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Increasing religious intolerance in India, Indonesia and Pakistan is being highlighted by the World Council of Churches (WCC) at the current (59th) session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) that began on 17 March and continues through 24 April. The denial of socio-economic and cultural rights to the people of West Papua, as well as human rights violations committed under the Israeli military occupation of Palestine will also be addressed by the WCC.

"I told Islamic leaders they should thank the churches and Christians in Europe and the US for their stand on military violence against a Muslim country," said the foreign minister of Pakistan, Mr Mehmood Kasuri, to World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Konrad Raiser during a March 8 meeting between the ecumenical leader and Pakistan government officials.

Demonstrating their solidarity with the country's churches, an ecumenical delegation will be visiting the Ivory Coast from 10 to 12 March in order to explore the possibility of interfaith dialogue to help solve the political and ethnic conflict that is dividing that country.

Cf. WCC Press Update, Up-03-07 of 5 March 2003

Cf. WCC Press Update, Up-03-06 of 28 February 2003

During the week preceding the forthcoming Special Session of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the Draft Review of the Agreement on Agriculture, a

"Thanks to the World Social Forum, we're better prepared for the meeting we'll be having this year with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank," says Rogate Mshana, who heads the World Council of Churches' (WCC) programme on economic justice.Â

Struggling against intolerance is a vital way of resisting the free market model of globalization, according to Geneviève Jacques, director of Programmes for the World Council of Churches (WCC). Speaking at the third World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, Jacques suggested that the struggle against intolerance is directed against dogmatic claims that the free market model is the only option; it responds to a situation of existential crisis produced by the culture of violence and its deadly fruits.

Cf. WCC Press Release, PR-02-29, of 15 November 2002

The long-awaited revised and expanded second edition of the "Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement" has just been published. Produced by the World Council of Churches (WCC), this volume is an essential tool for study and research on the movement and for passing the ecumenical memory on to a new generation.

Cf WCC Press Release, Pr-02-26 of 8 October 2002

Alarmed by escalating hostilities in Ivory Coast, World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Konrad Raiser has encouraged WCC member churches there to "do all in their power to prevent the conflict from deteriorating into a civil war".

cf. WCC Press Release, PR-02-23.08e of 2 September 2002

The World Council of Churches (WCC) will be hosting an international consultation on "Christians and Muslims in dialogue and beyond". The three-day consultation will take place from 16-18 October 2002 at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva, Switzerland.

Questions on the future shape of the ecumenical movement and of the World Council of Churches (WCC) dominated this year's WCC Central Committee meeting in Geneva. The meeting adjourned on Tuesday, 3 September. Â

All four sites being proposed for the 9th Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 2005 look good to most Central Committee members. So good that the proponent of one site suggests wryly that the Council choose all four of them.

The rhetoric was impassioned at times, but the 32-page final report of the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the World Council of Churches (WCC) invoked few new questions from Central Committee members.

Bob Scott