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"In September 2017, a knock on the door upends Michelle Horton's life forever: her sister had just shot her partner and was now in jail. During the investigation that follows, Michelle learns that Nikki had been hiding horrific abuse for years. Stunned to find herself in a situation she'd only ever encountered on television and true crime podcasts, Michelle rearranges her life to care for Nikki's children and simultaneously launches a fight to bring Nikki home, squaring off against a criminal justice system seemingly designed to punish the entire family. In this exquisite memoir, Michelle retraces the sisters' childhood and explores how so many people, including herself, could have been blind to the abuse. An intimate look at a family surviving trauma, Dear Sister is a deeply personal story about what it takes to be believed and the danger of keeping truths hidden. Ultimately, Horton turns her family's suffering into hard won wisdom: a profound story of resilience and the unbreakable bond between sisters"--

State fragility, which describes how different components of a state do (or do not) function, is a central concept for understanding how development activities and policies in complex political, humanitarian and conflict-affected contexts will (or will not) work in practice. Using fragility as a lens, we use feminist development policy and forced displacement as examples to demonstrate how different empirical conceptualisations of fragility can be used to uncover potential challenges and identify opportunities for more comprehensive policy and programming. These examples are only two ways one can apply the concepts of fragility of the OECD and the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS). Indeed, these and other empirical concepts of state fragility have many applications and can be used to measure and understand state–society, conflict and humanitarian dynamics in myriad ways. The longest-running among these kinds of models is the Fund for Peace's Fragile States Index (Fund for Peace, 2023). Other models focus on state fragility as a function of different aspects of "stateness". This includes IDOS's Constellations of State Fragility typology, which clusters types of fragility based on strengths/weaknesses in key dimensions of statehood (Grävingholt et al., 2019). Some organisations have moved beyond an exclusive focus on the functioning of the state, with the OECD currently defining fragility contexts as the combination of risks and insufficient coping capacities of multiple levels of governance systems and/or communities to manage, absorb or mitigate those risks (OECD, 2016). The IDOS and OECD concepts do not rank countries, and the methods used in both models allow them to be applied to different levels of analysis. Essentially, these empirical conceptualisations of state fragility can serve as useful heuristics for the policy-makers responsible for setting policy agendas in fragile contexts. The key challenge for policy-makers that we address in this policy brief is the step from empirically categorising states' fragility, to using that empirical data to inform often fast-moving, idiosyncratic policy-making and implementation in fragile contexts. As noted previously, these concepts are heuristics; country-specific policy planning and implementation require more fine-grained monitoring of country contexts. To achieve this, we recommend: Donors should be aware that the suitability of a particular tool/ fragility lens depends on the specific problem at hand, and they should choose the tool following a rigorous problem analysis. Use Germany's leadership on feminist foreign and development policy to capture and highlight the full range of links between gender and fragility, and to continue strengthening feminist foreign and development policy in fragile contexts. In many cases, state fragility is a neighbourhood challenge that requires regional coordination in order to be managed. In the case of migration and displacement, donors can support the freedom of movement protocols in regional agreements such as ECOWAS and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Policy-makers and donor organisations should deepen investment in new avenues for collecting and standardising the data that is used to generate different empirical concepts of state fragility. This includes funding on-the-ground monitoring activities such as IGAD's Conflict Early Warning and Response Mechanism in East Africa. Recognise that otherwise functional states can indeed have sub-national pockets of severe fragility, and that these variations in sub-national fragility can over time erode the capacity, legitimacy and authority of the state if left unchecked.

On 16 September 2023, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger – all three states led by military regimes – decided to establish a new regional organisation, the Alliance of Sahel States (Alliance des Etats du Sahel – AES). This move was prompted by the worsening of the crisis within the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 2023, a crisis that reached its peak to date with the announcement by the three AES members on 28 January 2024 of their withdrawal from ECOWAS, a regional organisation set up back in 1975. In a socio-political context in which the role and functions of the state, the extent of state powers and the way in which they are exercised are increasingly being called into question, new forms of political and social organisation are developing. These are also influenced by the current geopolitical developments in the changing world order. At the same time, states and societies and the ongoing regional integration processes are facing major new challenges. Within ECOWAS, conventional ideas of state and society, values and structures are coming up against growing tendencies towards a new understanding of statehood and sovereignty. In the West Africa/Sahel region, new processes of nation-building and state-building are under way, underpinned by efforts to renew social cohesion and to integrate the 'vital forces of the nation' – a concept cited increasingly frequently in these countries – as comprehensively as possible. These developments call for a realignment of German and European foreign and development policy. The political and social conditions and expectations of the partners in the West Africa/Sahel region are currently undergoing profound transformation. They need to be aligned with the content and interests of the value-based foreign policy advocated by Germany – in line with the principle of a 'partnership between equals'. Any appraisal of the future developments and integration of the dynamics that determine them must take account of the various integration processes, which are particularly diversified and run in parallel in this region. Adopting a comparative perspective, this paper provides an overview of the various regional organisations in the West Africa/Sahel region. It analyses the potential of each of them in terms of their development prospects and sustainability. In addition to the critical relationship between ECOWAS and the AES, it also examines the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), the Integrated Develop-ment Authority of the Liptako-Gourma Region (Autorité de Liptako-Gourma – ALG) and the G5 Sahel, which is currently being dissolved. If the partnership between Germany and Europe on the one hand and the West African and Sahel states on the other is to be continued, it will be vital to adopt a pragmatic approach and maintain a political dialogue with all the partners. The states in this region are extremely important to Europe's future development. Moreover, it is only through communication based on mutual respect underpinning cooperation in the economic and development sectors that the growing influence of political powers such as Russia and Iran – whose ideas, interests and values are not in line with the Western Atlantic model of democracy governed by the rule of law – can be curbed effectively.

