Minyalga

Minyalga, formerly called [EXONYM] and officially styled the Most Righteous and Thrice-Blessed Republic of Minyalga, or simply the Republic of Minyalga, is a nation in [CONTINENT], bordered by Higher Tar-dinuu and Lower Tar-dinuu to the north, to the Locufaric Ocean to the west, the Kidal Sea to the east, and [NEIGHBOR(S)] to the south. Ngudlu Dhitá is the nation's capital and largest city, as well as the spiritual center of the Kahasaylumna branch of Edlrism. The multi-ethnic population of 7.8 million includes peoples of Minyal, Dinuu, Kidal, and Mwakhnen descent, alongside other smaller inland indigenous groups, such as the tribes of the Suhul Coast in the east of the nation. The nation's official language is Minyal, while Dinuu is the nation's second most-spoken regional language, followed by those of indigenous groups, principally Kidal. The nation is governed under a  that nominally has an  in the form of the Lumi'mdrisi (Minyal, lit. "Beloved soul"), the religious leader of Kahasaylumna Edlrism. In practice, more temporal authorities have gradually been vested in the hands of the House of Elders, a dual secular and clerical institution which serves as the nation's legislature, which is led by a popularly-elected High Elder which by custom runs matters of temporal concern in the stead of the Lumi'mdrisi. The Lumi'mdrisi theoretically has the ability to rule by decree, though the overall trend in both religious scholarship and political theory in Minyalga has seen the role of the Lumi'mdrisi become more of a for temporal matters, while they remain highly significant culturally.

The ancestors of the Minyal people are believed to have migrated eastward from modern-day Gemurtrak sometime in the 4th Century CE, believed to have been Old Osamian Mariners on a series of voyages of exploration. Having been dislocated as a result of the chaos caused in the region by the Hórá Enutú event, the mariners and their families are believed to have fled into an area today part of the southwestern regions of Minyalga, where they became integrated with the extant Dinuu populations before forging a new and unique cultural identity of their own. Despite this narrative, modern anthropologists and ethnographers are uncertain if the Minyal had actually emerged from Osamian culture in late antiquity, though references to the Minyal culture through the Dinuu "[EXONYM]" appear as early as the 5th Century CE. Various petty states competed for control of the region throughout the medieval period, with numerous Dinuuenized city-states, the most prominent being Ngolgan and Kihibli, in opposition to forces such as the Mwakha Kingdom and Suhul Confederacy, until the 13th Century CE when the first Minyal-ruled state, the Chubuta Empire, was established in 1313 CE by Sigawong, emerged and united much of [GREATER REGION].

Chubuta under the Sigawong dynasty was largely responsible for the spread of Kahasaylumna, building a number of highly complex urban temple complexes known as Ngudlus, which deeply affected architecture in the region through their use of sophisticated hydroengineering and precision stonemasonry. Chubuta would enter a long decline, and would gave way to that of the Kahasaylumna scholars which were originally developed by the empire, returning the region to an era of smaller, local polities by 1550, nominally led from the modern capital of Ngudlu Dhitá by the Lumi'mdrisis, while secular authority among the Minyal states cycling between the successors to the Chubuta, generally consolidating in the state of Pwenxun in the mid-18th Century. In 1847, the final King of Pwenxun, having failed to produce a heir, pledged their lands to the sitting Lumi'mdrisi Tsisha, a coalition of other petty kingdoms propped up by a myriad of external powers, largely by the ascendent Higher Tar-dinuu and the Alutran colonial empires, attempted to depose Tsisha in a bid to maintain the existing balance of power in the region, sparking the Great Minyal War which lasted from 1848 until 1855, with the victorious Thrice-Blessed Army laying the groundwork for an independent and singularly united Minyalga.

The nation would be fortunate in avoiding the imperial designs of the Alutrans during the Great Game of the 19th and early 20th centuries, but would do so at the price of signing numerous with these powers. In the First World War, it would side with the [ALLIES] in a bid to seek review and revision of the treaties, but after seeing their concerns ignored, would fall into the sphere of the nationalist governments in Higher Tar-dinuu and Gemurtrak, though would remain neutral during both the Second and Third World Wars. The "lonely kingdom", as it was known, would continue to fall behind its counterparts in the region as its archaic form of government and slower pace of development often dissuaded foreign investment up until 1960, when a string of popular uprisings in the nation's urban centers led to a bloodless coup which substantially democratized the country and modernized the nation's economy, beginning the duel between secular and clerical arms of government that continue to affect Minyalgan politics and its future prospects.

Minyalga is a in world affairs. It is classified as a, and today ranks highly in its score, the 2nd highest in [CONTINENT], and has a markedly low , with one of the lowest Gini coefficients among the non-socialist economies of the world. While its economy is largely built on its agricultural exports, an emergent service sector, especially in telecommunications, shows promise for the nation going into the 21st Century.

Demographics
In 2021, Minyalga is estimated to have a population of 11,408,223. According to the 2011 census, a narrow majority of Minyalgans (64.21%) resided in rural areas, though trends indicate an accelerating shift towards urban dwelling. Minyalga's population grew at a high rate during the latter half of the 20th century, though has slowed significantly as family planning services has become more accessible and destigmatized. As a result, the for the country was estimated at 3.392 in 2016, down from 4.1 in 1996. The average annual population growth from 2011 to 2021 is 84,234.6 persons, for a 7.38% growth rate over the past decade to the current estimates for the 2021 census. Because of Minyalga's young population, statisticians project that the growth rate will continue to slow before reaching an estimated maximum of around 55-60 million by mid-century. Due to its religious policies, immigration to Minyalga has some of the lowest rates in the region.

Education
Minyalga's modern, established in 1945, began with an estimated 16% literacy rate among adults in the country and about 25,000 students enrolled in 300 schools. In 1997, that number had expanded to just under 80%, and today is at 98.1% for all persons aged five and above. Historically, a literacy gap existed between men and women, favoring the former. However, since the 1980s, a trend has emerged seeing female students have higher literacy rates and earlier on in life than their male counterparts.

Primary education has a 99% enrollment rate, though enrollment to completion of secondary education was only at 73.4% in 2017, though both are fully subsidized by the national government. Tertiary education is partially subsidized, and 14.1% of Minyalgans have completed at least some higher education. All of these metrics continue to rise, and a small but growing contingent of international scholars, largely from elsewhere in the Kidal Sea region are arriving to Minyalgan universities to pursue an education. This has come largely as a result of efforts at secularization in education that has taken place over recent decades. As such, though education in Minyalga is officially secular, the vast majority (94%) of all primary and secondary schools in the country are operated under the patronage of the National Kahasaylumna Temple through local institutions. However, they legally still cannot discriminate against pupils based upon religion or lack thereof, or for being part of a institutionally-protected minority group. Preference cannot be shown towards students of a particular faith, and mandatory participation in religious activities are prohibited in secondary education outside of religious schools, of which only the National Kahasaylumna Temple is permitted to operate.

Minyalgan education has undergone considerable reforms both at the outset of their public education campaign and in more recent history, and is influenced by their unique history and religiosity of institutions. For much of the nation's recent history, and highly rigorous lecture-based learning was favored, with educators going from scholar-monks which traditionally handled education throughout much of the nation's history to more specialized instructors familiar to those elsewhere in the world who, while still part of the National Temple, are specifically employed as instructors in a classroom setting. This remains the case in many parts of the country, though since the 2000s, the success of the Liberated Classroom model from Ordrey has influenced a return towards the more hollistic, student-based learning structure employed by the scholar-monks of previous centuries, citing concerns about the effects of highly strenuous testing and impersonal educational on the development of students' social and mental faculties. This however has contributed to the problem of rising politicization in the nation's educational system as the conflict between teachers' unions, who generally support the more traditional educational system, and the officially-sanctioned clerical institutions, who favor reform, continues to shape how concerns are addressed and already thin resource allotments are allocated.

In 2016, the Ministry of Education began efforts to place high-speed nodes in more than 20,000 schools around the country, with priority given to those in rural communities. This comes alongside efforts to encourage tech literacy among the nation's students, with many of the rural "hub" schools engaging in pilot projects with the "flipped classroom" format which relies much more heavily on e-learning.