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Three years after its establishment, the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has not established a safe and secure environment, the rule of law or a meaningful civil administration in north Mitrovica.

Competition for water is increasing in Central Asia at an alarming rate, adding tension to what is already an uneasy region.

Six months after the installation of the transition government, the promises of peace and reconciliation of the Arusha accords have not materialised. The ceasefire negotiations in South Africa, between the government and the various rebel factions, have not produced a single concrete result.

For the first time since the last UN mission left the country in 1995, there is considerable international interest in Somalia, centred on the possibility that the country may become part of the global war against terrorism.

After seven weeks of negotiations at Sun City, a partial agreement was reached on 19 April 2002 between Jean-Pierre Bemba’s MLC (Mouvement pour la libération du Congo) and the government of Joseph Kabila.

Despite more than six years of increasingly intrusive reforms carried out at the behest of the UN Mission in Bosnia & Herzegovina (UNMIBH), the local police cannot yet be counted upon to enforce the law.

As East Timor moves toward independence on 20 May 2002, trials are proceeding in Jakarta against Indonesian army and police officers and civilian officials accused of serious human rights violations in connection with the 1999 violence there.

On 14 March 2002 the leaders of Serbia, Montenegro and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) signed an agreement in Belgrade to replace FRY with a new "state community": a "union of states" to be called "Serbia and Montenegro".

While the international community has made great strides in improving the security situation in Sierra Leone, Liberia remains a wellspring for continued conflict stretching across Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

In July 2000, the Constitutional Court of Bosnia & Herzegovina made an historic ruling requiring the two entities, the Federation of BiH and Republika Srpska (RS), to amend their constitutions to ensure the full equality of the country's three “constituent peoples” throughout its territory.