By The Youth Endowment Fund

The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) surveyed nearly 11,000 children aged 13–17 in England and Wales to hear directly about their experiences of violence. The findings are being shared across several reports, each exploring a different theme. This third report focuses on mental health and experiences of violence. For the first time, we asked detailed questions about mental health, including using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a 25-item questionnaire that measures the scale of children’s struggles. Combined with data on victimisation and perpetration, this provides an unprecedented picture of how violence and mental health are linked — and the complex ways they shape young people’s lives. Here’s what we found. Teenage children affected by serious violence face a dramatically higher risk of mental health problems. The scale of poor mental health among teenagers is alarming. More than one in four 13-17-year-olds reported high or very high levels of mental health difficulties, as measured by the SDQ — the equivalent of nearly a million teenage children struggling with their well-being. Behind this figure lie serious and often complex needs. A quarter of teenage children reported a diagnosis of at least one mental health or neurodevelopmental condition, such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or speech and communication difficulties. A further 21% suspected they had a condition but had not been formally diagnosed — suggesting large numbers of teenage children are facing difficulties without recognition or support

By The Youth Endowment Fund

The Youth Endowment Fund asked nearly 11,000 children aged 13–17 across England and Wales to share their experiences of violence. The findings are set out in separate reports, each exploring a different theme. This one focuses on teenage children’s experiences of exploitation and ‘gangs’. When we asked teenage children whether they had been in a ‘gang’, we defined a ‘gang’ as: “A group of young people who think of themselves as a ‘gang’, probably with a name, who are involved in violence or other crime.” We used the word ‘gang’ because it is one that many young people recognise and use themselves, more than phrases such as group-based criminality. But we also recognise its limitations: the term oversimplifies a complex issue and can reinforce harmful stereotypes. To reflect these sensitivities, we use inverted commas when referring to ‘gangs’. At several points in this report, we share the words of James (whose name has been changed to protect his identity), who, from ages 12 to 18, was criminally exploited. His story lays bare the reality

By Chukwudi Kingsley Onyeachu, Ikechukwu Clement Okoro & Martina Mgbosolu Ugwuoke 

Cybercrime and violent extremism have not only become mutually reinforcing, in recent times, but also fast growing, multidimensional and easily joined by the youth for lack of socio-economic opportunities to break out of poverty and overcome family and peer pressures. Research findings have proven that to ‘get-rich-quick’ through cyber-criminalities influences performance of human blood and body parts rituals, which translates to violent extremism. The youth who make money through these inhuman practices that negate acceptable societal values believe that education, apprenticeship, human capital development and decent work are a dysfunctional social-orientation. Careful observations have shown that when the youth acquire illicit money, the result is excessive clubbing, frivolous spending, promotion of prostitution, substance abuse, which undermine effective youth engagement in socio-economic development. The youth bulge theory was adopted in the study. The theory postulates that large youth population can become a “demographic dividend” when their potentials are properly harnessed, and it can also become a “demographic bomb” in the face of systemic socio-economic exclusion, unemployment, hunger and family poverty. The methodology applied was content analysis, leveraging empirical studies in Nigerian context and other sources of data. The paper revealed that youth unemployment, systemic corruption, absence of transparency in the administration of poverty alleviation interventions and limited opportunities are manifestations of youth exclusion from decision-making process and they are key factors influencing youth participation in cybercrime and violent extremism. The paper recommended practical youth-specific engagement strategies in socio-economic development as a means to discouraging cybercrime and its associated extreme practices.

Discov glob soc 3, 72 (2025)

Edited by Stephen Pierce Duggan. Introduction by Graeme R. Newman

A Landmark Vision of International Order at the Dawn of the Modern World

Published in 1919 at the very moment when the post–First World War settlement was taking shape, The League of Nations: The Principle and the Practice, edited by Stephen Pierce Duggan, is one of the most authoritative and illuminating contemporary statements of the ideas that sought to prevent another global catastrophe. Written as the Covenant of the League of Nations moved toward ratification, this volume captures the urgency, optimism, and hard-headed realism of thinkers grappling with the central political question of the twentieth century: how can peace be made durable in a world of sovereign states?

Bringing together leading scholars, jurists, historians, and policy practitioners, the book moves beyond slogans to examine how an international organization must actually function. It explains not only the moral and historical foundations of the League idea, but also its practical machinery—arbitration, sanctions, international administration, and continuous cooperation across borders. Readers are guided through the institutional logic of collective security, the limits of national sovereignty, and the challenges posed by armaments, small nations, and postwar reconstruction.

Distinctive for its clarity and documentary richness, the volume includes key historical texts and the full Covenant of the League itself, allowing readers to engage directly with the constitutional framework of early international governance. Written in accessible but rigorous prose, it was intended for educated citizens as well as specialists—an informed guide for public debate at a decisive historical moment.

Today, The League of Nations: The Principle and the Practice stands as an indispensable primary source for understanding the intellectual foundations of modern global governance. It reveals how the ambitions and anxieties of 1919 shaped later institutions, including the United Nations, and it remains strikingly relevant in an era once again marked by questions of collective security, international law, and global cooperation. For historians, political scientists, legal scholars, and readers interested in the origins of the contemporary international order, this book is both a historical document and a continuing challenge to think seriously about how peace is organized.

The Atlantic Monthly Press. BOSTON. 1919. Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2025. p.253.

By Human Rights Watch

Following the July 2024 presidential elections, electoral authorities in Venezuela announced that Nicolas Maduro had been re-elected president, despite substantial evidence to the contrary. When people took to the streets to demand a fair counting of votes, Venezuelan authorities responded with brutal repression. At least 24 protesters and bystanders were killed and over 2,000 people were detained in connection with post-electoral protests. Punished for Seeking Change documents human rights violations committed against protesters, bystanders, opposition leaders, and critics in the post-electoral protests and the months that followed. It implicates Venezuelan authorities and pro-government armed groups, known as “colectivos,” in widespread abuses, including the killing of protesters and bystanders, enforced disappearances of opposition party members and foreign nationals, arbitrary detention and prosecution of children and others, and torture and ill-treatment of detainees. With 8 million Venezuelans abroad, the rights crisis in Venezuela remains arguably the most consequential in the Western Hemisphere. Governments should support accountability efforts for these grave human rights violations, call for the release of people arbitrarily detained, and expand access to asylum and other forms of international protection for Venezuelans fleeing repression.

New York: HRW, 2025. 109p.