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After traveling to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv in the last week for a climate justice meeting, World Council of Churches staff and partners were detained or deported in a manner that WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit terms both unprecedented and intolerable.

Following the EU-Turkey refugee agreement, effective 20 March 2016, the Greek islands are again a changed place. Where refugees have arrived in great numbers in the past years, and where they have engaged a whole community of local, national and international aid workers and volunteers, the situation is now dramatically different.

“Act now, not later.” Dr David Barstow chose this message for a photo featured in the “100-day countdown” to a United Nations (UN) High Level Meeting on HIV in New York on 8-10 June.

Canadian church leaders issued a joint statement endorsing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP) and promising to implement its principles. Doreen Spence, an aboriginal Canadian who was one of the architects of the declaration, welcomes the move.

The Racial Justice Accompaniment Visit to the USA is a continuation of the WCC’s long history of racial justice work. As part of the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace, the WCC wishes to listen to and express support for people and churches in the USA, and to encourage the efforts of member churches and ecumenical partners in the US, as well as other justice-seeking movements on these issues.

World Health Day, 7 April, is focusing this year on diabetes. The World Health Organization has released its first Global Report on Diabetes, which reveals that the number of adults living with diabetes has almost quadrupled since 1980 to 422 million, or 8.5% of the world’s adult population.

On the world scale of countries with plentiful water, Brazil comes out in the top league. It has 12 percent of the world’s fresh water supplies. Yet Magali do Nascimento Cunha does not see her country scoring so well when it comes to water and sanitation distribution.

The Protestant Church in the Netherlands faces a challenge to be the church "in an authentic way,” says Dr Arjan Plaisier, secretary of the general synod of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands.

Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance negate the essence of human beings by negating their origins and identities. This year marks the fifteenth anniversary of the 2001 World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held in Durban, South Africa.

As summer approaches, the World Council of Churches’ Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance (WCC-EAA) is now in full preparation for the 21st International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2016), hosted in Durban 18-22 July 2016.

Three renowned conductors give a rare classical concert for a refugee audience and volunteer aid workers. The Berlin International Film Festival — the world’s biggest film festival — gives its top prize, the Golden Bear, to a documentary about refugees.

While attending the Berlin International Film Festival, Afghan filmmaker Ghafar Faizyar shared his story about coming to Berlin in 2014 — and not returning to his homeland. This is not his first exile. His family fled the Taliban-rule in the nineties and he grew up in Iran.

Two major crises have marked the months since the WCC called Katalina Tahaafe-Williams to work in Geneva on its migration, indigenous, and multicultural ministry programmes. When she took up the job in October, the European refugee crisis was in full flow. Then in November, terrorists attacked Paris.

On 8 February, the WCC convened a strategy meeting between principals and senior staff of the ACT Alliance, Anglican Alliance, Caritas Internationalis, Globethics, Lutheran World Federation and WCC, to discuss communication and collaboration in policy engagement, advocacy and action.

“The way we handle the refugee crisis, not least the settling in and integration process, will be of utmost significance, both for the attitude towards refugees and asylum seekers in the future, and for the long-term stability and sustainability of our own societies”, said Knut Vollebaek, ambassador and former Norwegian foreign minister, in his speech at the recent WCC/UN conference on Europe’s refugee crisis.

Members of a small congregation in Toronto, Canada are celebrating. On Sunday the member of parliament for their riding came to the church to announce that the federal government has granted residency status to a Roma family that had lived under “sanctuary” protection in the church for 18 months.

While it was German chancellor Angela Merkel who boldly affirmed the willingness of Germany to receive hundreds of thousands of immigrants, it has fallen to the interior ministry, under the leadership of her longtime ally Dr Thomas de Maizière, that must realize that dream – and keep it from becoming a nightmare – through concrete arrangements for reception and integration of migrants into German society and its economy.

The Churches’ Commission for Migrants in Europe and the WCC have published a revised and updated edition of their joint study, Mapping Migration: Mapping Churches’ Responses in Europe. The 2016 text explores challenges and changes in the European church landscape in light of international migration.

Some 80 leaders of governments, UN agencies, faith-related as well as non-religious civil society organizations from countries affected by the current refugee crisis in Europe, Middle East, and Africa will meet at a conference hosted by the WCC in partnership with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Fund for Population (UNFPA), and the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to discern how they can proactively influence and shape coordinated collective practical responses.