- April 2008: First democratic elections in Nepal
- April 2008: Uganda and rebel agree on peace
- March 2008: Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders agree to resume talks on reunifying the island
- February 2008: Cuba releases four political prisoners arrested during a 2003 crackdown on dissidents and Fidel Castro announces retirement
- January 2008: Congo government and rebels sign a truce
- December 2007: 68 countries in Paris pledge billions of dollars of aid to the Palestinians
- December 2007: for the first year since the USA invasion, Iraqi oil production exceeds oil production before the invasion
- December 2007: New Jersey abolishes the death penalty
- December 2007: The first regular train service since the 1950s opens between North and South Korea
- December 2007: the USA senate approves a trade deal with Peru
- November 2007: Iraqi civilian killings drop sharply
- October 2007: The leaders of the two Koreas meet
- September 2007: Buddhist monks protest against Burma's dictatorship
- September 2007: North Korea accepts to undo its nuclear program
- August 2007: The Ethiopian government frees dozens of jailed dissidents
- August 2007: Francisco Chaviano (Cuba's longest serving political prisoner) is released from jail after 13 years
- July 2007: an Arab League delegation visits Israel for the first time
- July 2007: train service between India and Bangladesh is resumed after 42 years
- June 2007: Sudan accepts a peace-keeping force for Darfur
- June 2007: The G8 leaders pledge to spend $60bn to fight Aids, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa
- June 2007: Putin of Russia offers cooperation on missile defense with the USA
- June 2007: Indonesia offers to mediate between fighting Iraqi factions and calls for a Muslim force to replace the USA in Iraq
- May 2007: For the first time since 1951 a train crosses the border between North and South Korea
- May 2007: The Polisario Front and Morocco agree to hold direct talks
- April 2007: Mauritania joins the ranks of the democratic world
- April 2007: Russia proposes a tunnel to Alaska
- April 2007: Africa's economy grows 5.7% yearly
- April 2007: China's prime minister Wen Jiabao visits Japan, meets with the emperor and addresses the Japanese parliament
- March 2007: The Arab League adopts a Saudi peace proposal with Israel
- March 2007: The government of Ivory Coast and the rebels sign a peace accord
- February 2007: North Korea agrees to close its main nuclear reactor
- January 2007: Israel's government appoints the first Arab Muslim minister in Israel's history
- December 2006: The world's economy grew about 3%, posting gains in every single continent and in most countries of the world
- October 2006: Democratic elections in Congo Kinshasa
- October 2006: Qatar invites Israel to an Arab conference
- October 2006: Japan and China agree to condem North Korea's intention of carrying out a nuclear test
- September 2006: Sunni Arab tribes in the western province of Iraq join the USA to fight insurgents
- September 2006: The Ugandan government signs a truce with the Lord's Resistance Army
- September 2006: The USA hands control of the country's armed forces to oIraq's prime minister Nouri Maliki
- August 2006: Palestinian militants declare a unilateral end to attacks against Israel
- August 2006: Israeli forces withdraw after expelling Hezbollah from southern Lebanon and the Lebanese army takes control for the first time of the region
- July 2006: Democratic elections in the Congo (former Zaire)
- July 2006: China and India reopen the Himalayan pass of Nathu that was closed for more than 40 years
- June 2006: for the first time women are allowed to vote and stand in elections in Kuwait
- June 2006: Peace agreement in Somalia
- June 2006: Maoist rebels join Nepal's government
- June 2006: Nigeria implements a World Court ruling to hand over the Bakassi peninsula to Cameroon
- June 2006: the European union starts talks with Turkey about membership
- June 2006: China and Taiwan set up regular non-stop passenger flights
- June 2006: Jawad al-Maliki forms a government of national unity in Iraq
- June 2006: Islamic hyper-terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is killed by USA bombs
- May 2006: Nepal's government and Maoist rebel start peace negotiations
- May 2006: Sudan's government and the main Darfur rebel group sign a peace deal
- April 2006: Maoist rebels in Nepal offer a truce to the government
- April 2006: Nigeria pays off its foreign debt, the first African nation to do so
- April 2006: Phuntsog Nyidron, a Tibetan nun who has spent 15 years in jail for opposing China's rule of Tibet, is allowed to emigrate to the USA
- April 2006: Egypt releases the last prisoners of Gamaa Islamiya after its leaders renounced terrorism
- March 2006: ETA declares a stop to its terrorist campaign
- March 2006: Iranian dissident journalist Akbar Ganji is freed after five years in prison
- March 2006: Chilean prime minister Michelle Bachelet appoints equal numbers of men and women to the government
- March 2006: Radical cleric Moqtada Sadr appeals for calm among Shias of Baghdad, Iraq
- February 2006: USA archaeologists discover an ancient Egyptian tomb in the Valley of the Kings
- February 2006: The Magdalena Medio Bloc, Colombia's oldest paramilitary group, demobilises, bringing the number of demobilised paramilitaries to more than 22,000
- February 2006: Muslim journalists from Jordan to Yemen stand up against the cartoon protests
- February 2006: Peaceful elections in Haiti
- February 2006: Hamas declares willingness to negotiate with Israel and rejects support from Al Qaeda
- February 2006: Iraq's top Shia cleric Ali Sistani declares that militant Islamists are to blame for distorting the image of Islam
- February 2006: Newspapers of Italy, France and Germany reprint Danish cartoons in a rare show of European solidarity for the victims of religious superstition
