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The international strategy for Bosnia and Herzegovina risks derailment. It consists entirely of preparing the country for eventual European Union (EU) membership in the hope that integration processes will overcome ethno-political divides and their intertwined economic and criminal interests. However, the police reform needed to begin negotiations on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU appears hopelessly blocked.

Operation Murambatsvina (Restore Order) cost some 700,000 Zimbabweans their homes or livelihoods or both and otherwise affected nearly a fifth of the troubled country's population. Its impact, as documented in a scathing UN report, has produced a political shock that has returned Zimbabwe to the international spotlight and made the quality of its governance almost impossible for its regional neighbours to ignore, however difficult they find it to be overtly critical.

While the world focuses on Gaza, the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations in fact may be playing itself out away from the spotlight, in Jerusalem. With recent steps, Israel is attempting to solidify its hold over a wide area in and around the city, creating a far broader Jerusalem.

The January 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) formally ended war between the Khartoum government and the insurgent Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A), Africa’s longest civil conflict.

Elections for Afghanistan's National Assembly and Provincial Councils are a critical opportunity to achieve a sustainable peace in a country that is still emerging from a quarter century of conflict, created and exacerbated by ethnic, sectarian, regional and linguistic divisions.

Nearly four years after 9/11, hardly a day passes without the “war on terrorism” making headlines, with Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia and now London holding centre stage. But away from the spotlight, a quiet, dirty conflict is being waged in Somalia.

Scheduled for 15 August 2005, Israel's disengagement from Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank has already begun. How Israel for the first time evacuates settlements in the Palestinian Occupied Territories will have profound implications for Israeli-Palestinian relations, but also for Israeli society.

Relations between Japan and North Korea continue to deteriorate due to concerns over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program and past abductions of Japanese citizens.

President Álvaro Uribe's quest for re-election in 2006 by amending the constitution so a sitting president can run is a risky endeavour that could weaken democratic institutions.

Nepal is in the grip of a constitutional crisis. The drafters of the 1990 Constitution hailed it as "the best constitution in the world", ending three decades of absolute monarchical rule by enshrining a multi-party system under a constitutional monarchy.