"When somebody dies in Christ, or dies a Christian, it’s a good thing because he’s going to God. He has died on a good path," says Nii Adei Klu.

"They don’t believe that either change is possible there or that their money, or their resources, what they give, will actually translate into something different on the ground. That’s the crisis that we’re seeing," says American Refugee Committee president Daniel Wordsworth.

Religious leaders of this largely Christian country will have a key role to play in successfully managing its wealth and in fostering its adherence to democratic values.

“The biggest challenge is the sheer volume of people,” says Tony Hall, former US ambassador to the UN World Food Program. Every day an estimated 1,500 malnourished refugees cross the Kenya border to escape Somalia’s widening famine.

It is a painful rite of passage for girls in many African and Middle Eastern countries. But in Senegal there has been a remarkably successful campaign to change people's attitudes towards female circumcision in an effort to eliminate the practice altogether.

Watch excerpts from newly-announced GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s April 28, 2011 speech at the National Press Club.

Millions of women in the developing world suffer from obstetric fistulas and are outcasts in their societies, but a medical missionary from Australia has spent much of her life working to eradicate the condition.

During decades of war in Sudan, says John Ashworth of Catholic Relief Services, the church was the only institution that stayed on the ground with the people. Now they are voting in the south in a referendum for independence from the Muslim-majority national government in the north.

A new book chronicles the people and places across Africa and Asia where Islam and Christianity meet and often clash.

"In a lot of places where there had been conflict in the name of religion there is now peace in the name of religion, and that's a hopeful sign."