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The pro-reform AK Party’s resounding victory in the July 2007 parliamentary elections gives both it and the European Union (EU) a chance to relaunch Turkey’s accession process, which has floundered since 2005 due to Europe’s enlargement fatigue and a neo-nationalist backlash in the country.

Ecuador has been Latin America’s most unstable democracy for a decade. Starting with the ousting of President Abdalá Bucaram by Congress and street protests in 1997, weak, temporary governments have been the rule.

Hamas’s takeover of Gaza and President Abbas’s dismissal of the national unity government and appointment of one led by Salam Fayyad amount to a watershed in the Palestinian national movement’s history.

President Musharraf faces the most serious challenge to almost eight years of military rule.

Lasting peace in Sudan requires a new strategy, one which tackles its multiple conflicts and potential conflicts in a consistent manner. The overwhelming international concentration on Darfur has come at the expense of the broader quest for peace in the country. Unless a more balanced approach is developed, Darfur will continue to suffer, and new wars are likely.

Haiti’s security and stability remain fragile. President René Préval has endorsed national policies for security, police, justice and prison reform, but a weak state and decades, if not centuries, of institutional abandonment, make implementation slow, difficult and uneven.

Sierra Leone holds presidential and legislative elections in August 2007. President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah, who won a landslide victory in 2002 at the end of the civil war, split the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) by anointing a successor, Vice-President Solomon Berewa.

Unrest in the Tarai plains has exposed the weaknesses of Nepal’s peace process, could derail elections for a constituent assembly in November and, if not properly addressed, could start a new form of conflict.

Elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo were a milestone in the peace process but much remains to be done to consolidate the gains. A return to full-scale war is unlikely but violence in Bas-Congo and Kinshasa in early 2007 with over 400 people killed and renewed threats of war in the Kivus show the country’s fragility.

The peace agreement signed in Ouagadougou by Laurent Gbagbo and Guillaume Soro on 4 March 2007 is a major turning point in resolving Côte d’Ivoire’s armed conflict but is only a first step in the right direction.