- January 2006: Long lost Phoenician ports of Tyre and Sidon are found
- January 2006: The first free parliamentary elections in Palestine punish the corrupt Fatah party
- January 2006: NASA launches a spacecraft ("New Horizons") towards Pluto
- January 2006: India and Pakistan agree to reopen a railway linking the two countries
- December 2005: Parliamentary elections in Iraq
- December 2005: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia becomes the first elected female head of state in Africa
- December 2005: Afghani parliament is sworn in
- December 2005: Aceh rebels in Indonesia surrend their last arms
- September 2005: North Korea accepts to give up its nuclear weapons program
- September 2005: The IRA destroys all its weapons
- September 2005: Afghanistan holds parliamentary elections
- September 2005: Aceh rebels surrend to the government of Indonesia
- September 2005: Israel withdraws from the Gaza strip after 38 years of occupation
- September 2005: Maoist rebels in Nepal declare a unilateral ceasefire
- September 2005: Pakistan and Israel meet for the first time publicly
- August 2005: Hutu rebel leader Pierre Nkurunziza, who won the first democratic elections in Burundi, is appointed president, thus ending the 12-year civil war that killed 200,000 people
- August 2005: Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka agree to hold direct talks with the government
- August 2005: Colombia's right-wing paramilitary organization United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) disbands
- July 2005: the IRA (Irish Republican Army) gives up its armed struggle for a united Ireland
- June 2005: Vietnam's prime minister Phan Van Khai visits the USA
- June 2005: The Sudanese government and southern rebels sign a reconciliation agreement and a power-sharing deal
- June 2005: Scheduled passenger flights between the Iraqi cities of Baghdad and Basra begin to operate
- May 2005: Korean scientists create human embryonic stem cells
- May 2005: Iran's foreign minister visits Iraq, thus ending 25 years of hostility between the two countries
- April 2005: The two Chinas, totalitarian Beijing and democratic Taiwan, hold their first talks since the end of their civil war
- April 2005: Italy returns an obelisk that Mussolini stole from Ethiopia
- April 2005: Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf visits arch-enemy India
- April 2005: at Pope John Paul II's funeral, both Syrian president Assad and Iran's president Khatami shake hands with Israel's president Moshe Katzav
- April 2005: Iraq's parliament names a Kurd for president, Jalal Talabani, and a shiite for prime minister, Ibrahim Jaafari
- March 2005: Rigged elections in Kyrgizstan are annulled and the president resigns
- March 2005: Mass demonstrations in Lebanon force Syria to announce it will pull out of Lebanon
- February 2005: Israel and the Palestinians declare a truce
- January 2005: Palestinians vote in free elections. Iraqis vote in free elections.
- December 2004: The government and the rebels of Senegal make peace
- December 2004: Rigged elections in Ukraine are annulled and people are allowed to vote again
- December 2004: Sudanese government and southern rebel sign a peace deal
- November 2004: Burma frees 4,000 political prisoners
- November 2004: Egypt legalizes a new political party, led by a woman, a Christian woman
- November 2004: Arafat's death reopens a window for peace in Palestine
- October 2004: The first democratic elections are held in Afghanistan
- September 2004: The number of people seeking asylum in the world declines by 22%, mainly due to Afghanistan and Iraq
- August 2004: An assembly meets in Iraq to create the first democracy in the Arab world and in Arab history
- August 2004: Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia's most notorious opposition leader, is freed
- July 2004: The USA Congress urges the world to take action on the Darfur genocide
- July 2004: USA secretary of state Powell visits the Darfur region of Sudan
- June 2004: the USA hands over power to an Iraqi government
- June 2004: Scientists transfer properties of one atom and to another atom by entangling their quantum waves
- June 2004: The United Nations finally votes a resolution that recognizes the new Iraqi government of Iyad Allawi, thus removing Saddam Hussein from the leaders of the world
- May 2004: Sudan and John Garang's Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) sign a peace deal, ending a civil war that cost the lives of two million people
- May 2004: Algeria holds the most democratic elections ever held in an Arab country
- April 2004: Liberian rebels begin to disarm
- March 2004: A woman, Tanzania's Getrude Mangella, is elected president of the Pan African parliamen
- March 2004: Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qorei denounces suicide bombings as immoral
- February 2004: Iraqis agree on a new constitution
- January 2004: Somalia warlords make peace
- January 2004: Afghan delegates agree on a new constitution
- January 2004: the "Spirit" spacecraft lands on Mars and sends the first pictures of the planet's surface
- January 2004: North Korea agrees to let USA experts visit its top nuclear facility
- January 2004: India and Pakistan restore air links, and Indian prime minister Vajpayee attends a regional summit in Pakistan
- December 2003: Pakistan rules that women can marry without the consent of a male guardian
- December 2003: in Afghanistan the highway linking the Kabul with Kandahar is inaugurated
- December 2003: An alternative peace plan for the Middle East is worked out in Geneva by moderate Israelis and Palestinians
- November 2003: Pakistan bans three Islamic groups (Jamiat-ul Furqan, Hizbul Tehreer, and Jamiat-ul Ansar)
- November 2003: a Colombian paramilitary group begins disarming
- November 2003: the USA senate approves a $20 billion gift to the Iraqi people, the largest such reconstruction budget since WW II.
