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A World Council of Churches (WCC) consultation in Kigali discussed peace and security issues in Africa, with more than ninety church and ecumenical leaders. Together, they also reflected on Rwandan experiences of ethnic violence, genocide and church initiatives of reconciliation in the past.

A consultation organized by the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) of the World Council of Churches (WCC) called for the church to become involved in wider advocacy initiatives to protect rights of the stateless people.

An ecumenical delegation visited Ivory Coast from 28 November to 4 December 2011 and met with churches and civil society representatives to express solidarity amidst violence and political turmoil in the country.

An international study process developed by the World Council of Churches (WCC) is preparing a report on freedom of religion as a fundamental human right for all.

An international team of church representatives will pay a solidarity visit to churches, ecumenical organizations and civil society movements in the Philippines from 1 to 5 December. It will be the last in a series of "Living Letters" visits to various countries organized ahead of the International Ecumenical Peace Convocation in May 2011, in order to accompany people and churches who long for peace, security and reconciliation in the midst of conflicts and violence.

At the 50th meeting since its foundation in 1946, the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) decided to refocus, establishing four thematic working groups, in order better to respond to the needs of the member churches.

The Churches' Commission on International Affairs (CCIA) for the World Council of Churches (WCC) is meeting in Tirana, Albania from 2 through 8 October 2010 at the St Vlash Theological Academy in Durrës, Albania. The CCIA dates from 1946 and provides an ecumenical witness on issues and conflicts of global importance.

Representatives from churches, ecumenical organizations and civil society organizations from around the world will gather in Geneva from 27 September to 1 October 2010 for the sixth United Nations Advocacy Week (UNAW), an annual event organized by the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) of the World Council of Churches (WCC).

No doubt the global financial crisis is and will continue impacting negatively all regions of the world, but according to an advisory body of the World Council of Churches (WCC) it also represents an opportunity to deeply transform the international financial system for good.

Some forty-five religious, interfaith, and value-based organizations from five continents agreed to form a coalition to advance a "United Nations Decade for Inter-religious and Intercultural Dialogue, Understanding, and Cooperation for Peace." Coalition members expressed the hope that the UN Sixty-Fourth General Assembly, which will begin its deliberations in September 2009, will approve a resolution establishing such a decade from 2011-2020.

Despite having a constitution which does not allow discrimination and a proactive government working for the integration of the marginalized parts of society, violence and discrimination persist in some parts of India.

By Walt Wiltschek (*)

Six committed ecumenists, each with significant experience in specific fields of ecumenical endeavour, have been appointed to take up key leadership roles within the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC). The newly appointed staff members will head five programmes plus a planning and integration office, all of which are the result of programmatic reshaping following the WCC 9th Assembly in 2006 .

The international community's responsibility to protect endangered populations when their governments fail to do so - if necessary, by the use of force - and church support for such measures was the subject of a lively debate at a World Council of Churches (WCC) workshop at the 20-25 January World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya.

The 11 October killing in Mousel, Iraq, of a Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch priest, Father Boulos Iskander, was a "senseless crime that... neither benefits anyone nor promotes the cause of any religion".

"Tom Fox was in Iraq as a religious peacemaker so that those who use violence to pursue their own plans for that much-troubled nation might see that this is no way toward peace," Peter Weiderud, director of the World Council of Churches' Commission of the Churches for International Affairs (WCC/CCIA), said in Geneva today.

This year's Nobel Peace Prize affirms that "multilateral, legal and peaceable conduct of international affairs is not only possible but productive," said Peter Weiderud, director of the World Council of Churches Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (WCC/CCIA), commenting on the prize awarded to Mohamed El Baradei today. Weiderud also said that "control of nuclear arms and technology" is an "incontrovertible recognition of the God-given value of human life" and that, therefore, the award represents an "important investment in hope as well as peace".

To fully evaluate the Gaza pullout, it is necessary to watch for a number of "signs of peace" in the months ahead, according to the international affairs unit of the World Council of Churches (WCC).

The member churches of the World Council of Churches (WCC) have been invited to make Sunday 24 April a day of memory of the Armenian genocide on its 90th anniversary.

The rights of the Papuan people will be the focus of WCC's involvement in the 61st session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR). The WCC delegation includes representatives from Papua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Nepal and Colombia. A written submission has been presented to the commission, and a study on the economic, social and cultural rights of the Papuan people, commissioned by German churches with the WCC and undertaken by Papuan academics and human rights defenders, will be released on Thursday, 31 March.