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A plenary discussion on support by religious communities for the rights of children, and a first draft of the statement of “principles for child-friendly churches,” captured the imagination of the Central Committee of the WCC on 27 June. The document will now undergo further revision and be resubmitted at the next WCC executive committee meeting.

Women and children figure prominently as refugees in mass movements of people in recent months and their rights will be at the forefront of a summer school organized in Greece by the Conference of European Churches.

In a message to its Buddhist partners, WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit offered greetings on the day of Vesakh, which celebrates the founder of the faith, Siddhartha Gautama.

Almost forty years after the advent of HIV and AIDS, people around the world living with HIV still endure assaults on their dignity and basic human rights—from stigma and discrimination to denial of legal protection and even medical care.

“Today, thankfully, religion is no longer a ‘taboo’ in political science and development literature,” said Rev. Dr Olav FykseTveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC) at an international conference on religion and sustainable development.

On 8 February, the WCC convened a strategy meeting between principals and senior staff of the ACT Alliance, Anglican Alliance, Caritas Internationalis, Globethics, Lutheran World Federation and WCC, to discuss communication and collaboration in policy engagement, advocacy and action.

The Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe and the WCC have published a revised and updated edition of their joint study, Mapping Migration: Mapping Churches’ Responses in Europe. The 2016 text explores challenges and changes in the European church landscape in light of international migration.

Edward Dommen has been honoured for writing A Peaceable Economy, his 2014 book on the potential for peacemaking through economics. The work appears in the Voices and Visions series of WCC Publications, the World Council of Churches book publishing programme.

As head of policy at Christian Aid, a key member of the ACT Alliance, Alison Kelly has an eye on sustainable development in what is seen as the prophetic voice of the church, which has a busy year in 2015.

The life and works of Dietrich Bonhoeffer were revisited by three historians in a panel held by the WCC.

The newly published issue of Current Dialogue is now available online. Along with key documents from the WCC 10th Assembly, the issue includes several strong pieces addressing some thorny issues in contemporary inter-religious encounter and dialogue, including the recent Malaysian prohibition of Christian use of the name Allah for God, the relationship of ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue, the particular difficulties in dialogue among the Abrahamic traditions, and the limits of dialogue itself.

A gender advisory group representing member churches of the WCC has begun working by developing procedures and policies to help the WCC in accomplishing gender justice in institutions, communities and societies – an objective lying at the core of its vision of a “pilgrimage of gender justice”.

Bishop Eva Brunne from Stockholm is one of three Swedes on the Central Committee of the WCC, which met in Geneva 2-8 July. “The Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace” became the central focus of the Committee’s work.

An “inter-generational dialogue on faith, culture, HIV and sexual reproductive health and rights” was initiated on 11 March in New York City by the World YWCA in partnership with the WCC and other international organizations. The dialogue was organized as a side event at the United Nations 58th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women.

During 2014 the Ecumenical Institute at Bossey will be holding a number of seminars raising awareness on issues related to women’s concerns, justice and peace, ecology and Christian theology, interfaith relations and migrant churches.