Jean-Pierre Bemba, the former Vice-President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, returned to the country on Wednesday after being acquitted of war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court.

Mr Bemba was initially convicted by the court in 2016, after being found guilty of crimes committed in the Central African Republic from 2002 to 2003, including failing to prevent his troops from committing murder and rape. He was arrested in Brussels in 2008 and eventually handed an 18 year sentence.

A US Court has heard the first oral argumentation between representatives of Namibian tribes and representatives of the German government in a case concerning reparations for Germany’s colonial genocide of Namibians between 1904 and 1908.

Around 100,000 Ovaherero and Nama people are estimated to have been killed in those four years as a result of a mass-extermination policy initiated by German colonial troops in South West Africa, currently known as Namibia, when the territory was a German colony.

"All we are asking for is restorative justice for the genocide," said Ngondi Kamatuka, a Namibian-born American of Herero descent, Al Jazeera reports.

The provisional voting rolls for New Caledonia's referendum on independence from France, which is set to take place on November 4 this year, have been published across town halls. 

The voting registration has been restricted to only long-term residents of the Pacific archipelago, which at present remains a French overseas territory. 

The referendum follows a 20 year agreement signed in 1998 which gave the region greater autonomy but also made provisions for a referendum on independence to be held by the end of this year. 

Over nine months after the Kirkuk-Erbil road was closed following the Iraqi military take-over of Kirkuk, the Iraqi government and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) have reached an agreement on its re-opening, Kurdistan 24 reports. 

The Kirkuk governor made a statement announcing the opening of the road on Sunday and added that the re-opening would be dependent on the establishment of a customs checkpoint.  

The road has been closed since October last year when the Iraqi military and Shia militias launched a take-over of Kirkuk province. 

Read more here. 

Thousands of Scots marched in Inverness yesterday to show their support for independence. 

The march was part of a series of pro-independence rallies across Scotland organised by 'All Under One Banner'. 

“Scotland will be free," protesters shouted. 

The Balochistan Awami Party garnered the most number of seats in Balochistan's assembly elections, which took place across four administrative provinces on Wednesday, and secured the support of three independent candidates, thereby becoming the region's largest parliamentary party. 

“As the largest parliamentary political party, we have to be allowed to form the government in Balochistan,” said the BAP leader, Jam Kamal said. 

Following the BAP, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, independents, and the Balochistan National Party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was able to secure 4 seats in the assembly. 

A group of UN human rights experts has welcomed an announcement by the Spanish Government that it intends to set up a Truth Commission to investigate violations that occurred during the civil war and the era of dictatorship under General Francisco Franco that followed.

Earlier this month, Spain’s Minister of Justice announced a series of initiatives in Congress to revise the Historical Memory Law, which would make it possible to create a new commission to examine abuse allegations buried for decades.

A high profile Serbian lawyer who served in the defending legal team at the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic was shot dead in front of his home in Belgrade on Saturday.

Dragoslav Ognjanovic, 57, was gunned down in front of his apartment building and his 26-year-old son was wounded in the right arm, Serbia’s Interior Ministry said in a statement.

As a prominent criminal lawyer, Ognjanovic served in the early 2000s on a legal team that helped to defend Milosevic at his war crimes trial before the U.N. tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Milosevic died in the tribunal's detention unit in 2006 before a verdict was reached.

Serbia is stalling on prosecuting war crimes and seems to have set a strategy of “waiting for time to do its work”, the NGO Humanitarian Law Centre said in a report.

"Time is passing and victims, witnesses and culprits alike are passing away, while memories become less reliable," Jelena Krstic, from the HLC, said.

She added that Serbia seems to have decided on a strategy of "waiting for time to do its work", instead of implementing its own war-crimes prosecution strategy.

The HLC report on the implementation of the national strategy for war crimes prosecution noted no notable progress in the past six months concerning the goals laid out in the strategy.

The UN Human Rights Council this week appointed a three member commission of inquiry “to investigate all alleged violations and abuses of international humanitarian law and international human rights law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, in the context of the military assaults on the large-scale civilian protests that began on 30 March 2018.” 

David Michael Crane (United States), Sara Hossain (Bangladesh) and Kaari Betty Murungi (Kenya) we’re appointed to the panel with Mr Crane serving as the chair.