With a focus on peacebuilding and human rights protection, The United Evangelical Mission’s International Summer School 2023, organized in cooperation with the World Council of Churches and other partners, took place in August and September in Hofgeismar, Germany.
In Renk, a small South Sudanese town on the banks of the White Nile, churches are working to help thousands of people fleeing the war in the neighbouring Sudan.
“They came to our house. We refused to open the door so they broke in though the window.”
That’s how Damaris Blessing Tiswan, a finance student at Kaduna Polytechnic, began describing her ordeal of being kidnapped with her four siblings at midnight.
Sanctions should not harm the support for the most vulnerable, says a report on the impact of sanctions on humanitarian work presented at a side-event of 52nd session at the Human Rights Council of the United Nations in Geneva on 10 March.
The world faces a global crisis on food exacerbated and brought to the fore by the war in Ukraine, but humanity can and must take remedial steps in economic and climate justice, a World Council of Churches-led meeting has heard.
The churches of Sudan – and especially the Sudan Council of Churches as their ecumenical forum – have suffered from a serious lack of attention and support by international ecumenical partners since the separation of South Sudan in 2011.
World Council of Churches (WCC) acting general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Ioan Sauca expressed deep concern about the worsening security situation in Nigeria, and the impact on the people and churches of the country.
When Rev. Frank Chikane was leading the South African Council of Churches in calling out injustices of the apartheid system, their work did not stop even after the council’s office building was bombed to the ground in 1980s. Moderating the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs of the World Council of Churches (WCC) since 2016, Rev. Chikane has been engaged in addressing injustices in many parts of the world. WCC Communication asked Rev. Chikane to look back at his term at the commission and the ongoing calling of churches to address injustices in the world today.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) has facilitated churches’ engagement in a wide range of critical issues of the world since the last WCC Assembly in Busan, concluded the 58th meeting of the WCC CCIA, gathering church representatives in Johannesburg and online in the 75th anniversary year of the Commission’s creation.
South Sudan came into existence ten years ago this week, but there is little to celebrate for the world's newest nation, Rev. Fr James Oyet Latansio, general secretary of the South Sudan Council of Churches.
A 12 July statement from the South African Council of Churches notes with deep concern the violence and destruction of property that is engulfing the nation. “This violence is resulting in untold suffering,” the statement reads.
As children and women in Nigeria become targets of rising insecurity and violence, churches are moving to offer support to the victims, while amplifying their voice against the challenge, according to senior Christian women leaders in the West African nation.
Zambia’s founding president, Kenneth Kaunda, passed away at the age of 97. He led his country for 27 years and championed Africa's struggles against apartheid and HIV.
As Mozambican churches respond to growing humanitarian challenges in the country, their leaders are urging the government to act decisively to end a violent conflict in the north which has left behind a trail of death, destruction and displacement.
An intervention on behalf of the World Council of Churches (WCC) made by Peter Prove, director of the WCC Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, in a recent conference on “The Situation of Christians in Africa” lifted up the concern that, alongside the extraordinary demographic growth of Christians on the continent, churches and Christians in Africa are experiencing an increasing number of violent attacks and other forms of repression.
In a pastoral letter to “sisters and brothers in Ethiopia,” eight faith-based organizations expressed Christian love and care, as well as a commitment to accompany churches and people of Ethiopia as they face the challenges confronting their country.
Church leaders and relief agencies have welcomed an agreement between Ethiopia and the UN that will allow humanitarian agencies “unimpeded, secure and sustained” access to the northern region of Tigray.
A two-day conference in Buea, Cameroon, has empowered religious leaders to offer vital input into a peace plan in the divided nation. Rev. Samuel Fonki Forba, president of the Council of Protestant Churches in Cameroon, said that the conference helped religious leaders build their capacity in the area of peace.
When a group of Cameroonian religious leaders from both English and French-speaking communities, both Christian and Muslim, met to discuss the crisis in the Anglophone western provinces of Cameroon, they committed themselves to being "diplomats of peace.”
Church leaders in Africa are continuing to call for a peaceful settlement of the armed conflict in northern Ethiopia, as agencies warn of a humanitarian crisis in the region.
