Latest Updates

The deadlock in the Burundi peace process has finally been broken. On 23 July in Arusha, Nelson Mandela’s choice of Pierre Buyoya and Domitien Ndayizeye as president and vice-president of Burundi for the first phase of transition was endorsed at a summit of regional heads of state.

Zimbabwe is in a state of free fall. It is embroiled in the worst political and economic crisis of its twenty-year history as an independent state. The crisis has negatively affected virtually every aspect of the country and every segment of the population.

There are many challenges facing the Lusaka cease-fire signatories and the wider international community in implementing the Congolese peace agreement, but perhaps none so complex as the effort to disarm the non-Congolese armed groups destabilising the region from Congolese bases.

Seven years after its establishment immediately following the genocide in Rwanda, and more than four years since the beginning of the first trial, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), based at Arusha, Tanzania, has to date handed down verdicts on only nine individuals.

The attempted coup d'etat by a group of young army officers against President Pierre Buyoya on 18 April 2001 was a grave warning about the peace process in Burundi. More than eight months after its signing, in August 2000, the Arusha peace accord is at an impasse.

Sierra Leone is a human tragedy of massive proportions that is rapidly becoming a security nightmare for all West Africa. Two-thirds of Sierra Leone’s population are thought to have been displaced during the ten-year civil war. Another 600,000 have become refugees in neighbouring countries.

Joseph Kabila, son of the late Laurent Désiré Kabila, speaks a far more peaceful language than that of his bellicose father. But he will not be able to deliver peace alone, and there are already signs that the many parties to the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo are heading for renewed confrontation.