Just for curiosity's sake, does any one view this issue like I do? This Lake is called Lake Malawi following the country's changed name after independence. Originally it was call Lake Nyasa just like the Tanzanians are calling it. Now, the point is, if this lake belongs to Tanganyikas and they call it Lake Nyasa and not Lake Malawi, while before independence Malawi was called Nyasaland and the Lake was Lake Nyasa, Where is the claim of the Tanganyikas portion on this lake falling? Lake Nyasa meant it belonged to Nyasalanders then and Nyasaland was what is called Malawi now. Are not Tanganyikas themselves accepting that this lake belongs to Nyasaland as they call it Lake Nyasa? When was Tanganyika Nyasaland for their lake to be called Lake Nyasa, may I know?

Cross-border dynamics are a key consideration in the work of Conciliation Resources, an international peacebuilding NGO. There's much to be learnt from past initiatives – what's worked and what's less effective – and we analysed some of these in our Accord series issue 22: 'Paix sans frontières: building peace across borders' http://www.c-r.org/accord/cross-border

Armed conflicts are neither defined nor confined by national borders, so peacebuilding strategies need to ‘think outside the state’ – through regional diplomacy and cross-border civil society networks, and by strengthening the social contract in conflict-prone borderlands.

While Mali is mentioned in this article, elsewhere in West Africa the Mano River Union region continues to experience post-conflict problems of poor governance and corruption affected people in borderlands. A 20-min docudrama seeks to give a voice to local people's concerns: http://www.c-r.org/talking-borders. We also continue to support local communities affected by the LRA conflict who work to build peace across borders: http://www.c-r.org/RCSTF