WCC news: WCC urges pausing proposed merger of UN Women, United Nations Population Fund

n a letter to UN secretary-general António Guterres, World Council of Churches general secretary Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay urged pausing the proposed merger of UN Women and the United Nations Population Fund under the UN80 reform initiative.  Photo: Ivars Kupcis/WCC 6 August 2026 “We recognise the legitimate purpose behind your UN80 initiative, and we do not write as opponents of reform,” writes Pillay. “Our concern is grounded in a conviction we hold as a matter of faith: that women bear the image of God as fully as men, and that the dignity of the vulnerable cannot be a line item in an efficiency exercise.” Pillay notes that many countries have formally stated that the analysis does not yet demonstrate how a composite model would preserve the integrity of either mandate. “Combining them risks weakening both,” he writes. Pillay further notes that, with more than a quarter of countries at heightened risk of rights regression, reopening mandate language now invites those opposed to gender equality to weaken protections that are already hard-won. “More than 500 civil society organisations report being treated as a communications audience rather than as partners in this decision, on a timeline too compressed for the consultation a change of this magnitude warrants,” Pillay writes. “Move the women most affected by these decisions, especially across the Global South and Africa, from consultation to formal participation in any review of the two entities’ collaboration, through a standing multi-stakeholder mechanism with a genuine seat at the table.” Pillay further urges a defined pilot period before any structural change. “Give the collaborative model 18–24 months to run, measured against published indicators, so that any future efficiency case rests on evidence rather than projection - the very standard several member states have already said this process has not yet met,” he writes. “Commission a transparent, independently reviewed costing of the composite model’s transition costs and of the safeguards meant to protect each mandate, before, not after, any decision is taken.” The letter points out that member states cannot make an informed judgement on the basis of what has not been shared with them. “We would welcome the opportunity, in the days ahead of any decision, to brief you or your office further, alongside our ecumenical and civil-society partners, on the perspective set out here,” Pillay concludes.  Read the full letter WCC calls for renewed commitment to multilateral cooperation (WCC news release, 23 January 2026) See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 356 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 580 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay from the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa. Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches Chemin du Pommier 42 Kyoto Building Le Grand-Saconnex CH-1218 Switzerland

WCC News: Around Colombian coal mine, “people get very ill from the dust”

