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At a 12 August press conference in Amman, the Patriarch of the Holy City of Jerusalem, All Palestine and Jordan Theophilos III said that a decision delivered on the 7 August by Israel’s Jerusalem District Court regarding two hotels near the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City has “crossed the lines of justice and reasonableness.”

If women will not support each other to step up to the pulpit or become engaged in politics, then gender equality will not be a priority issue for leaders both in the church and in government, says Eppie Marecheau, Christian educator and president of the Christian Council for Caribbean Women. In July, she participated in a seminar organized by the Pan African Women’s Ecumenical Empowerment Network (PAWEEN), at the WCC's Ecumenical Institute Bossey.

Expressing its deep disappointment at US withdrawal from the 2015 Paris Agreement the WCC has urged renewed commitment by churches and praised local communities and governments for their reaffirmation of climate commitments.

Recent developments in the global finance sector are imperilling food production and the vision for life-enhancing agriculture, say economists in a two-year study.

The ACT Alliance, the Lutheran World Federation and the World Council of Churches, call for a prioritization of climate justice as US President Donald Trump issues executive order withdrawing the US from the Paris Climate Agreement. They express deep dismay at this development, which goes against global commitments to address climate change.

For Pacific island nations, climate change is more than a political concern - it’s rapidly leading to extinction of peoples, lands and a way of life. In one of the biggest examples of environmental injustice in the world, the Pacific region is extremely vulnerable to climate change, despite contributing minimally to global greenhouse gas emissions.

“So much has changed, and yet so much remains the same. Global public health structures have changed, yet gross inequalities still exist – between developed and under-developed countries, between rich and poor, and the vision for equitable health care still lies in the far distance. Primary health care remains a task unfinished.”

The WCC celebrated implementation of its responsible water commitments in an event on 15 February in the Ecumenical Centre. The WCC became a Blue Community In October 2016. The special occasion was marked by the visit of Dr Maude Barlow from the Blue Planet Project, Canada, who awarded a “blue community certificate” to the WCC and raised awareness of the problems created by indiscriminate use of disposable plastic bottles and their negative impact on our planet’s ecosystem.

During the visit to Iraq on 20-24 January, a delegation of church leaders shared the findings and recommendations of a recent study exploring the specific needs of displaced people in Iraq and Syria. The delegation also learned a lot about the current situation and challenges from representatives of local faith communities in Iraq, heads of the country’s Christian churches and Christian young people.

Baden-Württemberg minister-president, Winfried Kretschmann, has expressed gratitude to the churches for putting Christian service and neighbourly love into practice, and not only at Sunday sermons. The German state’s governor Kretschmann gave his message in a meeting with the general secretary of the World Council of Churches, Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, in Stuttgart last Thursday.

A workshop in Mozambique examined the connections between finance on the one hand and food and land on the other. Titled “From the Financialization of Food to Life-giving Agriculture,” the workshop took place in Maputo from 7-11 December. It was organized by the WCC together with Bread for All and was hosted by the Christian Council of Mozambique.

Translate the hope provided by the Paris Agreement into real action to direct the world toward a more just and sustainable future, urged the World Council of Churches (WCC) on 17 November at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP22) in Marrakech, Morocco.

WCC is casting out its bottled water and has joined the Blue Communities Project. Maude Barlow, co-founder of the Blue Planet Project, on 25 October awarded the WCC a “blue community certificate” and launched tap-based public water fountains at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva.

Peasant seed systems, which have fed most of the world’s population for centuries, are endangered by the imposition of intellectual property rights and patents, says a church-backed campaign.

The Council of Baptist Churches in North East India (CBCNEI) is one of the largest Baptist groups in India, including 1.2 million members in 7,263 congregations. The CBCNEI officially became a WCC member church in July. Rev. Dr Solomon Rongpi, general secretary of the CBCNEI, spoke to WCC news about the CBCNEI’s decision to join the WCC.

A delegation from the WCC attended the 12th World Social Forum in Montreal, Canada, which concluded on 14 August. More than 30,000 participants from around the world gathered to discuss global issues based on their local experiences, network with others working on similar problems, and create new joint initiatives advancing a progressive path forward.

Land rights, equity in development resource flows and life-enhancing epistemologies were among the themes emphasized by faith-based organizations at the World Social Forum in Montreal, Canada on 9-14 August.

The Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC), at its meeting in Trondheim, Norway, 27 June 2016, has elected a new executive committee with 11 new members.

Attending the Central Committee meeting of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Trondheim is Peder Borgen, who was part of the First Assembly of the WCC in Amsterdam in 1948.

Capitalizing on momentum from the recent COP21 accord in Paris was the focus of a meeting of the WCC general secretary and the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth Palace on 16 December.