Amnesty has urged the new Italian government and municipal authorities in Rome to end policies which deny Roma communities access to social housing.

This week (20 January 2013) the thinktank Demos (“ideas and action to promote the common good”) has published its report Faithful Providers, which argues that faith-based organisations should be used more as public service providers. Simon Barrow offers an initial response, highlighting some of the problematic assumptions and stances within the report, setting out the background to successive government's interest in co-opting faith providers, and pointing towards a more radical Christian stance which roots service in a tradition of modelling and advocating a different social order based on justice and equality.

The European Court of Human Rights has upheld one of four UK cases where issues of the manifestation and expression of religious belief were raised.

A new report highlights the sometimes extreme limitations on freedom of thought for the non-religious in over 60 countries across the world.