The Government’s Pre-Budget Report announced some measures which will help those hit hardest by the economic crisis. But more needs to be done, says the campaigning group Church Action on Poverty (CAP).

People in the poorest countries are being forced into poverty by having to repay hundreds of millions of dollars of illegitimate loans from wealthy Western countries to greedy dictators, an international conference has heard.

As the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation meets to discuss the food crisis in Rome today, debt campaigners have issued a call for a moratorium on debt repayments from afflicted countries.

Campaigners calling for the cancellation of poor country debts have begun a 36-day rolling fast, ahead of the tenth anniversary of the Drop the Debt campaign in May. They are demanding debt cancellation for 36 poor countries which still desperately need it - ten years after the G8 promised to drop the debt.