international news

Nicaragua has repealed the tax exemption for churches and religious bodies, which now face income tax of up to 30 per cent, as President Ortega’s government also shut 151 more NGOs in a wider crackdown on civil society.

Christchurch Methodist Mission opened five social homes for homeless families on land given by a Methodist parish, following a church decision that parishes should make surplus land available for social housing.

Baptist and Methodist missionaries faced persecution and property losses after the 1831 rebellion, then took Jamaica’s case against slavery to London, where Knibb vowed to see it “destroyed root and branch” and emancipation followed in 1833.

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review — Edition 9 | Published 3 July 2024 | Reporting Period: 3…

Hanoi’s Thai Ha Parish opposes a US$10 million hospital building on 61,455 square metres the Redemptorists bought in 1928 and the state borrowed in 1959 and 1973 and never gave back.

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review — Edition 10 | Published 3 April 2024 | Reporting Period: 3…

As housing affordability dominated political debate in the United States and beyond in 2024, economists warned that buyer subsidies alone cannot solve a shortage of supply. Jamaica’s own housing policy faces precisely the same tension.

A Nairobi megachurch’s perimeter wall was demolished as Kenya Railways reclaimed land for its 273-acre rail masterplan, with Bishop Margaret Wanjiru disputing that the land belongs to the state agency at all.

Across the developing world, formalising land rights produces measurable gains in investment, mortgage access and economic mobility. Jamaica’s family land tradition and untitled settlements represent both a cultural institution and a property market challenge that deserves a serious policy response.

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review | Published 3 January 2024 | Reporting Period: 3 October – 2…

Nearly one in four United Methodist congregations, 7,659 in all, left the denomination by the end of 2023 under a rule that let them keep their buildings if they paid apportionments and pension liabilities, though some had to go to court.

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review | Published 3 October 2023 | Reporting Period: 3 July – 2…

A mob in Jaranwala, Pakistan, burned one church, damaged two others and demolished a Christian man’s house after he was accused of desecrating the Quran; police said those who attacked Christian properties would be traced and arrested.

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review | Published 3 July 2023 | Reporting Period: 3 April – 2…

Los Angeles churches with spare land, including a Compton congregation planning 65 homes for homeless families and a four-acre Whittier campus with 20 members, said in 2023 that zoning rules were blocking their plans to build affordable housing.