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Armenia’s flawed presidential election, the subsequent lethal crackdown against a peaceful protest rally, the introduction of a state of emergency and extensive arrests of opposition supporters have brought the country to its deepest crisis since the war against Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh ended in 1994.

A month has passed since Kosovo declared independence on 17 February 2008. Much has gone well, but there is a real risk, as made most evident with the violence on 17 March around the courthouse in north Mitrovica, that partition will harden at the Ibar River in the north, and Kosovo will become another frozen conflict.

On 11 October 2007, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) announced it was suspending participation in the Government of National Unity because the National Congress Party (NCP) was not implementing key aspects of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended the generation-long, primarily North-South conflict.

There are strong indications that Uzbek security forces murdered one of Kyrgyzstan’s most prominent journalists, Alisher Saipov, in October 2007 during the build-up to Uzbekistan’s end of year presidential elections, most likely because of his involvement in Erk (Freedom), a leading exile opposition party.

A year after major police operations in the Central Sulawesi district of Poso, there are grounds for cautious optimism that Muslim-Christian and jihadist violence is a thing of the past.

Gravely damaged by eight years of military rule, Pakistan’s fragile political system received a major blow on 27 December 2007, when former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated.

On 19 December 2007, South Koreans elected Lee Myung-bak as their president.

Nepal’s progress toward lasting peace is seriously but not yet irreparably faltering.

North Korea’s relations with Russia have been marked by unrealistic expectations and frequent disappointments but common interests have prevented a rupture.

The process that will be launched shortly at Annapolis may not quite be do-or-die for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process but at the very least it is do-or-barely-survive.