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To commemorate the World Week for Peace in Palestine and Israel this year, the WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit has encouraged and invited expressions of solidarity with Palestinian prisoners unjustly detained in Israeli jails.

For the National Council of Churches of Brazil (CONIC), the World Cup offers a unique opportunity to provide pastoral care and highlight understanding about Brazil.

People have the right of access to archives of public bodies, argued Trudy Huskamp Peterson, an archivist from the United States, in her recent talk organized by the WCC Archives in Geneva, Switzerland. She said public access to information is particularly relevant for archives documenting human rights violations.

APRODEV and CIDSE, two church-related organizations, have condemned in a recent statement the forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank, which they say is “uprooting any chance of a just peace”.

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.

A group of activists from Manipur, India, visited the WCC headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland on 26 March, sharing accounts of human rights violations in their region and efforts to lobby against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act at the 25th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

The WCC will hold an international consultation exploring links between migration, human trafficking and modern slavery. The focus of the gathering concerns thousands of migrants faced with violence, abuse and exploitation during their perilous journeys as well as in the countries to which they migrate.

Migrants are reduced to mere commodities, traded and exchanged in the global market, according to a declaration issued by churches calling for an end to this gross violation of human dignity. The declaration was issued on the occasion of the Second United Nations High Level Dialogue on International Migration and Development in New York City, USA.

A new website documenting human rights violations perpetrated by former military dictatorship in Brazil was launched last week in Sao Paulo.

At the Human Rights Defenders Forum, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter called the abuse of women the “most pervasive and unaddressed human rights violation in the whole world.” This abuse, he stressed, is contrary to the basic premise of every religion, including Christianity.

With Zimbabwe and other African nations heading for elections in the coming months, churches in the region recently reflected on their role in strengthening democratic governance and electoral process.

In a recent solidarity visit to Bangladesh, an ecumenical delegation was updated about the on-going persecution and attacks against religious minorities occurring in the country since early March of this year.

Dr Magali do Nascimento Cunha, a Central Committee member of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and professor at the Methodist University of São Paulo, has joined Brazil’s National Truth Commission as a researcher. The commission will investigate human rights violations in Brazil that occurred between 1948 and 1988, including the years of military dictatorship in that country.

Campaigners for the civil society coalition Control Arms say radical changes are still needed in the latest draft of the Arms Trade Treaty under negotiation at the United Nations if the treaty is to save lives. Christian voices joined the criticism of the latest developments at the Final United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty currently underway in New York, United States.

“Discrimination and statelessness live side by side; it is no coincidence that most stateless people belong to racial, linguistic and religious minorities,” read a recent communique issued at the end of a World Council of Churches (WCC) consultation on stateless people in Washington, D.C., United States.

A World Council of Churches (WCC) consultation has urged protection for the rights of over 12 million stateless people around the world, encouraging  governments to ensure their basic human right to citizenship, adequate access to health care, education and employment.

The participants of a World Council of Churches (WCC) sponsored hearing on the misuse of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws have urged the Pakistani government to “take realistic and solid steps to stop abuse of the blasphemy law that are causing massive human rights violations.”

While accusations of blasphemy in Pakistan have once again captured the news headlines, Bishop Samuel Azariah, moderator of the Church of Pakistan, hopes for the Pakistani government to consider repealing the controversial clause in the Pakistan Penal Code which, he says, invokes misuse of the blasphemy law.

At a place called Antietam, 23,000 soldiers died in the bloodiest day of the American Civil War. More than 150 years later, 20 different religious traditions will gather on this battlefield in Maryland, United States as part of the 2012 International Day of Prayer for Peace commemorations to share prayers and songs of peace. Â

“The misuse of blasphemy law is contrary to the vision of Pakistan as a moderate and democratic country,” said Mohammad Tahseen, in a public hearing on the “Misuse of blasphemy law and religious minorities in Pakistan” organized by the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Geneva, Switzerland.