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The work of the World Council of Churches (WCC) related to disarmament continues to endure and expand, even as the world faces increasing injustice and tensions that threaten peace on a daily basis.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is standing in solidarity with the National Council of Churches of Christ in the USA and WCC member churches in the USA as they demand an end to gun violence, racist rhetoric, and white supremacy.

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.

The Meeting on the Implementation of the Plan of Action for Religious Leaders and Actors to Prevent Incitement to Violence that Could Lead to Atrocity Crimes will take place in the Vienna International Center, United Nations Office in Vienna, from 13-15 February 2018.

At a “Hearing on Racism, Discrimination, Afrophobia and Xenophobia” held at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva on 25 September, speakers reflected, lamented and, at times, simply sat in silence as they considered the experience of people of African descent in the USA.

The first ever action plan specifically designed to enable religious leaders to prevent incitement to violence - the Plan of Action for Religious Leaders and Actors to Prevent Incitement to Violence that Could Lead to Atrocity Crimes - was launched on 14 July by Secretary-General António Guterres at a meeting at United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Friday evening when the leaders of the G20 states will be meeting in Hamburg and discussing global economic, social, environmental and political issues, the churches in Germany are inviting people in Germany and all over the world to a common peace prayer.

“Peace is not just a ceasefire. Peace is not just the silencing of arms. Peace is education. Peace is figuring out how to coexist and how to build together.”

To raise awareness on the work of churches and church-related organizations engaged in peace-building efforts in Colombia, the WCC and Caritas Internationalis are promoting an event in New York on 18 August.

The WCC offered prayers for peace in the USA while condemning acts of violence in recent days that have shocked the nation and people around the world.

“We had heard that racism continues to be an issue in the United States,” said Dr Agnes Abuom, moderator of the WCC Central Committee. “But we did not expect to find it so deep, so wide and so pervasive.”

The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is taking a new turn in its 60th Session by relating its goals to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

To promote open discussions on the theological and practical discourse, narrative and experiences on implications for the work of the multi-religious organizations on religion, violence and extremism, the WCC, along with the General Board of Church and Society of The United Methodist Church and the General Conference of Seventh-Day Adventists held a Symposium on the Role of Religion and Faith-Based Organizations in International Affairs.

In the midst of a mounting climate of fear of refugees and immigrants, the WCC is calling on Christians to be true to the Biblical imperative to “welcome the stranger”.

The WCC has condemned the mass killing at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, United States.

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”.

“Nuclear weapons are incompatible with the values upheld by our respective faith traditions”, representatives of some 50 Christian, Buddhist, Muslim and Jewish organizations said on 1 May. The inter-religious statement came in a joint call to the 191 governments participating in the world’s largest disarmament treaty. The call, co-sponsored by the WCC, was made during civil society presentations to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York City.

The prospect of armed robots taking human lives, and whether to ban autonomous weapons before they are made, concentrated the minds of governmental and non-governmental delegates at a United Nations forum in Geneva in mid-April.

Leaders and representatives from the Cuban Council of Churches, the Latin American Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches USA and the WCC have spoken out together on the normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States.

At the Human Rights Defenders Forum, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter called the abuse of women the “most pervasive and unaddressed human rights violation in the whole world.” This abuse, he stressed, is contrary to the basic premise of every religion, including Christianity.