On 5 June, churches and faith-based organizations from Colombia, the United Kingdom, and Ireland, together with investment and ecumenical partners, submitted a complaint under the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises on Responsible Business Conduct concerning HSBC Holdings plc and its financial relationship with Glencore, the company operating the Cerrejón coal mine in La Guajira, Colombia. This is the second of a three-part feature story that illustrates the grave health effects—particularly on children—of the Cerrejón mining operation.  Yuleidis Amayo inspects a chick in her backyard in La Granja, Barrancos, La Guajira, Colombia. The Wayúu indigenous people of La Guajira, Colombia, have faced decades of displacement, contamination and cultural destruction linked to the Cerrejón open-cast coal mine — one of the largest in the world. Communities report polluted water, failing harvests, and chronic respiratory disease, while remaining excluded from the legal recognition that would give them access to basic rights and state services. Photo: Sean Hawkey/WCC 06 August 2026 In the villages around the Cerrejón coal mine, there are perceptible booms that vibrate. "They carry out blasting operations at any time of the day or night," says Mildreth Guetta Uriana, a young Wayúu woman from an Indigenous reserve near the mine, weeping as she tells the story.  "The pollution reaches our village—and it impacts our health. We live with it every day, especially when it rains… the vapour rises and carries the smell of sulphur into our homes. People get very ill from the dust and that smell, including my little brother.” For Uriana, the crisis is embodied in her brother. "My little brother has had a respiratory problem since he was a child. Every day I see my mother cry for that boy, for his difficulty breathing—in his own land, in his own territory, where he was born." In just the first three months of 2024, La Guajira recorded 649 cases of acute malnutrition in children under five, according to the National Institute of Health. Of those, 84% were Indigenous children. In 2023 alone, 70 child malnutrition deaths were recorded in La Guajira—approximately 30% of Colombia's entire national total, despite the department making up a small fraction of the country's population. A further 2,223 Wayúu children were found to be living with acute malnutrition. The year before, 2022, closed with 85 child deaths from malnutrition in the department. By late 2024, the National Institute of Health confirmed La Guajira had recorded the highest number of child malnutrition deaths of any department in the country—31 confirmed deaths by November—while malnutrition-related illness cases had risen a further 7.19% on 2023's figures. Community leaders dispute even these figures, insisting the official statistics fail to capture the true scale of the crisis. Many deaths go unregistered because Indigenous children in rural communities often have no birth certificates.  María Magdalena Brito, Wayúu indigenous leader of El Pimientón, La Guajira in Colombia. Photo: Sean Hawkey/WCC María Magdalena Brito pauses mid-interview to speak of her own loss. "Right now we are living through the death of our mother. Today marks exactly nine months since she died. What took her? A pulmonary illness—caused by the contamination of Cerrejón."  The Colombian government has taken some steps to address the emergency. President Gustavo Petro announced in 2025 that child mortality from malnutrition had fallen by nearly half since 2022, with La Guajira specifically recording a 48% drop. But human rights groups say that the structural causes—lack of water, contaminated land, displacement—remain unaddressed, and that improvement is fragile.  Jocelyn Carolina describes the daily reality for children in her community: "The children have constant colds, constant respiratory problems. The animals are also affected."  Global patterns in mining impacts The health crisis around Cerrejón bears remarkable similarities to other coal mine neighbours across the world. Coal mining and processing expose communities to air and water pollution through dust particles, heavy metals, and volatile organic compounds—and these are linked to respiratory diseases and cardiovascular health problems. The respiratory impact around coal mines is consistent. In Appalachian communities in the United States, lung cancer and other respiratory diseases in coal mining counties are disproportionately higher than regional and national averages. In 2014, West Virginia University researchers demonstrated—for the first time—a direct causal link, rather than just a correlation, between toxic dust from surface coal mines and the growth of lung cancer cells in people living nearby. A systematic review of European studies found increased risk of lung, colon, colorectal, and thyroid cancers in communities living near coal mines. There is also evidence on the impact on the unborn. The rate of children born with birth defects is 42% higher in areas near mountaintop removal coal