- November 2003: Saudi actor Nasser al-Qasabi makes fun of Islamic laws on national tv
- October 2003: Morocco grants women more rights than in any other Islamic country
- October 2003: some 2.5 million Afghan refugees have returned to Afghanistan since the overthrow of the Taliban regime
- September 2003: the Supreme Court of Nigeria overturns the stoning of a Muslim woman
- September 2003: the World Trade Organization grants poor countries the right to produce cheap versions of costly medicines
- July 2003: Grand Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi of the Al-Azhar mosque of Cairo, the world's most influential Sunni cleric, condemns all attacks by suicide bombers
- July 2003: Delegates at the Somali peace talks agree to re-establish a federal government to end the civil war
- July 2003: Liberia's president and war criminal Charles Taylor steps down
- June 2003: The government of Saudi Arabia fires hundreds of hard-line Islamic clerics
- June 2003: The Egyptian government allows the Ibn Khaldun Center, founded in 1988 by Saad Eddin Ibrahim to promote democracy in the Arab world, to reopen
- June 2003: Charles Taylor of Liberia is indicted for war crimes by a United Nations court
- June 2003: Palestinian prime minister Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime minister Sharon shake hands in public during a meeting with USA president Bush
- May 2003: A transitional government of national reconciliation is created in Congo/Zaire
- May 2003: A satellite takes the first picture of the Earth from Mars
- May 2003: Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee calls for negotiations with Pakistan over Kashmir
- April 2003: A woman is elected in free municipal elections in Qatar
- April 2003: India vaccinates 165 million children to eradicate polio
- April 2003: Iraq is liberated by the USA and UK, and opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi returns to Iraq after 47 years of exile
- April 2003: Vietnamese prime minister Phan Van Khai meets with monk Thich Huyen Quang, a leader of Vietnamese Buddhists, who has been under house arrest for 21 years
- March 2003: Mahmoud Abbas, a critic of the Palestinian intifada, is appointed prime minister of the Palestinian Authority.
- March 2003: Despite huge lobbying by the oil industry, the USA Senate votes against drilling in Alaska, the single greatest victory by environmental concerns over business concerns in the history of oil drilling.
- March 2003: The Brazilian government announces a plan to eradicate slavery in Brazil
- February 2003: Bowing to international pressure, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat allows the Palestinian parliament to choose a prime minister
- January 2003: Hossein Ali Montazeri, Iran's most famous dissidents ayatollah, is released after 5 years in prison
- January 2003: Xu Wenli, one of China's most prominent dissidents, is released after 16 years in prison and allowed to emigrate to the USA
- December 2002: Daniel Arap Moi peacefully steps down after 24 years as president of Kenya
- December 2002: The factions of the Congolese civil war sign a peace treaty
- December 2002: The European Union decides to admit ten new members, mostly old enemies of Eastern Europe
- December 2002: The Burundi government and the Hutu rebels sign a ceasefire agreement
- November 2002: Aceh separatists and the Indonesian government reach a peace agreement, ending a 25-year old civil war that cost 12,000 lives
- November 2002: Pakistan's dictator Musharraf hands over daily government duties to a democratically elected prime minister
- October 2002: in Brazil the opposition candidate, Luiz Inacio Lula, wins a fair election
- October 2002: the Somali warlords sign a truce
- October 2002: Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia begin withdrawing their troops from Congo, a country that they had virtually occupied and split
- October 2002: Bahrain, a small Arab country, holds the first parliamentary elections in three decades, and even women are allowed to vote
- October 2002: the wife of Egyptian president Mubarak opens a conference for Arab women in Cairo
- August 2002: Iraqi Kurds set up a provisional parliament
- May 2002: Myanmar (Burma) opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is released from house arrest
- April 2002: Ethiopia and Eritrea agree on a new common border
- January 2002: the Islamic government of Sudan and the Christian rebels sign a truce after 20 years of war that has caused the death of one million people
|