News and stories

On a dimly lit balcony in Delhi, the mosquitoes begin to close in. I am talking to the man who Outlook magazine – one of the top-selling English news magazines in India – named among the 25 most influential Indians without wealth or official power last year, and so it is perhaps unsurprising that his concentration is not distracted by a few mosquitoes.

Laws designed to empower and protect women in India have been described as “toothless” by activists who have spoken out against the government’s failure to implement them.

Christian villagers are rebuilding their lives and relationships more than a year after being attacked by a group of Hindu extremists in the eastern Indian state of Orissa.

Seventeen years after the war ended in Mozambique, churches are still collecting and destroying weapons and cleaning up areas of unexploded ordnance so the land can be farmed.

As the United Nations has made a small but significant step forward towards declaring caste-based discrimination a human rights violation, Indian Christian leaders have called on the churches to confess that the caste system is still being practised also within them.

A team of church representatives from Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia will pay a solidarity visit to churches, ecumenical organizations and civil society movements in India from 21 to 27 September.

With recent action by Africa a majority of the world's countries have now banned nuclear weapons from their national territory for the first time. The change happened when an all-Africa treaty entered into force in July. International civil society organizations including the World Council of Churches (WCC) played a catalytic role.

The Central Committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC) urged its member churches "to publicly condemn violence against women" in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and declare that "violence against women is a sin".

Young people have spent years knocking at the door of the World Council of Churches, seeking greater involvement in the life of the organization. In the past few years, that door has opened further.

If someone has a headache, they usually take an aspirin or other pain reliever. If someone has a cut, they might put a Band-Aid on it, or get stitches. Other types of pain and wounds, however, often are not so easily cared for. How does one care for people who have lost their homes or their families? What does one say to a fellow Christian who is suffering? How is God’s love communicated amid violence?