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Concrete plans to mobilize churches around the world for peace were approved by the World Council of Churches (WCC) executive committee in early March. What is expected to become a major worldwide mobilization of churches for peace will culminate with an International Ecumenical Peace Convocation to be held in early May 2011 and an Ecumenical Declaration on Just Peace.

In a statement for the fourth anniversary on 19 March of the invasion of Iraq, the World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia warns of "further carnage and destruction" because "the sponsors of this tragic war insist on carrying on military pursuits".

The World Council of Churches (WCC) is launching an international, inter-church advocacy initiative for peace in Israel and Palestine - the Palestine Israel Ecumenical Forum - at a conference June 17-21, 2007, in Jordan.

The World Council of Churches (WCC) executive committee has expressed worries about the "deteriorating human rights situation in Ethiopia and Eritrea", while encouraging the establishment of a "joint Christian and Muslim Peace Committee for Somalia".

The World Council of Churches (WCC) executive committee has expressed appreciation for the establishment of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, and urged WCC member churches to encourage and support its efforts.

"Make me a channel of your peace" was the theme for a celebration of common commitment to overcome violence at a gathering of Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican and Protestant church representatives on 17 February in Wittenberg, Germany.

The international community's responsibility to protect endangered populations when their governments fail to do so - if necessary, by the use of force - and church support for such measures was the subject of a lively debate at a World Council of Churches (WCC) workshop at the 20-25 January World Social Forum in Nairobi, Kenya.

In a message to all the Palestinian people, Jerusalem church leaders alarmed at worsening relations between two main political parties are calling for an end to violence and an urgent return to the "real priorities" of Palestinians. The plan is to work with Jerusalem's top Islamic leaders on a similar Christian-Muslim message as well.

"The cross calls us not to glorify, but to attend to the suffering in the world and to struggle for its elimination," said the participants of a theological consultation on cruelty organized by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in partnership with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). The conference took place 5-8 December in Puidoux, Switzerland.

The task of the Decade to Overcome Violence (DOV) reference group is to guide work on the Decade over the period between now and 2010. Meeting in Geneva in December, the group islooking at preparations for an event that will culminate the Decade in 2011 - an International Ecumenical Peace Convocation (IEPC) - as well as at plans for the Decade's focus on Europe in 2007.