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During the 4th United Nations Forum on Business and Human Rights, the WCC, in collaboration with the ACT Alliance and Lutheran World Federation, organized a side-event on “Faith-based organizations’ contribution to the protection of communities’ land rights: lessons learnt and good practices from Africa, Asia and Latin America” at the Ecumenical Centre in Geneva.

A delegation representing churches and ecumenical bodies around the world met for an historic international ecumenical visit and meeting in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from 23 to 30 October.

It is raining. It is cold and windy. Autumn is in the air in northern Greece. We have just arrived at the Idomeni refugee camp in northern Greece, on the border between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). The fast-approaching winter poses as great a threat to the refugees as do the smugglers. In the worst case, winter means death.

They are there every day, each month of the year – as they have been for the last 13 years. They have become a natural element in the chaos of life in Israel and Palestine. Their presence is appreciated. They provide safety and stability. Their sole weapon is a pen, or a camera. They see and listen; they analyze and report back.

The WCC has issued an urgent call to the United Nations for an immediate response to the killing of Christians and others by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militant fighters.

Attacks on civilians and the denial of human rights continues in the Nuba Mountain region of Sudan.

Following clashes between protesters and police in Venezuela, which left around 20 people dead in February, the WCC president for Latin America and the Caribbean, Rev. Gloria Nohemy Ulloa Alvarado, expressed concern over the violence. She made these comments on 10 March, conveying solidarity with the churches in Venezuela.

At the Human Rights Defenders Forum, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter called the abuse of women the “most pervasive and unaddressed human rights violation in the whole world.” This abuse, he stressed, is contrary to the basic premise of every religion, including Christianity.

In developing countries, many Christians are faced with issues of corruption, war, hunger, oppression, killings and new forms of terrorism, said Rev. Dr Ibrahim Yusuf Wushishi, general secretary of the Christian Council of Nigeria, an ecumenical organization representing member churches of the World Council of Churches in Nigeria.

The Department of Ecumenical Relations and Development (DERD) of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East has delivered around 75,000 humanitarian aid kits to an estimate of 280,045 individuals in Syria amidst its on-going conflict.

Myanmar was visited by an ecumenical solidarity team representing the World Council of Churches (WCC) from 4 to 9 August 2011 as part of the council’s commitment to accompany churches in conflict situations. This was a follow-up to a WCC Living Letters team visit to Myanmar in late 2010.

Conflicts over water threaten peace in the world, the general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, told a gathering in Germany on the banks of the River Danube to mark the end of the WCC’s Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV).

Escalating violence against civilians in Sudan’s disputed South Kordofan State is leading to major humanitarian catastrophe with an estimated 300,000 people besieged, cut off from relief aid, and unable to escape fighting, according to a number of aid agencies and witnesses in the region.

Several key leaders of the Christian churches in Iraq met with international church leaders, including members of the World Council of Churches Central Committee, in Geneva this week about the ongoing situation in Iraq.

Initiators of a World Week for Peace have urged Christians to pray and act for a just peace in Palestine and Israel. The call is "timely", they said, as peace activists have reportedly been killed after Israeli commandos stormed a convoy of ships carrying aid to the Gaza Strip this morning.

As the United Nations has made a small but significant step forward towards declaring caste-based discrimination a human rights violation, Indian Christian leaders have called on the churches to confess that the caste system is still being practised also within them.

“Tears are not enough.” Fernando Enns spoke that phrase in introductory remarks to the World Council of Churches central committee on 28 August. It was repeated several times during a morning plenary session on the WCC’s upcoming International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC).

Any solution to the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) must engage the whole nation – not just the eastern region where violence is centred, a small ecumenical team visiting the Bas Congo and Kasai Oriental provinces has learned.

By Fredrick Nzwili (*)

By Fredrick Nzwili (*)