The international viewpoint on the African continent has profoundly changed in the last decade. Images advertised by the media drifted from afro-pessimism - the sad fate of Africa (wars and poverty) - to afro-optimism - a brighter future for the continent.

The Eurasian axis of Russian foreign policy has been given several impetuses over the last two years. The most important of these has been the sharp deterioration in relations with the West against the backdrop of the Ukraine crisis.

The financial system has become too complex to be controlled at state level. 

Recent debates in Germany about the future of the country’s security and foreign policy have aroused interest abroad, especially in France. 

Over the last few years both the United States and Russia seem to have changed their conception of how to deploy force. 

Born from the ashes of two world wars, the concept of international criminal justice took nearly half a century to become anchored in institutions and legal concepts that are independent of specific conflicts. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, that for Rwanda, and the creation of the International Criminal Court, among others, bear witness to the real progress made during the 1990s. This issue of Politique étrangère offers a series of articles that shed light on these achievements and their limits.

The modern principle of international criminal justice goes back to Nuremberg and its highly specific historical context. The 1990s marks a decade of renaissance, for former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in particular. 

Established to hold trials for crimes committed during the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has vacillated between its punitive purpose and writing the history of this period.