South Africa’s border posts are increasingly becoming crucial hubs for organized crime posing serious national and regional security implications with far-reaching consequences. The country’s national security, economic stability, and community safety are significantly jeopardised by organised criminal enterprises at border posts. As a result, the porous borders of South Africa have fostered an environment that is conducive to a variety of unlawful activities, such as the smuggling of drugs into the country and human trafficking. This paper seeks to identify political, economic, and social factors that lead to organised crime, corruption, and weak border management systems. The paper employed a secondary data analysis of existing scholarly articles, government reports as well as relevant case studies. The study found that local communities are most affected by illegal activities at the ports of entry. The findings further emphasize the importance of inclusive approaches in responding to security challenges that address cross-border flow regulation, fight corruption in service delivery, and promote community resilience. The paper concludes with recommendations for strengthening border controls towards enhancing cooperation between countries and curbing transnational crime networks.

This research examines intangible assets or intellectual capital (IC) performance of tourism-related industries in an underexplored area which is a tourism intensively-dependent country. In this study, VAIC which is a monetary valuation method and also the most widely applied measurement method, is utilized as the performance measurement method for quantifying IC performance to monetary values. Moreover, to better understand performance, the standard efficiency levels are further applied for classifying the performance levels of tourism industries. The sample sizes of study are 20 companies operating in the tourism-related industries in the world top travel destination or Thailand, and the companies’ data are collected from 2012 to 2021. Therefore, finally, there are 187 firm-year observations. The utilization of VAIC could assess IC performance of tourism firms and industries, and the standard efficiency levels further support the uniform interpretation of IC efficiency levels. The obtained results show the strong performance of both human and structural capital of the focused tourism dependent country especially in the logistics industry that directly supports and connects to the tourism attractions. Moreover, the finding also highlights the significance of human capital which plays as a major contributor for overall IC performance in this tourism dependent economy. This study contributes the new exploration of IC in the high impact industries and also specifically in the top significant tourism country. Moreover, the application of VAIC also confirms a practical application for management. The limited number of studied countries is a limitation of study. However, these new obtained data and information could be further applied for making comparisons or in-depth or statistical analysis in the future works.

Improving educational outcomes in subjects such as English and mathematics remains a significant challenge for educators and policymakers. Strategic Human Resource Management (SHRM), which aligns human resource practices with organizational goals, has proven effective in business sectors but is less explored in educational contexts, especially from students’ perspectives. Existing studies often focus on teacher development, overlooking direct impacts on student performance. This research addresses the gap by examining how SHRM influences students’ performance in English and mathematics, incorporating student feedback to assess SHRM’s effectiveness. In the quantitative study, 200 students were analyzed to explore the relationship between SHRM practices and academic outcomes. The findings indicate that SHRM significantly affects student performance, with high predictive relevance and explanatory power in both subjects. The results suggest that strategic HR practices, such as professional development, performance management, and resource allocation, are critical to academic success. These insights provide valuable implications for educators and policymakers, highlighting the importance of integrating strategic HR management into educational frameworks to enhance curriculum design and resource distribution. The study demonstrates the broad applicability of SHRM across different academic disciplines, suggesting a need for comprehensive HR strategies that focus on both teacher and student performance. Future research should explore how SHRM influences educational outcomes and identify contextual factors that moderate its impact, enhancing effective HR practices in diverse academic settings.

In a context of refugee precarity, the article highlights the significance of inclusive economic models for sustainable resilience amidst protracted crises, examining the interplay between humanitarian aid and economic development within the Minawao camp. Initially established as a temporary solution, the camp now shelters over 76,000 Nigerians fleeing Boko Haram violence. The study focuses on analyzing initiatives implemented to promote economic empowerment and resilience for refugees within a sustainable humanitarian framework. Through a combination of survey data, document reviews, and interviews, findings reveal that while these initiatives align with Sustainable Development Goal 8, they remain limited and insufficiently adapted to the skills and needs of the refugees. The camp’s geographic isolation and the passive involvement of the Cameroonian government further exacerbate the refugees’ dependency on humanitarian aid. Consequently, the study advocates for greater host-state involvement beyond theoretical agreements, the diversification of economic opportunities beyond the camp, adjustment of empowerment programs to meet refugee needs, and strengthened funding through innovative partnerships.

This paper aims to explore the issue of human actions in Islamic thought, focusing on the various stances regarding determinism, free will, and the intermediate position between them. This topic is linked to an ontological question: What are the limits of human responsibility for their actions? Our view is that the different positions on human actions reflect the presence of pluralism within Islamic thought, specifically through the discipline of Islamic theology (kalām). The difference in positions about the human actions within the science of theology expresses the vitality of Islamic thought and its appreciation of the right to differ between theological schools such as the Mu’tazila, Shi’a, and Sunnis, especially in an era dominated by the rationalism of Mu’tazila thought influenced by the methodology of Greek philosophical thought. This difference was recognized, especially in the third and fourth centuries AH/ninth and tenth centuries AD. We consider this difference in discussing the subject of the human actions as evidence of the principle of pluralism in Islam, which allows us to speak of the existence of a significant degree of intellectual tolerance, a subject that has not been studied to date. The prevailing view in studies today on this subject is that the theological groups accuse each other of unbelief, which is a mistaken position, because the saying of unbelief did not appear until after the fourth century AH/tenth century AD when transmission, reliability, and conservatism prevailed in Islamic thought. In addressing this issue, we examine three major stances on human actions as represented by three theological schools: The Mu’tazila (who advocated free will in human actions), the Jabriya (who advocated determinism in human actions), and the Ash’ariyya (who upheld the theory of acquisition). Once this is accomplished, we will explore the philosophy of pluralism in Islam through the lens of kalām. The most important conclusion we reached is that the debate on human actions opened, by the mid-4th century AH/10th century CE, an intellectual horizon that laid the foundations for pluralism in Islamic theological discussions. However, this horizon was soon closed due to various factors, which we have discussed throughout the paper.

In the human and economic development context, this study examines the relationship between human capital, life expectancy, labor force participation rate, and education level in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The World Bank’s 2001–2021 data are examined using a panel vector autoregressive model. The findings demonstrate the substantial influence of health expenditure from the prior period on present health expenditure. Though not significantly different, life expectancy and education levels from earlier periods also impact present health spending. A slight positive correlation exists between prior labor force involvement and present healthcare costs. An increase in current health expenditure supports an increase in life expectancy. Health expenditure in the previous period had a significant positive effect on education, although insignificant. Life expectancy in the previous period harms current education but is also insignificant. Education in the previous period significantly positively affects current education, indicating a sustained impact of education investment. Labor force participation in the previous period also positively affected education, although not significantly. The prior period’s health spending, life expectancy, and educational attainment impact the current labor force participation rate. The length of life has a significant favorable impact on entering the labor sector. Currently being in the job field has a good correlation with prior education as well. These findings support that higher education levels lead to higher labor force participation rates. Life expectancy, health care costs, education level, and prior work experience all influence current life expectancy. While prior life expectancy significantly influences current life expectancy, health expenditures have a negligible negative impact. Prior education positively impacts life expectancy but negatively impacts prior labor force engagement. These results reject the hypothesis that increasing life expectancy causes current health expenditure to increase.