Region

Washington DC – Christmas has receded. Wishes and gifts have been exchanged, groaning boards have been emptied. Those who associate Christmas not only with “happy holidays” but with their faith have attended church services where prayers were said, sermons were delivered, and some of the most galvanizing choral music composed in the West, would have been heard.

Iran has warned the United States it will take action if its fleet returns to the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, France is pushing European countries to follow the US in freezing Iranian central bank assets and imposing an embargo on oil exports.

Geneva – The UN human rights office voiced alarm at reports that the Egyptian military has carried out raids against the offices of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in what would be the first documented incidents of their kind in the country’s recent history.

Since northern African nations gained independence in the late 50s and early 60s, and long before the Arab Spring, the dream of North African unity has existed amongst the peoples of the region. North Africans are naturally united by a shared history, culture and language.

Cairo – A civilian court has ordered an end to the practice of forced virginity tests on female detainees in military prisons. Judge Ali Fekry, head of the Egyptian Administrative Court, read out the ruling at noon on December 27 in a courtroom packed with pro-democracy activists and journalists. The crowd immediately erupted in cheers of jubilation and anti-military chants.

The final pull-out of US troops from Iraq marks the end or perhaps just one stage of the end, of the biggest military disaster since Vietnam. Every US-UK goal behind the invasion has been lost, in some cases humiliatingly.

Libya is heading into the New Year with new leaders and hopes. But it turns out, as the immediate post-revolutionary excitement fades, the different factions of the former rebels are turning on each other in what may become a competition for power.

Nairobi – South Sudan -the world’s newest country– now faces the danger of a wide-spreading “inter-ethnic” war after increasing armed clashes between two major tribes that took around one thousand lives so far.

Rome -“They expected that we were all dead, but we are still alive.” Silvano Sarti talks through a bullhorn to the people gathered in Dalmazia square, in Florence.

Montevideo – The World Trade Organization (WTO) has failed. In December, the Doha Round is turning ten years old, with nothing to celebrate[i]. Formal negotiations of the Round expired in 2005, without any agreement, and informal negotiations stalled in 2008. Indications in December too were that an agreement to liberalize trade among its 153 member countries was eluding.