Citizens’ movements have played an important part in cleaning up general elections in several countries. Brian Lightowler charts their development from 1988 to the present day.

The first of two Agenda for Reconciliation conferences focussed on peace-building initiatives. It included private 'dialogues of the heart' between citizens from the Great Lakes area of Africa (Rwanda, Burundi, Congo and Uganda) and also among people from Sierra Leone; and a round table meeting of people from Bosnia Herzegovina involved in setting up a truth and reconciliation process there. Here we print extracts from Donald Shriver's keynote speech on forgiveness, and (below) Mary Lean meets some of the peace builders who took part.

Otto Pulkkinen has spent years working with the underprivileged at great personal cost. Paul Gundersen tells his story.

Bethuel Kiplagat believes that Africa's development depends on peace and security, as he tells Michael Smith.

Paige Chargois travelled to West Africa for a meeting between the descendants of those who bought and sold Africans and the descendants of those they shipped to the Americas.

Over a billion people in the developing countries suffer from the burden of debt repayments to the West. Will our governments take the opportunity of the new Millenium to cancel these debts?

Liberian peace-worker Samuel Doe describes how an encounter with a starving child changed the course of his life.

Gerald Pillay assesses one country's bold-and controversial-bid to come to terms with its past.

For over 300 years the Quakers have been working for peace and acting as mediators. Campbell Leggat mines the experience of a group who have never been afraid to stand up to power or to listen at the deepest level.

Yusuf Al-Azhari spent six years in solitary confinement as a political prisoner. Now he is helping to bring Somalia's warlords together. Michael Smith tells his story: