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Volunteers for the WCC Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel have urged the European Union to take more effective actions against the illegal settlements, demolitions and forced displacement in the occupied territory controlled by the Israeli authorities.

A recent meeting of representatives from ecumenical organizations, Catholic, Evangelical and Pentecostal churches in Strasbourg, France has promised to address more effectively discrimination, persecution and violence faced by Christians around the world. This theme will be explored in depth through an international consultation to be held in 2015.

We met Rev. Dr Simo Peura, bishop of the Diocese of Lapua in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, and a member of the Central and Executive Committees of the WCC, in the chapel at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva.

A film about the imposition of a totalitarian form of Islam on a village in Mali has won the prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Cannes Film Festival in France. Timbuktu, directed by Abderrahmane Sissako, a filmmaker from Mauritania, tells the story of how local people resist the arrival of extremists who want to restrict women's liberty and to outlaw music and football.

A reflection on the recent United Nations meeting on the Non-Proliferation Treaty, by Jonathan Frerichs, WCC programme executive for peace building and disarmament, and member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

The Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit visited Finland this week, and spoke to the Finnish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Erkki Tuomioja, about the situation in Ukraine and in the Middle East. Tveit was also one of the speakers at the global partnership consultation organized by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland.

Embracing the holistic view of mission as “koinonia” (being in communion with God, all peoples and the whole of creation) has become more than bringing the good news to others, said Kyriaki Avtzi, the WCC programme executive on evangelism, while addressing the theme “Your Kingdom Come” at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland partnership consultation.

Five of the world’s major arms exporters are among a group of mostly European countries ratifying the world’s first Arms Trade Treaty today, 2 April, a year after the treaty was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly.

Public health and human rights remain woefully unprotected from nuclear disasters. This is a key assessment of a “Human Rights and Natural Disasters” workshop, three years after the Fukushima disaster and 30 years since Chernobyl. The workshop was hosted by the WCC on 28 February in Geneva, Switzerland

A workshop on “human rights and nuclear disasters” hosted by the WCC and led by lawyers and doctors from France, Japan, Canada, Belarus and Switzerland will be held on Friday, 28 February at the Ecumenical Centre, Grand Saconnex, Geneva.

Two member churches of the WCC from Reformed and Lutheran traditions have united to become the United Protestant Church of France.

In Tahiti, an ecumenical delegation was told about the need for re-inscription of French Polynesia (Maohi Nui) on the United Nations list of countries to be decolonized.

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.