The Zimbabwe Christian Alliance, a network of church and civic bodies, says it has no hope that inter-party peace talks brokered by South Africa's Thabo Mbeki will achieve results before Zimbabwean elections scheduled for 29 March.

Only a small number of the refugees arrested in a controversial police raid on Central Methodist Mission in Johannesburg, South Africa, remain in jail, according to the bishop there. Appeals went to Desmond Tutu for help.

A South African church-backed group that helps former combatants involved in violence during the apartheid era to play a peaceful role says its life skills programme is needed helping a country undermined by violent crime.

Although there has been a lot of progress in South Africa in recent years income distribution in the country is among the most unequal in the world. To find out more about child sponsorship, and sponsor a child in South Africa, visit the World Vision sponsor a child website

British mining corporations supported by the UK government, such as Vedanta Resources, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, are complicit in human rights abuse while making huge profits in developing countries.

The World Alliance of Reformed Churches has said that a South African church, suspended from the grouping in 1982, cannot be readmitted because it has not renounced the support for the apartheid ideology that led to its exclusion.

Zimbabwe is seeking to put pressure on other European Union countries to back off Britain's tough stance on human rights there, as the diplomatic debate over Prime Minister Gordon Brown's proposal to send an envoy to the country continues.

Talk of the efficacy or otherwise of the surge is a smokescreen, says Simon Barrow. There is no long-term military solution to Iraq’s nightmare. But viable alternatives are being sought within civil society.

To be a member of the pacifist Society of Friends (Quakers) and a member of the South African Communist Party may seem contradictory to some of her compatriots. But Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, until recently South Africa's deputy health minister, sees no anomaly.

As the situation in Zimbabwe worsens, South African Methodists are offering a 'ray of hope' to homeless asylum seekers, refugees and displaced people crowding into the capital city of Johannesburg.