As the 21st Conference of Parties (COP 21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change came to a close in Paris, a consultation organized by the National Council of Churches in the Philippines and the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance of the WCC on 11 December in Quezon City, Philippines considered “The Right to Food and Life in the Context of Climate Change.”
Some 200 people from Japanese churches and minority right networks as well as overseas partners, gathered for an international conference on minority issues and mission at the Korean YMCA in Tokyo.
During the 4th United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights, the WCC, in collaboration with the ACT Alliance and Lutheran World Federation, organized a side-event on “Faith-based organizations’ contribution to the protection of communities’ land rights: lessons learnt and good practices from Africa, Asia and Latin America” at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva.
Participants in Manilakbazan 2015, called by some the “Lumad caravan”, have come to Manila for a month-long series of activities and protests to bring attention to human rights violations in Lumad communities of the Philippines.
The nuclear attack on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945 revealed the brutality and dangerous logic of war, money and power, according to an Indigenous Anglican bishop from Canada.
A communiqué adopted at a WCC consultation describes human trafficking as a “serious human rights violation” and its consequences are “most horrific results of the economic and social disparities that increase the vulnerability of millions of people”.
At the recent World Social Forum, ecumenical voices warned about the grave consequences of extraction of natural resources and mining, which they say generate a tremendous amount of social and ecological debt.