Le 16 septembre 2023, le Burkina Faso, le Mali et le Niger, trois États dirigés par des régimes militaires issus de coups d'État, ont décidé de former l'Alliance des États du Sahel (AES). Cette nouvelle organisation régionale a vu le jour dans le sillage de l'intensification de la crise interne au sein de la Communauté économique des États de l'Afrique de l'Ouest (CEDEAO) en 2023, dont le point culminant a été atteint le 28 janvier 2024 avec l'annonce, par les trois États membres de l'AES, de leur retrait de cette organisation régionale fondée en 1975. Dans un contexte sociopolitique où le rôle et les fonctions de l'État ainsi que la portée et les modalités d'exercice des pouvoirs publics se trouvent de plus en plus contestés, de nouvelles formes d'organisation politique et sociale se développent, également sous l'influence de l'évolution actuelle de la situation géopolitique dans un ordre mondial en mutation. Dans le même temps, les États et les sociétés, mais aussi les processus d'intégration régionale en cours, font face à de nouveaux enjeux majeurs. Au sein de la communauté des États de la CEDEAO, les notions traditionnelles d'État et de société, les valeurs et les structures se heurtent aux tendances croissantes en faveur d'une nouvelle conception de l'État et de la souveraineté. La région Afrique de l'Ouest/Sahel voit émerger de nouveaux processus d'édification de la nation et de l'État (Nation Building et State Building), portés par des efforts visant à renouveler la cohésion sociale et à intégrer le plus pleinement possible les « Forces Vives de la Nation » auxquelles les dirigeants de ces États se réfèrent de plus en plus. Ces évolutions nécessitent un ajustement de la politique étrangère et de développement allemande et européenne. À l'heure actuelle, les conditions politiques et sociales et les attentes des partenaires de l'espace Afrique de l'Ouest/Sahel connaissent de profonds bouleversements qu'il convient de concilier avec le contenu et les intérêts de la politique étrangère de l'Allemagne, fondée sur des valeurs, et dans le droit fil du principe d'un partenariat « d'égal à égal ». L'appréciation des développements à venir et l'intégration des dynamiques qui les sous-tendent nécessitent de tenir compte des différents processus d'intégration qui se déploient de façon parallèle dans cette région et s'avèrent particulièrement diversifiés. Dans une perspective comparative, le présent article propose un aperçu des différentes organisations régionales de l'espace Afrique de l'Ouest/Sahel. Leur potentiel respectif est analysé en termes de perspectives de développement et de durabilité. Outre la relation critique entre la CEDEAO et l'AES, l'Union économique et monétaire ouest-africaine (UEMOA), l'Autorité de Développement Intégré des États du Liptako-Gourma (ALG) et le groupe des États du G5 Sahel en cours de dissolution sont considérés. Pour poursuivre le partenariat entre l'Allemagne – et l'Europe – et les États d'Afrique de l'Ouest et du Sahel –, il est impératif de maintenir le dialogue politique avec l'ensemble des partenaires selon une approche pragmatique. Les pays de cette région sont très importants pour le développement futur de l'Europe. Et seule une coopération dans les domaines de l'économie et du développement, fondée sur une communication empreinte de respect mutuel, peut permettre de contenir l'influence croissante de puissances politiques telles que la Russie et l'Iran. Des puissances dont les idées, les intérêts et les valeurs s'écartent du modèle fondé sur la démocratie et sur l'État de droit d'inspiration occidentale-atlantique.

Presenting European Anthropology of Education through eleven studies of European schools, this volume explores the constructing and handling of difference and sameness in the central institutions of schools. Based on ethnographic studies of schools in Greece, England, Norway, Italy, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Austria, Russia, Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark, it illustrates how anthropological studies of schools provide a window to larger society. It thus offers insights into cultural lessons taught to children through policies, institutional structures and everyday interactions, as well as into schools' entanglement in state projects, cultural processes, societal histories and conflicts, and hence into contemporary Europe.