Feature stories 
28. June 07
"They have stolen the nights of Baghdad from us"
"I come from a wounded Iraq and a severely wounded Baghdad," said the man in black habit standing in front of some 130 silent church representatives from six continents gathered for a peace conference on the Middle East. "The situation in my country is tragic," the man continued. "We were promised freedom, but what we need today is freedom to have electricity, clean water, to satisfy the basic needs of life, to live...
21. June 07
Churches need to speak more strongly on migrants' rights says Ecumenical Network on Migration
Churches around the world are concerned about the fate of migrants fleeing from poverty or violence in their home countries. In Africa, the promise of a better life is luring many young people to Europe and the USA, where a lot of them end up as illegal migrants. In Sri Lanka, the armed conflict between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is producing migrants by the thousands who now live in fear of abduction. In...
14. June 07
Villagers in eastern Uganda tackle water scarcity through Anglican partnerships
Khadija Kagoya, a widow and a mother of six, hails from Busowobi, a village in Uganda's Busoga region about 120 kilometres east of Kampala, whose inhabitants grow maize, cassava and bananas for a livelihood. Busowobi used to suffer from a lack of sufficient and safe water, and from water-borne diseases. But that was before community members, including Kagoya, got involved in a campaign against water scarcity initiated by the Busoga Trust, an...
7. June 07
Darfur crisis sparked off over water; smaller water conflicts also lethal says water conference
From Darfur in western Sudan to Mt Elgon in Kenya, the absence of water for rural communities is emerging as a major cause of conflict on the African continent. In Darfur, the story is one of pain and desperation for the nearly two million displaced persons. And the organizations that work in the area are convinced that it is battles for water and pasture that sparked it off.
24. May 07
Melting ice caps on Mt Kenya and Kilimanjaro need action now
"In my childhood, the water was so clear that you could see the hard rock at the bottom. Fishing for trout was so easy. We enjoyed it. When we used our fishing rods, we could see ourselves catching the fish," says Professor Jesse Mugambi, a member of the World Council of Churches (WCC) working group on Climate Change. "But then we started to grow coffee and tea. First the rivers were polluted because of erosion, and then there was...
17. May 07
World Mission and Evangelism Conference recommended for 2011
A global conference on Christian mission has been proposed for late 2011 by the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World Council of Churches (WCC). The commission, newly elected and reconstituted following the WCC's February 2006 assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil, includes delegates from member churches of the Council as well as from the Roman Catholic Church and several other Christian bodies not in full membership of the WCC. The...
28. February 07
For Kobia, India visit a "memorable experience" of churches' "vibrant life"
Just before his departure for Geneva, Switzerland, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia summed up his impressions of his recently concluded visit to southern India by saying that it had been an unparalleled opportunity to experience the "vibrant life" of the churches and their local traditions.
26. January 07
A story in a glass of muddy water
A glass of water could tell a whole story. Like the glass Dunstan Ddamulira was offered recently in the Ugandan countryside. "In my country [Uganda]," Ddamulira says, "you can't be refused water to drink. So I stopped by at this house and asked for a glass of water. A girl gave it to me. It was 50 percent mud." And to prove what he says, he shows a picture he took with his cell phone. It is 50 percent mud.
24. January 07
Seeds of life - looking for alternatives to the dominant agrobusiness model
Why have an alarming number of Indian farmers taken their lives over the last years? Why are people in the rural Jang Seong county near Kwangju, South Korea, getting involved in organic farming? Why are church-sponsored organizations in Brazil working to recover native seeds? The answer to these questions has a lot to do with the impact of economic globalization on agriculture, where two models are currently locked in a life-and-death contest.
28. November 06
An "all-year-round and all-day-long church": The Tek-Tung congregation
Founded in 1932 as a traditional rural church, the Tek-Tung congregation of the Presbyterian Church of Taiwan is anything but traditional today.