With a special focus on the majority world: Our media feed us news dominated by rich-world events and preoccupations. Here the NI redresses the balance with an alternative view of the year's key events.

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Chronicle 2001

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With a special focus on the majority world: Our media feed us news dominated by rich-world events and preoccupations. Here the NI redresses the balance with an alternative view of the year's key events.

JANUARY

BANGLADESH The High Court, which includes Bangladesh's first female judge, rules that fatwas -- religious edicts issued by Muslim clergy -- are illegal. Rural clergy issue dozens of fatwas each year, mainly against women. In October 2000 the UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance stated that most fatwas in Bangladesh were an attempt 'to stifle any efforts to emancipate women'.

CHILE Judge Juan Guzman Tapia removes the immunity which has long enveloped former dictator Augusto Pinochet. The court declares, after reviewing the results of psychological testing, that Pinochet is mentally fit to stand trial for human-rights violations by his government, which took power with a military coup in 1973.

DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO Laurent Kabila, President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is assassinated by one of his own military officers. His son, Joseph, is installed as the new leader -- with the backing of Angola and Zimbabwe.

ECUADOR An oil tanker runs aground and leaks 700,000 litres of heavy oil fuel into a bay on San Cristobal Island in the Galapagos. Oil sinking to the ocean floor destroys algae that are vital to the food chain -- thus threatening marine iguanas, sharks, birds that feed off fish and other species in the unique ecology of the Galapagos Islands.

PHILIPPINES The government of President Joseph Estrada collapses as more than a quarter of a million people take to the streets to protest against his acquittal in an impeachment trial. The Catholic Church swears in Vice-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as the new President.

RUSSIA European Union external relations commissioner, Chris Patten, warns that the 300 nuclear reactors and thousands of spent fuel rods in the Arctic Kola Peninsula form the world's biggest nuclear graveyard, an immediate and extreme danger to both Russia and Europe.

SIERRA LEONE/GUINEA war spreads further into Guinea. Revolutionary United Front rebels continue to attack and forcibly conscript Sierra Leonean refugees. The UNHCR attempts to relocate some of the 328,000 refugees from Sierra Leone living in Guinea from border areas to camps further inland, despite fears that this will extend the fighting even further.

BURMA Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratic leader who is effectively under house arrest, confirms that she has been engaged in talks with the senior members of the military junta since October -- for the first time in more than five years. The junta releases over 115 political prisoners prior to visits from the European Union and the United Nations.

SAUDI ARABIA A UN committee decides that 'narrow interpretations of Islamic texts by State authorities are impeding the enjoyment of many rights protected under the Convention (on the Rights of the Child)'. Saudi Arabia became a state party to the convention in 1996. The committee finds that children are subject to arbitrary arrest, detention, ill treatment and torture.

WORLD The annual world Economic Forum takes place in Davos, Switzerland. Lines of riot polic...

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