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From 3-8 July, gender justice advocates from over thirty countries are convening at the Ecumenical Center, in Geneva, Switzerland, for an advocacy training on women’s human rights for faith-based organizations.

Interfaith consultation on positive masculinities and femininities with adolescents and young people in Abuja, Nigeria brought together more than fifty religious leaders, theologians, people living with HIV, adolescents and young people, teachers, health professionals, media persons and government officials for frank conversation.

Fifty adolescents, young people, teachers, theologians, health professionals, people living with HIV and religious leaders met in Abuja from 22-26 May to discuss positive masculinities and femininities in faith communities.

Rev. Ikechukwu Anaga remembers when people didn’t know about “Thursdays in Black,” the global movement resisting attitudes and practices that permit rape and violence. But his community of Aba, in Abia State, Nigeria, was seeing firsthand an increase in gender-based violence and rape. When Anaga helped others in his community make a firm decision to do something about it, the zeal and passion for Thursdays in Black rose.

Dr Ulysses Burley III is serving as a WCC delegate to the 62nd Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations in New York City (CSW62), being held 12-23 March. Dr Burley, from Chicago, is a member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He currently serves on the WCC-Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance HIV Access to Treatment Working Group.

Working with boys and men is critical to the success of the UNAIDS Fast Track agenda, said Pierre Somse, UNAIDS senior advisor for Fast Track Innovation, speaking at a symposium in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Delegates from around the world will this week explore strategies that lay and religious leaders and other civil society actors can use to increase the impact of faith-based advocacy for women’s human rights.

“Before being identified as a person with disability, you are a woman with the same rights,” said Hellen Anurika Udoye Beyioku-Alase, a young woman with a disability. She was among some 70 women who gathered at the Swiss International Hotel in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, on 22-23 June around the theme “Women with Disabilities, Sexual Reproductive Health and HIV.”

In the West African countries of Togo and Benin, adolescents and young people are confronted by various obstacles in accessing sexual and reproductive health services. Organized by the World Council of Churches Ecumenical HIV and AIDS Initiatives and Advocacy West Africa regional office in Lomé, Togo, a workshop for 25 adolescents and young people from Benin and Togo helped participants make safe, responsible choices that prevent HIV infection.

”We are here to listen. To learn what others do, so we can contextualize our understanding of HIV issues, and journey together in our work ahead. Because on HIV, we do not compete. We work together.”

At a consultation on religion and development on 28 September, WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit shared thoughts on an emerging global religion and development agenda. The meeting was convened by the ACT Alliance. Tveit and other participants shared their thoughts on how faith-based and humanitarian groups can work together to help reach the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

“Dignity, Freedom, and Grace: Christian Perspectives on HIV, AIDS and Human Rights,” a book published earlier this year by the WCC, will be among reports discussed at a 20 September event with the theme “Keeping the Faith in Development: Gender, Religions & Heath.”

Religious leaders must break their silence with regard to young people and sexual reproductive health, agreed young people and theologians gathered in Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire) from 6-7 September.

Thirty-five years into the response to HIV and AIDS, it remains a disease that not only thrives on, but exploits the lines of exclusion and inequality in society. In the Philippines, where there has been an alarming increase in people testing positive for HIV, the country’s National Council of Churches recognized that more than words were needed. While dialogue and debate were important, they needed to translate into action, given the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor in Filipino society, and a faith-based and societal milieu still dominated by a sex-negative theology.

A workshop in Tanzania created a “safe space” in which adolescents, church leaders, theologians, development practitioners and others could share their feelings and ideas about HIV response.

Sexual and reproductive health services must be not just "youth-friendly" but also “male- and female-friendly" and "youth participatory" so that young men and women gain access to the information and services they need and want, agreed adolescents who attended a workshop in Lomé, Togo on 24-25 March.