Rev. Canon Dr Ezekiel Olusegun Babatunde, director of the Institute of Church and Society with the Christian Council of Nigeria, speaks about attempts to provide clean drinking water to communities in Nigeria.

WCC member churches in Canada join hands with faith leaders, politicians and civil society actors to stress a “moral responsibility to address global warming”, which they call “a spiritual crisis”. Together they prepared a “Canadian Interfaith Call for Leadership and Action on Climate Change”.

In September, the Palestinian leadership plans to seek recognition as an independent state from the United Nations. The situation in the Middle East continues to be impredictable. But, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel writes in the latest edition of its newsletter, one thing is clear: basic human dignity must be protected, no matter what the future holds.

Read about the Italian churches' promotion of water as a public good and Israel's Supreme Court acknowledging the right to water of Bedouins in the Negev in the latest edition of the EWN newsletter.

Dr Katharina Kunter came upon the WCC as an object of research through the discipline of Cold War studies, analyzing the encounter of Christian bodies in East and West from the end of the second world war to the fall of the Berlin Wall. She soon came to realize that the interplay of “northern” churches with the global South was equally influential in transforming attitudes and practices of the WCC and its member churches during those decades.

Rev. Dr Walter Altmann, moderator of the WCC Central Committee, argued forcefully today that unity as well as justice and peace should be included in the theme for the next assembly of the world’s largest ecumenical body.

The World Council of Churches is hosting an international exhibition of textiles, arpilleras and quilts from 16 February to 18 March at its Geneva headquarters. The curator Roberta Bacic, a former member of Chile’s truth and reconciliation commission, will officially open the exhibition on Wednesday 16 February, the first day of the WCC Central Committee meeting, together , with moderator Rev. Dr Walter Altmann and general secretary Tveit.

Across the Middle East and North Africa, the year 2011 has begun in dramatic fashion. While media coverage has focused on unfolding events in Egypt, the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory has not been static either, the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) reports in the latest edition of its newsletter.

A heat wave coincides with the start of the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan. The Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) reports on developments in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

The need for a "theology of healing" was the central theme of a recent international encounter between Orthodox women and Christians of both sexes from other traditions.