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The World Council of Churches (WCC) executive committee visited the Sultan of Sokoto, Muhammadu Sa’adu Abubakar III in Abuja, Nigeria. As Sultan of Sokoto, he is considered the spiritual leader of Nigeria's 100 million Muslims.

Peace education to promote mutual understanding and cooperation between people involving the religious and secular sectors is needed to counter uncertainty fed by radicalization and xenophobia, says a leading human rights advocate.

Three weeks have now passed since this year’s edition of the World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden was wrapped up and delegates from all over the world headed home, inspired to “float” the issues, as the WCC Ecumenical Water Network chairperson, Bishop Arnold Temple from Sierra Leone, put it.

At its meeting in Amman, Jordan, the WCC Executive Committee issued a “Minute on the situation in Zimbabwe” as developments in Zimbabwe have led to the resignation of President Robert Mugabe after 37 years in power.

During a solidarity visit in Kenya on 10-12 October, leaders from the World Council of Churches (WCC) Central Committee met with Kenyan church representatives, expressed their support for Kenyan churches working toward peace and justice, and deepened their vision for future WCC events, including the Conference on World Mission and Evangelism set for March 2018.

Reconciliation was once primarily seen as a message of the church but is now used by secular leaders trying to establish peace in communities torn by conflict and war, the WCC president for Africa, the Rev. Mary Anne Plaatjies van Huffel, has said at a major Protestant gathering in Germany.

On 21 May - the Global Day of Prayer to End Famine - millions of people from faith communities, organizations and neighborhoods across the world prayed, tweeted, posted and talked face-to-face about the urgent action needed to aid 20 million people facing famine in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria.

Almost 800 participants, including 324 delegates, are gathering in Windhoek from 10-16 May for the Twelfth Assembly of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), the highest LWF decision-making body that meets every six years. World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit will address the plenary on 12 May.

Nigeria Christians and Muslims gathered on 19 August to open the International Centre for Inter-Faith Peace and Harmony (ICIPH). The centre is located in Kaduna, where more than 20,000 people have died in various conflicts over the last three decades. Amid a growing number of interfaith initiatives in Nigeria, the new centre has a unique goal: to systematically document interfaith relations to inform national and international policy-making.

Between 7-27 March, more than 100 images with the hash tag #7Weeks4Water were posted by Instagram users who joined the World Council of Churches (WCC) contest. Most of them told stories about water justice, illustrating the Lenten campaign “Seven Weeks for Water,” promoted by the WCC Ecumenical Water Network annually since 2008.

A new initiative titled Ecumenical Institute for the Middle East is “promising and inspiring” in its attempt to train young Christians in ecumenical thought and history, according to Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the WCC.

The WCC has expressed deep shock over the attacks by extremist group Boko Haram in Nigeria, which is said to have cost the lives of more than 2,000 people, including children used in suicide bomb attacks.

After bombings on 21 May in the northern Nigerian city of Jos, in which more than one-hundred people have been killed, “heart-felt sorrow and condolences” have been expressed in a joint statement by the WCC general secretary and Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan.