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On 18-19 July, 35 young leaders from 14 countries across Asia – part of the World Council of Churches' (WCC) Youth in Asia Training in Religious Amity (YATRA) – travelled to the Indonesian city of Bandung to meet with faith leaders and young activists engaged in interreligious dialogue and work.

Rev. Pauline Wanjiru Njiru, eastern Africa regional coordinator for the World Council of Churches Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiatives and Advocacy (EHAIA), has worked with young people, church leaders and parents for several years now.

The World Council of Churches organised in June 2017 a pilgrimage in the Holy Land for eight young Christians from all over the world. Participants said it was a unique experience to discover biblical and spiritual places.

The first ever WCC Eco-School on Water, Food and Climate Justice will be held 24 July to 3 August, hosted by the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian Blantyre Synod. Applications are now open with a deadline of 11 June (deadline extended).

Delegations from the ACT Alliance, Lutheran World Federation and WCC at the United Nations climate conference in Marrakech, Morocco are jointly demanding a more rapid transition to a low-carbon economy based on clean energy in order to stem rising global temperatures.

“In our community, HIV is not spoken about openly. And the challenge is, it’s like people are both informed and not informed. They know what HIV is, that it’s an illness that can be treated, but still they don’t want to really talk about it, like they don’t really want to know about it…”

Speaking at the opening of the meeting of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Working Group on Climate Change (WGCC), Rev. Dr Olav Fkyse Tveit, WCC general secretary, emphasized the importance of facing climate justice issues with spiritual commitment and multidisciplinary collaborative preparedness. “Christians should look at climate change challenges through the lens of faith and hope in God’s love”, he reflected.

“Dignity, Freedom, and Grace: Christian Perspectives on HIV, AIDS and Human Rights,” a book published earlier this year by the WCC, will be among reports discussed at a 20 September event with the theme “Keeping the Faith in Development: Gender, Religions & Heath.”

Religious leaders must break their silence with regard to young people and sexual reproductive health, agreed young people and theologians gathered in Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire) from 6-7 September.

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.

“Ecclesiology and Ethics in Africa” is the theme of the latest issue of The Ecumenical Review, the quarterly journal of the World Council of Churches (WCC). The content includes principal presentations made at a June 2015 conference on Ecclesiology and Ethics: the State of Ecumenical Theology in Africa, held at the University of Western Cape in South Africa.

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.

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.

Participants in the 2015 Agape International Political Camp have explored the concept of security and issued a call for a “pedagogy of and for peace” founded on justice.

A new publication provides collected reflections on ecology and ethics, including a chapter by Dr Guillermo Kerber, programme executive for Care for Creation and Climate Justice at the WCC.

The possibility of a new economic framework is the chief focus of the newly published issue of The Ecumenical Review. Informed by years of ecumenical work on the relationship of poverty, wealth and ecology (including the proposal for a “greed line”), the 14 contributors offer an array of insights from specific contexts and religious standpoints – Dalits, South Africans, Latin Americans, Indigenous spirituality, feminist theology and non-Christian religions – into the values and structures that can create an “economy of life” for all.

As organizations worldwide intensify their work on issues of climate justice, and the clock is ticking for new climate commitments to take shape, members of the WCC Working Group on Climate Change have gathered for a four-day meeting to strategize for effective climate justice action and for strong participation of faith-based initiatives at COP21.

The 2014 Annual Review of the World Council of Churches, now published and posted online, reports on the 2014 activities and projects of the council.

Dr Fulata Mbano-Moyo, the WCC programme executive for Women in Church and Society, called on the movement of Christian students to reclaim its radical transforming nature towards a “pilgrimage of gender justice”.