In this article I argue that while the COVID-19 outbreak is at its early stages in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian coastal enclave is particularly vulnerable to its effects – not least due to the multiplicity of existing development challenges that have resulted from an ongoing Israeli and Egyptian-imposed blockade. With the economy at a standstill, the Palestinian governing authority has limited financial resources to (re)build key sanitation, hygiene, waste treatment and water supply infrastructure. These (infrastructural) inadequacies, while already a public health concern before the onset of the pandemic, now renders Gaza particularly vulnerable to the spread of viruses and diseases. Additionally, the limited movement of goods because of the siege has led to an acute shortage of medical supplies and equipment that are essential for combating a pandemic. Nonetheless, the COVID-19 outbreak is also “unique” in that it presents Gaza with a crisis that has little to do with the hostilities that define the politics of Israel-Palestine. Yet, the potential of a widespread outbreak also lays bare to the development challenges that Gaza faces as a result of the conflict. This, I conclude, provides an opportunity for the donor community to, under pretext of combating the pandemic, remedy some of the consequences of the conflict and siege without having to contend with the (political) stigma of doing so.

In 1995, the Dayton Accords were signed to eff ectively end the war in Bosnia. Th is agreement subsequently divided power and territory among ethnic Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims). As a result of this, a controversial territorial entity, namely Republika Srpska (Republic of Serbia) was created within Bosnia-Herzegovina. Dominated by ethnic Serbs, Republika Srpska has become the symbol for Serb national and religious identity. Further, one of key markers of this national identity has been the Serbian language. In this research I am focusing on the use of the Cyrillic script in Republika Srpska, as opposed to Latin. Th e central question that this study will intend answer is 'Why was the Cyrillic script used as a marker of Serb national identity in Bosnia-Herzegovina, even though religion is often cited as fundamental to the divisions that marked the violent fall of Yugoslavia?' Here I would solely focus on the choices made (in terms of 'national identity-markers') by the Serb secular political elite. Preliminary fi ndings indicate that while religion may have been the obvious choice of a national identity marker, it implicitly provided undue political leverage to the Serb religious leadership. Language ensured that the secular political elite maintained a monopoly over the articulation of Serb national identity in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Furthermore, in relation to the question posed earlier, a diff erent alphabet created a clearer boundary around the Serb nation, as, despite nationalist claims of distinctness, Bosnian, Serbian and Croatian (all remnants of Serbo-Croatian) are languages that remain especially similar to each other.

Discussions of race and racism are often missing in the curriculum of international relations courses or, when present, categorized as a “critical approach” and placed outside the mainstream. But this absence or marginalization from the mainstream of the discipline does not mean that such discussions are beyond the scope of its primary agenda—that is, theorize interstate relations. On the contrary, questions of race and racism have been foundational to the historical development of international relations. In its formative years, the discipline’s understanding of the global order was shaped by the Darwinist conceptions of racial hierarchies adopted by some its core theorists. They viewed the imperial domination of the “White races” over the “darker peoples of the world” to be justified, considering the immeasurable racial superiority of the former. Revisionist international relations scholars, also active during the formative years of the discipline, worked to upend these racialized hierarchies and underlined the need to account for the struggles and national aspirations of the dominated in international politics. Yet, international relations’ racist disciplinary precepts have persisted, and a color line—both globally and within the discipline—continues to divide the world into racialized, binary categories (e.g., civilized/uncivilized, modern/backward, and developed/undeveloped) that legitimize Western authority in international politics. However, the introduction of race and racism in the teaching of the discipline equally unsettles the assumption that international relations embodies a value-free scientific endeavor. Instead, the role of racist precepts in the making and workings of the field demonstrates that the discipline’s mainstream is deeply positioned in its view of the world and, as a consequence, fails to account for the multiplicity of ways in which international politics is encountered and experienced.

A few years ago, during the first session of my elective security studies course on Islamist politics in the Middle East, I went around the room and asked the students, 'Why are you taking this course?' In their responses, the students expressed interest in topics like 'global terrorism', 'Islamic fundamentalism', 'Muslim immigrants', 'radicalism among young Muslims' and the 'influx of Muslim refugees'. These themes were familiar, not least because they have become somewhat synonymous with mainstream academic and popular discussions of Islam and the Middle East. However, it was the response of a student of colour that stood out. She announced, 'I'm taking this course because the literature is not just white people talking about Islam.' Sensing that her statement had made some of the other (white) students visibly uncomfortable, she approached me at the end of the session and explained, 'My family is from the Middle East, and I am just tired of the Eurocentric approach to the way we are taught about the Middle East. What about the opinions of people who look like me?'There was no mention of race or racism in the description of the course. Come to think of it, I was strategic in my reluctance to use the 'R-word' (Rutazibwa, 2016: 193). Knowing the contentious nature of its deployment (Rutazibwa, 2016: 192), I was worried about the optics and professional consequences of me, an early-career researcher of colour employed at a predominantly white department, openly pursuing racial diversity in the curriculum of a course catering to a largely white student body. Instead, I had chosen the somewhat less contentious alternative 'Eurocentrism' to describe the course as an opportunity for students to learn about the hierarchies and biases that animate the epistemological foundations of international relations as a discipline. The discussions in the course were inspired by the intellectual ethos of critical security studies and used Islamist politics as the empirical basis for deliberating how and why the Middle East came to be seen as a bastion of 'backwardness' and a source of insecurity (vis-a-vis the West) in global politics (Lockman, 2004;Nayak and Malone, 2009;Ramakrishnan, 1999;Teti, 2007). Students read Said's (1979) work on the construction of the 'Orient' in the Western imagination as a place of exotic barbarism, Collins and Glover's (2002) assessment of the discursive politics of America's global war on terror, Abu-Lughod's (2013) writings on the perception of Muslim women as victims in need of saving, and Anderson's (2006) critique of American political scientists' overwhelming

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