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Four short videos sharing challenges and examples of how churches and church leaders can make a profound difference in global efforts to end AIDS as a public health threat are now available for individual inspiration and group discussion.

Only weeks after the WCC and the Royal Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought joined Nigerian Christians and Muslims to launch the International Centre for Inter-Faith Peace and Harmony, in Kaduna, Nigeria, a dire food crisis calls the attention of churches and partners around the globe.

Nigeria Christians and Muslims gathered on 19 August to open the International Centre for Inter-Faith Peace and Harmony (ICIPH). The centre is located in Kaduna, where more than 20,000 people have died in various conflicts over the last three decades. Amid a growing number of interfaith initiatives in Nigeria, the new centre has a unique goal: to systematically document interfaith relations to inform national and international policy-making.

From Paris to Pakistan, Orlando to Myanmar, Iraq to Nigeria, each day witnesses conflict and violence perpetrated in the name of religion or committed against persons because of their religious identity.

The Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC), at its meeting in Trondheim, Norway, 27 June 2016, has elected a new executive committee with 11 new members.

Forty years after the Soweto uprising, leaders of churches in conflict-torn countries gathered in South Africa to study the ways of peace and reconciliation.

After leading a workshop in Nigeria covering HIV and AIDS response, Jessie Fubara-Manuel recalls when AIDS response was in a much darker era. “The first stage of response was full of fear, characterized by judgment and rejection, a feeling that AIDS was a punishment from God,” she said.

“Statelessness renders people’s vulnerability to abuse and to denial of their rights invisible to national authorities. In this sense the right to a nationality is a threshold issue for access to protection of all other human rights - almost a 'right to have rights'”, said Peter Prove, director of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA), following a regional training workshop on birth registration and gender discriminatory nationality laws in Africa, organized by the WCC in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 11–13 May.

The African continent bears witness to the tragic consequences of the manipulation of religion to incite violence. Yet it is also the home of untold instances of the power of religious leaders and actors to exert a positive influence, said panellists at an international meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, today.

In April 2014, 276 girls were kidnapped by the extremist group Boko Haram from the Government Girls Secondary School in the town of Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria. Though 57 girls escaped, 219 are still missing.

“Disability does not mean inability! Human rights for all! Equality and access to good health care! Leave no one behind!” Slogans were plentiful at the 18th International Conference on AIDS and STIs. Some participants felt that the conference venue sadly belied these clarion calls as it was ill-equipped to handle the mobility and access needs of persons with disabilities.

“Children need to know their place in the church. And that is at the front, not the back”, said Bishop Raphael Opoko from the Methodist Church of Nigeria, speaking at a round table discussion on promoting the rights of children held on 19 November at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva.

The 13th International General Assembly of the Church of the Lord (Prayer Fellowship) was held in the Bantama area of Kumasi, Ghana from 9 to 16 November.

Adebayo Anthony Kehinde leads an African group supporting ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Its interfaith campaign is especially significant on the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombings in Japan.

The kidnapping of the Chibok schoolgirls in April 2014 is sadly symbolic of the suffering of children in Nigeria, says the pastor who heads the Council of Churches of Nigeria.

“Christianity is not about big preaching, it’s about how you can impact somebody and add value,” says Nigerian ecumenical leader Rev. Dr Ibrahim Yusuf Wushishi, who leads a huge grouping of churches in Africa’s most populous nation.

Key stakeholders in a new inter-religious centre in Nigeria have met to plan for the centre and its work, set to launch in March 2016.

WCC member churches in Nigeria, represented through the Christian Council of Nigeria, have been actively engaged in observing the recent Nigerian elections, continuing its stated conviction that effective participation of Nigerians in the processes of governance is very important in shaping the nation’s future.

The newly chosen general secretary of the Anglican Communion, Rev. Dr Josiah Idowu-Fearon, the bishop of Kaduna in Nigeria, has served on the WCC Central Committee and has worked with the Council on interfaith dialogue.