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At an online roundtable hosted by the All Africa Conference of Churches, male “champions for gender justice” shared their ideas and insights during their yearlong service as men who are helping to prevent gender-based violence.

World Council of Churches (WCC) acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca expressed the revulsion of the global fellowship of churches at the murder of Deborah Yakubu, a second-year college student beaten to death and burnt by a group of her fellow students in Sokoto, northern Nigeria.

Desde su fundación en 2016, el Centro Internacional para la Paz y la Armonía Interreligiosas en Kaduna (Nigeria) ha ido construyendo un marco para pacificadores que dan testimonio de la paz y la armonía interreligiosas. Al mismo tiempo, sigue siendo un símbolo físico que ayuda a musulmanes y cristianos a trabajar conjuntamente de forma más eficaz.

In the years since it was founded in 2016, the International Centre for Inter-Faith Peace and Harmony in Kaduna, Nigeria has been building a cadre of peacemakers who are witnesses to inter-religious peace and harmony. It also continues to serve as a physical symbol helping Muslims and Christians work together more effectively.

A webinar hosted by the World Council of Churches (WCC) on 26 November will explore “Conflict Zones and Covid-19: A call to compassion.” Speakers from Cameroon, Nigeria, South Sudan, Lebanon, Belarus and Colombia will offer their insights on how conflict exacerbates the conditions for contracting and treating COVID-19 among civilians caught in the crossfire, especially women.

“The church has lots of roles in removing barriers that prevent persons with disabilities from living a fulfilled life. All are created in the image of God and have equal rights. Sexual and reproductive health is one such right that should not be denied to any woman,” said Rev. Evans Onyemara, general secretary of the Christian Council of Nigeria during a training on empowering women with disabilities on sexual and reproductive health care held at Umuahia, Nigeria from 9-11 March.

The WCC-EHAIA programme organized a workshop on 27-29 November during which young people in Nigeria could highlight positive masculinity and femininity.

“The seeds of peace come from the ground.” That is the vision that Rev. Dr Shanta Premawardhana, former director of Interreligious Dialogue and Cooperation at the World Council of Churches and now president of OMNIA Institute for Contextual Leadership, tries to follow with his organization.

Fifty adolescents, young people, teachers, theologians, health professionals, people living with HIV and religious leaders met in Abuja from 22-26 May to discuss positive masculinities and femininities in faith communities.

The primate of The Church of the Lord, Aladura, Worldwide, an African initiated church founded in 1925 talks with pride about how the founder had a calling from God to have women serving with men in pastoral work. Primate Rev. Dr Rufus Okikiolaolu Ositelu, metropolitan archbishop of the church visited Geneva and the WCC on 29-30 January.

Rev. Ikechukwu Anaga remembers when people didn’t know about “Thursdays in Black,” the global movement resisting attitudes and practices that permit rape and violence. But his community of Aba, in Abia State, Nigeria, was seeing firsthand an increase in gender-based violence and rape. When Anaga helped others in his community make a firm decision to do something about it, the zeal and passion for Thursdays in Black rose.

El Rev. Ikechukwu Anaga recuerda los tiempos en los que la gente no conocía la campaña "Jueves de negro", el movimiento mundial que lucha contra las actitudes y las prácticas que permiten la violación y la violencia, a pesar de que su comunidad de Aba, en el Estado de Abia, en Nigeria, estaba experimentando de primera mano un aumento de la violencia de género y las violaciones. Cuando el Rev. Anaga ayudó a otras personas de su comunidad a tomar la decisión clara de pasar a la acción, aumentaron el entusiasmo y el fervor por la campaña "Jueves de Negro".

When more than 100 religious leaders and other actors from around the world gathered at the UN in Vienna in mid-February, it was a manifestation of unity between religious and non-religious organizations, and a genuine commitment to cooperate in dealing with hate speech and incitement to violence that could lead to atrocity crimes.

The Methodist Church of Nigeria (Diocese of Umuahia) Women’s Fellowship has invited Jessie Fubara-Manuel, an elder of the Presbyterian Church of Nigeria who also collaborates with the World Council of Churches Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiatives and Advocacy (WCC-EHAIA), to deliver the keynote address at the opening of its 42nd conference.

“Before being identified as a person with disability, you are a woman with the same rights,” said Hellen Anurika Udoye Beyioku-Alase, a young woman with a disability. She was among some 70 women who gathered at the Swiss International Hotel in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, on 22-23 June around the theme “Women with Disabilities, Sexual Reproductive Health and HIV.”

At the United Nations Office at Geneva on 15 March, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit joined a panel speaking on the theme “Islam and Christianity, the Great Convergence: Working jointly towards equal citizenship rights.”