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Important votes at the United Nations (UN) in early November give an indication of how much of the world wants new action to eliminate nuclear weapons, and how determined the main nuclear powers and their allies are to resist such long-overdue change.

The people of Kosovo got some good news when the EU and Kosovo signed an agreement on 27 October to deepen ties, a move seen as a first step towards Kosovar membership in the European Union.

An international conference held at the invitation of the Foreign Minister of the Hellenic Republic, Nikos Kotzias, has gathered around 70 prominent religious, political and academic figures in Athens, Greece, this week.

An ecumenical delegation organized by the WCC was received by Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani of the Kurdistan Regional Government, on 28 September 2015 in Erbil. The ecumenical delegation had spent six days visiting the Kurdistan Region of Iraq – including the Duhok area, part of the Nineveh Plain, and Erbil – and represented the WCC at the 27 September enthronement of the new Catholicos-Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, Mar Gewargis III, in Erbil.

In view of the current refugee crisis, European churches are being encouraged to deepen their efforts in receiving, supporting and protecting refugees who arrive in the region. This call was made in a letter issued jointly by the WCC, the Conference of European Churches and the Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe.

Interview with the WCC general secretary, who is currently in Brasilia, about violence committed in the name of religion, human rights and climate justice in Brazil.

The life and ministry of Tony Waworuntu from the Protestant Church in Western Indonesia, was fondly remembered by the WCC general secretary. Waworuntu passed away at the age 63 in Jakarta, Indonesia.

“The world must support a real peace process in Syria now to stop these tragedies for peoples and cultures,” according to the WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit. He said the reports received of the destruction by so-called “Islamic State” of a fifth-century monastery near Homs, Syria, is – “a further expression of Islamic State’s extremist agenda.”

Seventy years after nuclear fireballs exploded over two Japanese cities, an ecumenical group of pilgrims has come to Hiroshima to listen to those who survived and renew the struggle against their own countries’ continued reliance on nuclear weapons.

Four weeks of negotiations on nuclear weapons came to a close on Friday 22 May, as the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ended without a formal agreement. Despite the outcome, a bright new prospect towards a world without nuclear weapons has emerged in the form of a Humanitarian Pledge, now endorsed by 107 states, which promises “to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons”.

The Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), discussed the churches and peacemaking challenges during a meeting in Moscow 22 April with Patriarch Kirill, primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, and with Metropolitan Hilarion, chair of the Russian Orthodox Church’s department of external church relations. This is their second visit in the past year. There were two issues on the agenda: violence against Christian minorities and Ukraine.

The WCC has joined over 30 leaders from major world religions and heads of global faith-based organizations today in launching a call to action to end extreme poverty by 2030, a goal shared with the World Bank Group.

This Lenten season, the WCC invites its member churches to pray on Sunday 29 March for those affected by wars in the Middle East, especially in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt. The season of prayer is meant to revive hope from hopelessness, taking into account the vulnerability of minority communities and the threat of losing the diversity of the social fabric in this region.

To express solidarity with churches and people in Israel and Palestine, the leadership of the WCC Central Committee has undertaken a visit to Israel and Palestine from 7 to 12 March.

Participants in a recent WCC consultation in Myanmar have stressed the need to equip churches and ecumenical organizations to build peace, human security and human dignity in order to move beyond conflicts, towards a world of peace.

The recent killing of a Christian couple by an angry mob in Pakistan has prompted condemnation from the WCC. The victims had been accused by community members of desecrating the Qur’an.

The WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit has expressed profound concern over the rejection of an appeal against the death sentence for a Pakistani Christian woman, Asia Bibi, convicted under Pakistan’s controversial blasphemy law. To promote tolerance, religious harmony and protection of the rights of religious minorities, Tveit said it is important that justice is ensured in cases like that of Asia Bibi.

A former WCC official, Rev. Charles Harper, has been honoured with the Order Comendador de Mayo, a high decoration of the Argentine government for his emblematic legacy of struggles for human rights in the ecumenical movement.

Displaced by the armed offensive of the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and their brutal purge of Yazidis and Christians, along with Sufi, Shiite and Sunni Muslims, from northern Iraq, members of these communities have begun to speak out about their experiences, their longing for security, and their hopes for the future.

Even as hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria militant attacks find refuge in the towns of the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, agencies assisting these internally displaced persons warn of a huge unmet humanitarian need exacerbated by the looming onset of winter.