Latest Updates

Indonesia faces at least two and probably three national elections in 2004, including a presidential vote, but they are unlikely to bring fundamental change.

With the signing on 25 September 2003 of a framework agreement on security arrangements, the Sudanese government and the insurgent Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLA) are closer to peace than at any time in the past twenty years.

The Albanian-majority Presevo Valley in southern Serbia is one of the few conflict resolution success stories in the former Yugoslavia. Yet tensions linger, and a series of violent incidents in August and September 2003 demonstrated that the peace can still unravel.

For half a century Kashmir has been the major issue of contention between India and Pakistan.

More than five decades after independence, Pakistan is no closer to a resolution with India of the dispute over Kashmir.

While its roots predate Indian and Pakistani independence, the Kashmir conflict’s current directions can best be understood in the light of the nationalism and state building that followed the end of British colonial rule.

Georgia’s political crisis, which climaxed in the forced resignation of President Eduard Shevardnadze on 23 November 2003, is not over yet and could still lead to violence and the country’s disintegration. Georgia, in other words, is still pre-conflict, not post-conflict, and exceptional international action is required to contain the potential for chaos.

“The war is not yet over”, an ICG mission to Côte d’Ivoire repeatedly heard in November 2003. There are ominous signs that the Côte d’Ivoire peace process initiated in January 2003 has broken down.

Making another attempt to unite the divided city of Mostar has become, unexpectedly but appropriately, a very high international priority in Bosnia & Herzegovina (BiH) in 2003.

As attacks against the occupying forces and suicide bombs against civilian targets intensify, the need for a new political formula that will increase the powers, legitimacy and representative quality of Iraqi governing institutions is becoming more urgent than ever.