“They came to our house. We refused to open the door so they broke in though the window.”
That’s how Damaris Blessing Tiswan, a finance student at Kaduna Polytechnic, began describing her ordeal of being kidnapped with her four siblings at midnight.
Representatives of the South Sudan Council of Churches (SSCC) engaged in a series of meetings last week in New York, accompanied by the World Council of Churches (WCC) to inform UN member states and agencies about the current crisis and to advocate for a pathway towards peace.
Des représentants et représentantes du Conseil des Églises du Soudan du Sud (SSCC) ont participé à une série de réunions la semaine dernière à New York, aux côtés du Conseil œcuménique des Églises (COE), pour informer les États membres et les agences de l’ONU de la crise actuelle et pour défendre un chemin de paix.
Traveling from Tanzania, Esther Ngulwa brought a sense of hope regarding gender equality as she spoke on 10 March, two days before the start of the 62nd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW62) in New York City.
A consultation in Arusha, Tanzania, has issued a communique entitled “Sustainable Peace in Burundi.” The meeting, organized by the World Council of Churches and the United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, drew together Burundian religious leaders on 18-19 October.
Les participant-e-s à une consultation qui se tenait à Arusha (Tanzanie) ont publié un communiqué de presse intitulé «Une paix durable au Burundi». La rencontre, organisée les 18 et 19 octobre par le Conseil œcuménique des Églises et le Bureau de la prévention du génocide et de la responsabilité de protéger des Nations Unies, réunissait des responsables religieux du Burundi.
Dr Samuel Kabue, executive secretary of the WCC’s Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network, an initiative of the World Council of Churches, was elected to the Committee of Experts to the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities.
Forty years after the Soweto uprising, leaders of churches in conflict-torn countries gathered in South Africa to study the ways of peace and reconciliation.
As a United Nations high-level meeting on ending AIDS led to the adoption of a new political declaration to fast-track progress toward combating HIV and AIDS, the faith community responded, both with words of commendation and a call for changes.
The African continent bears witness to the tragic consequences of the manipulation of religion to incite violence. Yet it is also the home of untold instances of the power of religious leaders and actors to exert a positive influence, said panellists at an international meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, today.
“Children need to know their place in the church. And that is at the front, not the back”, said Bishop Raphael Opoko from the Methodist Church of Nigeria, speaking at a round table discussion on promoting the rights of children held on 19 November at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva.
«Les enfants doivent savoir quelle est leur place à l’église: et c’est devant, pas au fond», a déclaré l’évêque Raphael Opoke, de l’Église méthodiste du Nigeria lors d’une table ronde sur la promotion des droits des enfants qui s’est tenue le 19 novembre au Centre œcuménique à Genève.
Despite significant steps taken by the Kenyan government, coordinator of the WCC Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network Dr Samuel Kabue says that “more needs to be done” so that people with disability can enjoy their rights.
Four weeks of negotiations on nuclear weapons came to a close on Friday 22 May, as the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ended without a formal agreement. Despite the outcome, a bright new prospect towards a world without nuclear weapons has emerged in the form of a Humanitarian Pledge, now endorsed by 107 states, which promises “to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons”.
United Nations leaders and the WCC have agreed that the international community and faith leaders need to cooperate more on working to fight the scourge of the deadly Ebola virus.
Des représentants des Nations Unies et du COE sont convenus que la communauté internationale et les responsables religieux doivent coopérer davantage pour lutter contre Ebola.
“This is the only home we have,” said Archbishop Desmond Tutu referring to the crucial significance of our planet and its survival. He was speaking in an interfaith rally in Durban, urging the United Nations conference on climate change (COP17) to deliver a fair, ambitious and binding treaty to address climate change effectively.