mining in the United States. Neurotoxic metals including arsenic, lead, and mercury—all associated with coal mining contamination of water and soil—are linked to abnormal foetal growth, adverse birth outcomes, and cognitive and behavioural problems in later childhood. Communities near coal mines in Mozambique, Burkina Faso, and Tanzania have reported increases in newborn malformations and miscarriages, which they attributed to chemicals in their water supply. José Luis Amayo Urrarillo, community leader of the Wayúu indigenous people of La Guajira, Colombia in Barrancos, La Guajira, Colombia. Photo: Sean Hawkey/WCC There is also a heavy toll on mental health, with research finding increased rates of depression in coal mining communities, compounded by the destruction of landscape, noise, and dust, and the long-term stress of watching children fall ill. These mental health burdens are expected to last for decades—even long after the mines have closed. Heavy metals and carcinogens in contaminated water can linger for decades after mining ends. Communities near Cerrejón are asking what the land will look like, and what their situation will be after 2034, when the mine's licence expires. The global evidence suggests they are right to be worried; health impacts don’t stop when the last train leaves. The workers' side José Luis Amayo Urrarillo, who worked 25 years at Cerrejón in a security role, is withering about the protection workers and communities were given. "They gave us useless filters—filters that let the most dangerous particles through. What was the point? What is the point of money without life? These diseases are going to mutate. And if you go for a medical examination, all the doctors say what the companies want them to say.” Urrarillo, whose community was promised employment quotas, training, and scholarships when environmental permits were signed, speaks with bitter clarity about what those promises were worth. "We signed the environmental permit agreement—three days of negotiations in Buenavista, demanding job quotas, training, scholarships. They didn't comply."  As well as the impacts on local communities, poor working conditions at the mine have often been highlighted, including exploitation through cheaper labour, unhealthy working conditions, and 12-hour shifts. Pro-union workers have reportedly been intimidated or replaced with cheaper casual labour. In 2008, Sintracarbón union leader Adolfo González Montes was tortured and murdered at home. A 91-day strike in 2020 reflected how far conditions had deteriorated. Employment at the mine, other community members say, is allocated not by qualification but by political connection. "The jobs at Cerrejón depend on who you know," says one community leader. "If you're not their friend, you have no right to work there. I told them: 'Give us an opportunity - even five jobs.' But it wasn't possible. Because unless we hand over the territory, they won't help us with anything.” Vast spoil heaps tower over the landscape around the Cerrejón coal mine in La Guajira, Colombia. The waste material excavated to expose the coal seams has reshaped the terrain across tens of thousands of hectares, smothering vegetation, contaminating groundwater and generating clouds of fine toxic dust that carry across surrounding Wayúu communities — communities that have never consented to, nor benefited from, the mine's operations. Photo: Sean Hawkey/WCC The churches’ complaint in relation to HSBC bank is one example of the implementation of the WCC Hope for Children initiative, catalyzed by children and youth who urged the WCC to make climate justice one of the pillars of the Churches’ Commitments to Children programme. The World Council of Churches is inviting churches, ecumenical partners, and faith-based organizations worldwide to support an open letter backing an OECD complaint submitted by Methodist churches in Colombia, Great Britain, Ireland, and partners concerning HSBC’s financial relationship with Glencore and the Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia. Churches, ecumenical partners, and other organizations wishing to endorse the initiative are invited to sign the Open letter here. Indigenous people in Colombia pay—with their lives—for coal (WCC feature story, 22 July 2026) WCC invites churches, communities to support call for responsible finance, climate justice (WCC news release, 10 June 2026) Faith-based groups submit OECD complaint concerning HSBC financing linked to Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia (WCC news release, 05 June 2026) Learn more about the Churches’ Commitments to Children and Climate-Responsible Banking Sources for statistics See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 356 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 580 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay from the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa.  Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches Chemin du Pommier 42 Kyoto Building Le Grand-Saconnex CH-1218 Switzerland

