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“What is the role of churches in peace-building? How are they actually involved? Which are the ecumenical challenges, and especially which are the ecumenical opportunities that arise from joint efforts at peace building?” These were some of the questions on the table as the Executive of the Joint Working Group of the WCC and the Roman Catholic Church met in Dublin, Ireland on 24-26 April.

Like many people brought up in rural Kenya, Catherine Mwangi had a long walk to fetch water for home use from a nearby river in what she calls her “humble upbringing”. For the past seven years, Mwangi has been the executive director ADSMKE (the Anglican Development Services of Mount Kenya East) and water access is an important issue in her work.

The fifteenth of March 2017, marks the sixth year since the start of the Syrian war.
Lebanon, being a small Middle Eastern country facing constant political and national unity challenges with a population of approximately 450,000 Palestinian and Iraqi refugees, has been the shelter for more than 2 million registered Syrian refugees since 2011.

WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit joined other speakers at a side event of the 34th session of the UN Human Rights Council on 7 March. The speakers, which also included Metropolitan Hilarion, chairman of the Department of External Church Relations for the Russian Orthodox Church, addressed the topic of “Mutual Respect and Peaceful Coexistence as a Condition of Interreligious Peace and Stability: Supporting Christians and Other Communities.”

As the World Council of Churches (WCC) adopts a regional focus on Africa for its pilgrimage of justice and peace during 2017, Rev. Dr Andre Karamaga, general secretary of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) reflected that the entire continent has reached a crossroads at which it must make the right choices.

By unveiling the engaging Reformation truck in the Plaine de Plainpalais park in Geneva, events marking the 500-year anniversary of the Reformation have been launched. Being regarded as a peace city, Geneva has been chosen as the first of 67 stops for the storymobile, full of testimonies and interactive experiences related to the Reformation.

Forty years after the Soweto uprising, leaders of churches in conflict-torn countries gathered in South Africa to study the ways of peace and reconciliation.

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.

Almost forty years after the advent of HIV and AIDS, people around the world living with HIV still endure assaults on their dignity and basic human rights—from stigma and discrimination to denial of legal protection and even medical care.

A delegation representing churches and ecumenical bodies around the world met for an historic international ecumenical visit and meeting in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea from 23 to 30 October.

It is raining. It is cold and windy. Autumn is in the air in northern Greece. We have just arrived at the Idomeni refugee camp in northern Greece, on the border between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). The fast-approaching winter poses as great a threat to the refugees as do the smugglers. In the worst case, winter means death.

In developing countries, many Christians are faced with issues of corruption, war, hunger, oppression, killings and new forms of terrorism, said Rev. Dr Ibrahim Yusuf Wushishi, general secretary of the Christian Council of Nigeria, an ecumenical organization representing member churches of the World Council of Churches in Nigeria.

What will the world look like if we continue careening down a slide of eco-injustice? Ninth graders in South Africa have some idea. In a campaign organized by Suwi Siwila, the students pretended they were living in the future, writing a description to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

[Joint release with the Conference of European Churches (CEC)]

Joakim Book Jonnson, a salesman for a security company and a member of the Church of Sweden, transformed his urban commuter life when he decided to leave, at least temporarily, no ecological footprint.

A broad group of World Council of Churches (WCC) member churches, inside and outside of Korea, were involved in a recent shipment of food aid to North Korea.

The silence of the international community to the plight of millions of North Koreans facing starvation and severe malnutrition was of deep concern to the members of an ecumenical forum for peace and reunification of the Korean Peninsula, which met last week, 16 to 19 June, in Nanjing, China.

Any solution to the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) must engage the whole nation – not just the eastern region where violence is centred, a small ecumenical team visiting the Bas Congo and Kasai Oriental provinces has learned.