A senior U.S. official on March 13 urged Kosovo and Serbia to make tough decisions to restart talks and “move forward” on normalizing ties.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Gabriel Escobar met with officials in Kosovo in the latest American effort to restart the talks between the two countries after Kosovo made a controversial decision to ban ethnic Serbs in its territory from using the Serbian currency, the dinar.

More than 150 people, including political victims from Taiwan's White Terror period, have called for the establishment of a "White Terror Memorial Day" on May 19 each year, to mark the day when martial law was declared in 1949.

Starting with the declaration of martial law on May 19, 1949, the White Terror was a period of political repression under the then-Kuomintang government in Taiwan that lasted until the amendment of Article 100 of the Criminal Code on May 16, 1992.

A vote by the PSUV party concluded that Maduro would be its presidential candidate, said Diosdado Cabello, considered the number two in the ruling movement which was founded by the late Hugo Chavez and has been in power for 25 years.

Maduro, 61, has not made any announcement himself, but has been widely expected to seek reelection in a vote from which his main opposition challenger has been barred from running.

Nigerian soldiers were on March 11 hunting for armed kidnappers who seized nearly 300 school pupils in Kaduna state last week, a security source said, as distraught parents sought answers on when they would be reunited with their children.

The mass kidnapping last March 7, the first since July 2021, shattered the dusty town of Kuriga, 90 km from Kaduna state capital, with parents waiting for answers from authorities.

The European Union’s executive arm will recommend that member countries open membership negotiations with Bosnia-Herzegovina, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on March 12, despite lingering ethnic divisions in the Western Balkan country.

Bosnia-Herzegovina is among six nations from the region—the others are Albania, Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro, and North Macedonia—who are at different stages of the EU accession process following a period of wars and crises in the 1990s.

Haiti’s Prime Minister Ariel Henry has tendered his resignation and appealed for calm as the country descends into chaos.

The 74-year-old announced he would step aside late on March 11 following an emergency meeting of regional nations. Haiti has been plagued by spiraling violence in recent weeks as armed gangs have taken control, calling for Henry to go.

Palestinians began fasting for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan on March 11 with cease-fire talks at a standstill, hunger worsening across the Gaza Strip and no end in sight to the five-month-old war between Israel and Hamas.

The United States, Qatar, and Egypt had hoped to broker a cease-fire ahead of the normally joyous holiday that would include the release of dozens of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and the entry of a large amount of humanitarian aid, but the talks have stalled.

The Indian government has announced rules to implement the Citizenship Amendment Act, weeks before Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks a rare third term for his Hindu nationalist government.

The controversial law passed in 2019 by Modi’s government allowed Indian citizenship for non-Muslim refugees from India’s neighboring countries. It declared that Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Christians who fled to Hindu-majority India from mainly Muslim Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan before December 31, 2014, were eligible for citizenship.

President Macky Sall plunged Senegal into crisis with a last-minute postponement of the presidential poll, originally scheduled for February 25. After a month of uncertainty which sparked outcry at home and abroad, the country’s top constitutional body on March 7 agreed with the presidency for the vote to take place on March 24, before the end of Sall’s mandate.

On February 8, ICTJ held an event in The Hague on the missing and disappeared in Syria, in partnership with the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The event brought together activists, journalists, artists, and policymakers to reflect on the critical humanitarian needs of victims and their families and the role of the newly established international body on the missing in Syria, which is mandated in part to address these needs.