Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have embarked on ambitious “Vision”-driven reforms to diversify economies and reframe national security. This paper analyzes how Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar link economic transformation to security policy, under a theoretical “development-as-security” framework. We review rentier-state dynamics and human-security concepts to contextualize Gulf strategies. Through comparative case studies, we examine each country’s Vision (Saudi Vision 2030, UAE Centennial 2071, Qatar National Vision 2030), focusing on objectives, instruments, and progress in diversification, and how these affect economic, political, and social security. Data indicate rising non oil growth (Saudi non oil GDP ~53–57 % by 2025; UAE non oil GDP >70 %) and targeted reforms (e.g. Saudi defense localization, UAE tech hubs, Qatar education investment). We look at the implications in terms of economic security through the lens of multiple sources of income, political stability in the form of a new foundation for legitimacy, and improvements in human security in the realms of health and education. We also look at the constraints in the form of institutional and demographic pressures, and the geopolitical shifts in the US’s strategic retrenchment and the emergence of new partnerships. What our findings have shown is that, indeed, the Gulf states have benefited from the policy of diversification, but in doing so, a new set of security dynamics has emerged in the realms of cyber and artificial intelligence, and climate. In conclusion are some policy recommendations, but in the context of the Gulf, it is quite evident that the concept of development and security is inextricably linked in the Gulf, and the policies of diversification have both responded to and created a new set of security conditions.

This paper examines the persistent gap between formal recognition and substantive realization of women’s land rights in Nigeria and South Sudan, where legal guarantees remain undermined by patriarchal norms, weak enforcement, and customary authority. In South Sudan, despite progressive frameworks such as the Transitional Constitution (2011), the Land Act (2009), the Local Government Act (2009), and the National Gender Policy (2013), women’s land tenure security remains precarious. Bazugba (2024a) demonstrates that statutory protections are often disconnected from lived realities, with approximately 80% of women lacking effective access to land ownership (IGAD, 2020). Building on this evidence, the paper advances a comparative argument that women’s land exclusion is not merely a legal or economic issue but a performative system of gendered injustice, reproduced through entrenched social scripts within families, customary institutions, and state practices. Employing a comparative feminist dramatic framework, the study analyzes how land governance in Nigeria and South Sudan emerges from the dynamic interplay between statutory law, customary norms, and political power. It integrates feminist theory, gender performativity, and political theory with interpretive insights drawn from Aristotle’s dramatic structure, Brechtian epic theatre, and Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. The paper argues that women’s dispossession persists because exclusion is continuously enacted and normalized as part of the social order. Through comparative analysis, it demonstrates that differing political and legal contexts can reproduce similar patterns of inequality when legal reform is not accompanied by effective enforcement and cultural transformation. It concludes by positioning theatre not only as metaphor but as a rigorous critical methodology for exposing systems of domination and reimagining participatory pathways toward feminist social justice.

This paper examines how gender assessment can function as a reparative justice instrument for addressing historical injustices in land governance, using South Sudan and Nigeria as comparative case studies. It argues that women’s exclusion from land ownership, control, and inheritance is not merely a technical policy failure but a historically produced form of structural inequality rooted in colonial legacies, patriarchal customary systems, and weak enforcement of gender-responsive laws. Drawing on feminist theory, intersectionality, and legal pluralism, the study analyses how formal legal equality often coexists with persistent discriminatory practices that undermine women’s land rights in both contexts. In South Sudan, post-conflict instability, displacement, and fragile institutions deepen women’s tenure insecurity, especially for widows, returnees, and female-headed households. In Nigeria, legal pluralism, customary patriarchy, and unequal access to land administration continue to constrain women’s property rights despite statutory reforms. The paper contends that gender assessment should move beyond diagnostic compliance toward a reparative framework centered on recognition, redistribution, restitution, representation, and transformation. It concludes that meaningful land justice in Africa requires not only legal reform, but also institutional accountability, community-level norm change, and gender-responsive governance.