police in September 2022 triggered protests both within Iran and across the global Iranian diaspora. This article explores how representations of collective memory and identity were articulated by the Iranian diaspora in Sweden at that time, exploring the concepts of memory, nostalgia, and identity, among others, through a constructionist framework. Key findings show hope as a central theme in diasporic engagement with the Woman, Life, Freedom protests, expressed as a desire for revolution and potential return to a liberated and democratic Iran. This study underscores the complex, multifaceted nature of diasporic activism, shaped by contested memories, subject-positions derived from lived experience and political interests, and historic and ongoing ideological tensions.