Mexico has big plans for celebrating its 200th anniversary of independence from Spain next year. But Mexicans of African descent are as invisible in those plans as they are in everyday life.

Southern African countries have buried the hatchet in an effort to preserve the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), one of the few building blocks of regional integration. Its chiefs vehemently denied reports that Pretoria wants to pull out of the customs union.

Egyptians critical of their government are using new media and the Internet to expose its improprieties and press for social change.

Showing off China’s new wealth and national might on the anniversary of the birth of the People’s Republic, the country’s leaders attributed its rise as a rejuvenated world power to the 60 years of communist rule. But behind the shock-and-awe military parade displaying their vaunted confidence hovered uncertainty and anxiety about the future.

New legislation in Poland introducing compulsory castration of paedophiles has angered human rights groups, who claim its introduction is little more than populist posturing.

Pushing Muslims’ long-held aspirations for genuine self-determination in mainly Catholic Philippines is a complicated struggle 'because we are not a priority issue' for the central government.

At an age when most 20-year-olds dream of living a perfect life, Kousalya Periasamy found hers shaken by personal tragedies.

Civil society groups in Argentina are concerned that private security firms, which have mushroomed to 850 in Greater Buenos Aires, employ many former police officers and troops who played an active role in the political repression during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

The head of the U.N. commission that investigated the December-January Gaza war Thursday rejected assertions by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that any action to pursue the recommendations of his commission's report could prove fatal to any renewed peace process with the Palestinians.

The Council for the Defense of the State (CDE), the Chilean government's legal watchdog, is considering bringing a suit for environmental damages against an Italian-Chilean consortium carrying out geothermal studies a few kilometres away from the El Tatio geyser field, a tourist attraction in the northern region of Antofagasta.