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As “16 Days Against Gender-Based Violence” drew to a close, churches around the world expressed their prayerful determination to keep carrying the message past 16 days, into the coming new year and beyond.

The Ecumenical Women's Assembly recently ended a weeklong meeting in Taiwan with calls to repent from greed and for Asian women to become advocates and catalysts of reconciliation, renewal, and restoration in the world, communities, and in churches.

Women have a unique approach to peace-building that could strengthen communities facing conflict and other challenges, found participants at a side event during Geneva Peace Week.The World Council of Churches, ACT Alliance and Norwegian Church Aid organized a dialogue that emphasized new arenas for women’s participation in peace-building.

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.

In einem Land, in dem Menschen christlichen Glaubens eindeutig in der Minderheit sind und oft unter Diskriminierung leiden, und in einem von wiederholten Spannungen und Konflikten zwischen Menschen unterschiedlicher religiöser Tradition bestimmten Kontext haben die Kirche von Norwegen und die Kirche von Pakistan vor kurzem in Pakistan ein neues ökumenisches Kapitel aufgeschlagen.

In a country where Christians are in clear minority, often suffering discrimination, and in a context that has seen repeated frictions and violence between people of different religious traditions, the Church of Norway and Church of Pakistan have broken new ecumenical ground during a recent week in Lahore, Pakistan.

How can we begin building peace in an era of religious extremism and acts of terror? Start by reaching out in your own neighborhood, suggests Rev. Arshad Gill, general secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Pakistan.

Lit with bright lights and adorned with colourful paintings on the walls, the Raham Centre run by the Gimhae Presbyterian Church in South Korea looks like a day-care centre for children. However, the name Raham, which literally means “womb of a woman” or “womb of God” in the Hebrew language, has deep implications for the work of the centre with the purpose of supporting “migrant wives” in Gimhae.

The WCC is working toward the revival of “Thursdays in Black”, a campaign against sexual and gender-based violence. The emphasis is pertinent to the theme of the WCC’s upcoming assembly: “God of life, lead us to justice and peace”.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) Central Committee has adopted a statement expressing concern on abductions, forced marriages and forced conversions of young women from Christian and Hindu communities in Pakistan.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) “ is defined by all the three key words in our name. We are global, in all continents, and therefore also in solidarity with one another, seeking peace in all its meaning for the whole earth,” said the WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit.

By Naveen Qayyum (*)