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World Council of Churches (WCC) deputy general secretary Prof. Dr Isabel Apawo Phiri reflected on the recent Global Consultation on the Decade of the Churches in Solidarity, and what the insights gathered there might mean for the ecumenical movement.

A warm welcome with cheers and high expectations awaited WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit when he touched down in Kingston earlier this week. The Jamaican capital was the first stop of a 10-day tour in the Caribbean.

Rev. Gary Harriott knows there is a problem with violence against women and girls in Jamaica. Each year hundreds of women report having been raped and many more rapes and cases of aggression go unreported. Churches can make a difference by speaking out, he says.

Manuel Quintero is retiring after eight years of service as the international programme coordinator for the WCC Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI). He took time to reflect on the mission of EAPPI, particularly within its current context, as well as aspects of the programme that have been dear to his heart.

“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.

A court decision in the Dominican Republic annulling the citizenship of an estimated 200,000 Dominicans of Haitian ancestry has been strongly criticized by church leaders, including the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church.