Burmese President Thein Sein is set to lead the reformed Union-level peace team which deals with ethnic armed groups in ceasefire negotiations.

Libya began its first civilian trial of alleged supporters of Muammar Gaddafi's regime on Tuesday, officials said, as five men accused of planning to create instability by "terrorist acts" appeared in the dock.

The official number of deaths during the Tunisian Revolution comes to 338, according to a report released yesterday by the National Fact-Finding Commission into the violations committed during the popular uprising. 2,147 people were additionally reported wounded throughout the revolution by the Commission.

A Bahraini court has ordered a retrial for jailed hunger striker Abdulhadi al-Khawaja and 20 other men convicted in a military court of leading last year's pro-democracy uprising, but ruled they would remain in jail until new verdicts are reached.

The National Democratic Institute (NDI), in collaboration with Yemen’s Legal Affairs Ministry, held a workshop in Sana’a to discuss the transitional justice draft law on April 25-26, 2012.

Prosecutors in the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor have said he should be handed an 80-year sentence following his war crimes conviction in The Hague last week.

Burundi is making progress in improving it human rights record, but impunity remains a challenge, a senior United Nations official said, stressing that the envisaged establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission will be a real test of country’s commitment to upholding human rights.

Rights groups in Kenya have warned of a potential miscarriage of justice after the government moved to have the cases of four people charged with crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC) transferred to a region tribunal which has no experience in handling such crimes.

A Kosovo court has acquitted an ethnic Albanian former guerrilla commander and three aides over the torture and killing of Serb detainees in 1999.

UN chief Ban Ki-moon praised Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi Tuesday for backing down over a boycott of parliament which had threatened to stall the fragile reform process.