The crowd burst into applause when the commanders of the government troops and the Unita guerrillas announced an end to one of Africa's longest-running civil wars.

But in the last few months the woes of Africa's longest-running war appear to have focused full force on the Lunda Norte region.

South Sudan gained independence from Sudan on 9 July 2011 as the outcome of a 2005 peace deal that ended Africa's longest-running civil war.

But southern Sudan is particularly destitute, for the continent's longest-running war makes even farming a death-defying act.

The trial shone a light into a murky world of secret payments made in cash and discreet deals linking Parisian high society with one of Africa's longest-running wars.

But Guatemala remains the site of Latin America's longest-running civil war, and forced conscription by both the Government and guerrilla forces continues.

Scroggins half-apologizes for this choice in her author's note, but there is probably no other way to get more than a handful of Westerners to read a book about Africa's longest-running war.

The talks, intended to end Africa's longest-running civil war, are taking place at Lake Naivasha in Kenya.

The stakes in the conflict in Sudan - Africa's largest country, cursed by the continent's longest-running civil war - have suddenly gotten much higher.

Later in his career, he helped resolve the longest-running war in the western hemisphere between Ecuador and Peru.