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This text is the report from the most recent international consultation of united and uniting churches. Focusing on issues of unity, mission and identity, this text brings the unique perspective and experience of these churches into dialogue with the wider ecumenical movement.

The following article is the entry on Councils of Churches: Local, National, Regional from the revised edition of the Dictionary of the Ecumenical Movement published jointly by the World Council of Churches and the Wm. Eerdmans in 2002.

Report of the Ecumenical Consultation held in Kyoto, Japan, 26 February - 3 March 2001.

WCC programme on Interreligious dialogue and cooperation

A Justice Statement regarding Climate Change from The World Council of Churches (WCC)

Prepared in anticipation of the 6th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP6) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to be held in The Hague, Netherlands, November 2000

A sub-regional seminar on "Debt in Central Africa" was held in Yaoundé, Cameroon, from 10 to 12 January 2000. The seminar falls within the framework of the Accra, Lomé, Johannesburg and Lusaka meetings.

It was jointly organised by the World Council of Churches (WCC), the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), the Federation of Protestant Churches and Missions of Cameroon (FEMEC) and the Ecumenical Service for Peace (SeP), Cameroon.

Apart from nationals of Central African countries and Mauritius, the seminar equally saw the participation of resource persons from various organisations of the North and the South that advocate debt cancellation (Eurodad, Uganda Debt Network, Jubilee 2000 South Africa, Jubilee 2000 London Africa Initiative).

There was a consensus on the following leading ideas:

1. The debt of poor countries should be completely cancelled! This is a main prerequisite for poverty and misery alleviation and for regaining their dignity;

2. The struggle for debt cancellation is a struggle for social justice. It aims to free the human person from the yoke of everlasting economic domination and slavery. The fight concerns all of us. All the components of civil society, without exclusion, should contribute to the fight;

3. Debt is not only an economic problem. It is a fundamentally moral and ethical problem which requires various solutions -political, legal and social.

The third meditation was given by Kosuke Koyama, recently retired professor of ecumenical studies at Union Theological Seminary in New York and a former missionary of the United Church of Christ in Japan. He addressed the second part of the assembly theme, reflecting on how we can rejoice in hope in the face of so much suffering and violence.

Economic growth without social and cultural justice cannot be our idea of development. It is imperative that development is measured in terms of the quality of human life, which can be reflected in, for example, better education, health and life expectancy for every single member of society. This is only possible if men and women are equally empowered, in theory and in practice. And the North has a crucial role to play in this process. Anything that falls short of restoring peoples' dignity, sense of identity, continuity and security should never be accepted. Africa needs to learn to respect the dissenting voice of its own people.

The following study paper has been drawn up by an international group of experts meeting at Bad Boll near Stuttgart, Germany, from March 23th to 27th 1997. The consultation was organized as a joint initiative of the World Council of Churches and the Evangelical Academy Bad Boll near Stuttgart, Germany.

The study guide My Neighbour's Faith and Mine: Theological discoveries through interfaith dialogue, was published by the WCC in 1986. Since then it has been translated into numerous languages and used widely.

(Suggested as a possible reading at prayers for peace on Hiroshima Day)

A night-long vigil for peace on 5 August 1983 at the WCC 6th Assembly in Vancouver commemorated the atomic bombing of Hiroshima 38 years earlier. Meditation by the WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Philip Potter