Croatians - and their government - have reacted with shock and outrage over the sentencing in the Hague last week of two former generals for crimes against humanity committed over fifteen years ago by troops they commanded.

Kosovo’s newly sworn in President, 36 year-old Atifete Jahjaga, has vowed to pursue wider recognition of her country’s independence and its entry to the United Nations, as well as stronger relations with the United states.

“It is convenient for the world to think that the ongoing Ivory Coast civil war and genocide is about election and election results, and removing recalcitrant Gbagbo from an office which he lost in the polls.

“In reality, this is hypocrisy. The UN and the stakeholder-countries involved in Ivory Coast [know] that the problem is not Gbagbo and Ouattara, or elections. The primary issue in Ivory Coast is that of “North vs. South” which is now translating into perhaps Muslim North vs. Christian South.

European Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström has urged member states to resettle Eritrean, Somali, Ethiopian and other refugees fleeing Libya.

See reports by Reuters here and the Jesuit Refugee Services here

"We need to show an element of solidarity. There are ... people who have nowhere to go and with this we will have to help, to resettle them," she said.

“Peace versus Justice; it is an old question for prosecutors at the International Criminal Court and one they are hearing all over again as they plunge into investigations in Libya and Ivory Coast.

“What price stability, the argument goes, if the new leaders find themselves in the ICC crosshairs? Peace, in other words, trumps justice. It is a short term solution, but it is the wrong one, and not just on moral grounds

Alarmed over the recent nuclear catastrophe in Japan, India and Russia have decided to jointly review the safety of nuclear reactors installed in India, but have also agreed not to impose brakes on ongoing projects.

"We will do this exercise together. But nothing stops and it does not replace anything that we have already agreed in the long-term,” National Security Advisor Shiv Shankar Menon says.

Critics argue that we are inconsistent, even hypocritical, in our military interventions. After all, we intervened promptly this time in a country with oil, while we have largely ignored Ivory Coast and Darfur — not to mention Yemen, Syria and Bahrain.

We may as well plead guilty. We are inconsistent. There’s no doubt that we cherry-pick our humanitarian interventions.

Many of you will remember how effective the sports boycott of the 1970s and 1980s was in conveying to sport-crazy South Africans that our society had placed itself beyond the pale by continuing to organise its life on the basis of racial discrimination.