De Facto recommends

For over a century, Kurds have been trying to fight for their rights and freedom. Sadly, their quest has been largely characterized by human rights abuses and marginalization. Hindered by political persecution, their dream of independence has been gradually fading.

The war against Ukraine did not start in February 2022, but in the spring of 2014. And the root of the invasions goes back in time even more, as they were a delayed response to the collapse of the Soviet Union and earlier territorial claims. The online exhibition Borderlands - Ukraine in Historical Maps - with numerous maps and short commentaries, aims to shed some light on the historical backgrounds of the present war of Russia against Ukraine. It was curated by historian Harrie Teunissen and map curator Martijn Storms.

Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera, a small rock in northern Africa conquered by Spain in 1564, holds the title for the world’s smallest national border, measuring just 85 meters in length.

A newly-published book explores the circumstances around the violence that accompanied Transnistria’s de facto secession from Moldova. Three decades later, finding new answers to old conundrums is key to preventing ongoing tensions from escalating.

For years to come, its violent dissolution will loom large in the Armenian consciousness and reverberate across other majority-minority conflicts around the globe.

The third war over Nagorno-Karabakh, the long-disputed Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, ended almost as soon as it began. The next phase of the tragedy is now unfolding. How did Western inaction enable Azerbaijan and Russia? An analysis by Thomas de Waal.

A wealthy American wanted to build an island republic. The king of Tonga had other ideas.

Waterloo Uncovered, the groundbreaking charity that combines archaeology with veteran care and recovery, will be visiting the Falkland Islands this month to begin the first intensive archaeological survey of its battlefields.

The “world’s most challenging shipwreck search” for one of the greatest legends of exploration history, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance, lost more than a century ago in the icy waters of Antarctica, has succeeded. The site of Endurance was declared a historic monument under the terms of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty.

In Blood and Honey: Encounters at the Borders of the Balkans, Dutch journalist Irene van der Linde and documentary photographer Nicole Segers set out to document the borders of the Balkans. Go and watch their work at Museum Het Valkhof in Nijmegen (the Netherlands).

In March 2014, the Crimean Peninsula declared independence from Ukraine, announcing the formation of the Republic of Crimea. However, just two days later the new republic was annexed by Russia. In this video, James Ker-Lindsay (London School of Economics) explains why Crimea had to claim to be an independent state before it could be incorporated into the Russian Federation.