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After learning about the link between HIV and sexual and gender-based violence, the Rev. Neila Ingram said what was on the minds of many women religious leaders: “So now I have work to go and do in my community and church.”

Is religion discriminating? Does there exist discrimination within and by different religions? World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit explored these questions with fellow panelists in Trondheim, Norway.

The staff members of the Office of Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation of the WCC as well as their colleagues from the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, held their annual meeting on 30-31 January.

More than 120 religious and spiritual leaders, health workers and young people met on 7-8 February to focus on strengthening the fight against stigma in the HIV response in Kenya. They were joined by representatives from the Kenyan government, civil society organizations, networks of people living with HIV, and development partners for an event in Nairobi. The meeting, “Faith on the Fast Track: Eliminating Stigma and Discrimination Through Love and Dialogue” aimed to assess the impact of the Framework for Dialogue methodology which has been implemented in several countries since 2013.

All forms of human enslavement are the most heinous of sins, violating the free will and the integrity of every human being created in the image of God, stated the Forum on Modern Slavery, co-organized by the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Church of England in Istanbul from February 6-7, 2017.

Expressing concern regarding recently announced US measures related to refugee admissions and entry into the US by seven Muslim-majority countries, the World Council of Churches (WCC), ACT Alliance (ACT), and The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) affirmed that faith calls all Christians to love and welcome the stranger, the refugee, the internally displaced person - “the other.”

During the visit to Iraq on 20-24 January, a delegation of church leaders shared the findings and recommendations of a recent study exploring the specific needs of displaced people in Iraq and Syria. The delegation also learned a lot about the current situation and challenges from representatives of local faith communities in Iraq, heads of the country’s Christian churches and Christian young people.

A global delegation of church leaders concluded a visit to Iraq on 24 January, focusing on the future of vulnerable components of Iraq’s society following the expected military defeat of the so-called “Islamic State”. The delegation called for an emergency response from international donors to support efforts to secure, stabilize and rebuild affected communities and societies.

Upon her first visit to Iraq, Antje Jackelén, archbishop of the Church of Sweden, had the same questions as many others across the world: “What’s really happening? What can we do to help our Christian brothers and sisters? What can we do to also assist other communities under huge pressure?”

The World Council of Churches - Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance applauds the first licensing agreement related to tuberculosis, announced on 25 January by the Medicines Patent Pool and Johns Hopkins University. The agreement will facilitate the clinical development of sutezolid, a tuberculosis drug candidate. The antibiotic sutezolid, in combination with other drugs, could be used to more effectively treat drug-sensitive and drug-resistant tuberculosis.

If the worsening global inequality highlighted recently is to be tackled, world leadership must act “now”, in tangible ways, says World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, participating in the 2017 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland this week.

The General Board of Global Ministries, a mission agency of The United Methodist Church, hosted representatives from the WCC Commission on World Mission and Evangelism this week for a meeting to plan a World Mission Conference scheduled for March 2018.

While participating in the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland from 17-20 January, World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit urged the world’s leaders to be accountable to humanity for the sake of justice and peace for all.

He earned the title “Green Patriarch” as a religious leader addressing alarming environmental issues over at least two decades. In 2008, Time Magazine named His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew as one of 100 Most Influential People in the World, for “defining environmentalism as spiritual responsibility”.

Baden-Württemberg minister-president, Winfried Kretschmann, has expressed gratitude to the churches for putting Christian service and neighbourly love into practice, and not only at Sunday sermons. The German state’s governor Kretschmann gave his message in a meeting with the general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, in Stuttgart last Thursday.

As part of an ongoing, multiyear project called “Walking Together,” an international and interreligious group met in Nicosia, Cyprus, from 6-8 December to explore different facets of the theme “Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace,” which undergirds the World Council of Church’s programmatic focus.

Are steps needed now in case high-tech weapons of the future are designed to attack and kill on their own? Members of a United Nations treaty on inhumane weapons have decided an expert group will deliberate on the topic next year, and WCC has joined with civil society organizations and concerned governments for plans to ban such weapons.

From social and diaconal action, to liturgical life, pastoral care, and theological reflection, churches are responding and adapting to the movement of migrants within Europe and beyond its borders. A recent consultation convened by the Conference of European Churches, Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe and WCC took place in Copenhagen from 8 to 10 December 2016.

Father Emanuel Youkhana rues that, for the third Christmas in a row, the church bells will not ring in Mosul. He recounts that, around June 2014, the numerical religious minorities such as Yazidis and Christians around Iraq’s second biggest city began to face a horrific onslaught by the group calling itself IS (Islamic State), or Daesh in Arabic.