As attention shifts to the NATO summit in Chicago, a statement by sixteen non nuclear weapons states, including Switzerland and Norway - an ally of the nuclear weapons states, says that nuclear weapons and programmes have catastrophic humanitarian consequences and should be abolished.

Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany have acknowledged publicly that they would like to see the US nuclear weapons all three are hosting removed from their territories. Yet the debate in NATO on this issue lacks transparency and accountability.

Russian police reform has so far been about centralisation and modernisation. Mark Galeotti suggests that the time is now right for a focus on localisation and humanisation, too.

It is a long road from an initial uprising to something that can be called a successful revolution. So far in the Arab region, only Tunisia has met even the minimum criteria of revolutionary success. And although there is increasing talk of a ‘Turkish’ or ‘Indonesian’ model combining a pious society with a democratic state, the region as a whole is stuck in a phase of fragile pacts and illiberal renewal

The government’s Justice and Security Green Paper and its plans to allow English courts to hold secret hearings is a threat to the basic principle of justice: the right to a fair and open trial. Tim Otty QC sets out his observations on the proposals, showing their potential to cause profound damage to the values Parliament is bound to protect.

Can the experience of the western Balkans help Libya in its transition? Some best practice could be adapted to the local context.

Violence in Iraq is not a throw-back to some more ‘primitive’ past, driven by dark passions dredged up from history.  On the contrary, it has a logic and a constitutive power of its own fully in line with the contemporary experiences that Iraqis have undergone both before and after 2003. Moreover, it seems to be regarded by those in power as a good deal less troubling than public accountability.