WCC news: Five WCC fellows trace their climate work to home ground

Five young researchers joined the World Council of Churches (WCC) in 2026: four through the Climate Curve Constellations Fellowship, a programme placing early-career researchers with organizations working on climate change, and one returning for a second internship in the WCC’s work on children’s rights. They came from Nigeria, Uganda, Sierra Leone, and the United States. Ask any of them why climate justice, and the answer starts somewhere specific. A farm, a marsh, an audit desk. 06 August 2026 In Eruwa, a farming town in Oyo State, southwest Nigeria, Toyosi Olatayo grew up the daughter of a Baptist pastor, attending services at the Oke-Oba Baptist Church, part of the Nigerian Baptist Convention. Her grandfather grew cassava and okra. She followed him to the farm as a teenager to harvest. Most of her congregation farmed, too. She studied geography at the University of Ibadan. The question came from home. “Why are people working so hard and still struggling?” She returned to Eruwa afterwards and worked alongside smallholder farmers, mostly women, to reach better markets. At the WCC, she supports research and coordination in the Land, Water, and Food programme. She had expected to do research, and spends a good deal of time coordinating and organizing instead, which is what running a rural agribusiness had taught her. Accounting and auditing in Kampala paid Hella Nicole Tangu’s bills, but she wanted work tied more directly to climate change mitigation. Both the Anglican Church of Uganda and the Lugazi Catholic Diocese, which ran her high school, shaped her. A classmate in Uppsala, Sweden, where she is completing a master’s degree in sustainable development, mentioned the fellowship. The placement covered land, water, and food in the same term her coursework covered the water-energy-food nexus, the principle that water, energy, and food security cannot be planned separately. “It was a perfectly timed coincidence!” She now leads the WCC’s Seven Weeks for Water Lenten campaign. Maryjane Onyechesi found the opening on LinkedIn. She grew up at Saint Cletus Catholic Church in Nnewi, Anambra State, and had just finished a master’s degree in land and water systems at the University of British Columbia. Her work now is a survey of how WCC staff are putting the Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action—the WCC’s ten-year commitment running from 2025 to 2034—into practice. The Florida Everglades set Roksanna Keyvan’s question. She spent childhood summers in the marshes, then 18 months interning with Wine to Water, a faith-based organization in North Carolina. Water, she came to think, “is not only an essential resource but also a fundamental human right and a cornerstone of human dignity.” She first encountered the WCC in 2025 while researching nuclear justice in the Marshall Islands, where communities face harm from nuclear weapons testing and strive for reparations and a say over their own land. A WCC blog post by Litokne Kabua, “We spoke up. Will you answer?” shaped the questions she went on to ask Marshallese youth climate activists. She now coordinates preparations for a joint conference in Chiang Mai of the WCC commissions and reference groups on Life, Justice, and Peace, the programme area covering justice, peace, and care for creation. Foday Bangura is Muslim. He attended Catholic and Anglican schools in Sierra Leone, but had no contact with the WCC until 2023, when it supported him, then 17, to take part in the summit on a new global financing pact called for by French president Emmanuel Macron. There he met Frederique Seidel, WCC senior programme lead for Children and Climate. He had assumed religious tolerance was rare outside Sierra Leone. He found otherwise. Born and raised in Kanikay, Bangura says that “through the grace of God, I was shaped into becoming an exception.” He is completing a second WCC internship while studying entrepreneurial leadership at the African Leadership University in Rwanda, working on children’s climate litigation and promoting “The Path of Justice,” a song set to a poem by Faith Sebwa, a teenage Kenyan campaigner who is deaf and speaks Kenyan Sign Language. “It is reminding me of how I have continuously stood for justice from childhood to a young adult today.” Olatayo, Tangu, and Keyvan all sit on the editorial team of the Living Planet Monitor, the WCC publication tracking food security, water resources, land use, and climate resilience across a continent. Tangu came to it from the water-energy-food nexus, Keyvan from water governance, Olatayo from cassava markets in Oyo State. What surprised them, they mostly agree on: Onyechesi named “how people from many countries and backgrounds work together for climate justice”; Keyvan, the responsibility handed to fellows rather than withheld from them; Tangu, seeing the finished Monitor become a source others use. On whether a young person reading this belongs here, they agree more strongly still. “I was afraid too,” Bangura said. “I mean I am Muslim, I was afraid that I would be rejected, it was the inverse, because I tried, I tested, and now I feel like I have a home here.” Keyvan’s hesitation was that she did not come from a Christian community; from her first day, she said, “those fears disappeared.” Tangu is blunter: “Next time you see an ad for interns, please apply!” The WCC opens internship and fellowship positions across its programmes through the year, and Climate Curve recruits new Constellations cohorts several times a year, placing fellows across its network of climate organizations with the WCC among them.  Young people in WCC member churches should be using this door. If you are one of them, or outside a member church as Bangura and Keyvan were, watch for the next call and put your name forward. “Your background is not something to hide,” Olatayo said. “It is part of what makes your contribution unique.” Understand a bit more Climate Curve Constellations Fellowship — The fellowship connects students and recent graduates to placements with climate-focused organizations. Several WCC research fellows and interns in the Land, Water, and Food programme have entered through this route. Placements are typically time-bound and research-oriented, and fellows are recruited internationally rather than through church networks alone.   Living Planet Monitor — The Monitor gives faith communities a regular overview of conditions in a particular continent, monitoring indicators on food security, water resources, land use, and climate resilience. It is used to share good practices and projects led by church-based organizations. Research fellows contribute to its research and editorial work.   Water-energy-food nexus — An analytical framework used in sustainability research and policy. It holds that water, energy, and food security cannot be planned separately: irrigating crops consumes energy, generating energy consumes water, and food production depends on both. The framework is taught in sustainable development programmes and increasingly shapes how agencies design land and water policy. We spoke up. Will you answer? — the blog post by Litokne Kabua that shaped Keyvan’s research questions Music video for the song “The Path of Justice” launched — background on Faith Sebwa’s poem and the song Bangura is promoting Constellations Fellowship — the Climate Curve programme through which four of the five arrived Ecumenical Decade of Climate Justice Action — the ten-year commitment Onyechesi is surveying See more

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith, witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings together 356 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches representing more than 580 million Christians in over 120 countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Prof. Dr Jerry Pillay from the Uniting Presbyterian Church in Southern Africa.  Media contact: +41 79 507 6363; www.oikoumene.org/press Our visiting address is: World Council of Churches Chemin du Pommier 42 Kyoto Building Le Grand-Saconnex CH-1218 Switzerland

SojoMail - Peak youth group is over. Now comes the reckoning

View this email in your browser By Betsy Shirley Editor in Chief, Sojourners If you know what Relient K’s lead singer wears in “Sadie Hawkins Dance,” this one’s for you. Ditto if you ever participated in a 40 Hour Famine, signed a purity pledge, or dutifully wore a t-shirt over your swimsuit on the “fun day” of a summer mission trip. Those of us who came of age in a certain period of U.S. youth groups—what Tyler Huckabee unofficially dubs “Peak Youth Group Era”—are now adults. And though we’ve tossed out our copies of She Said Yes and I Kissed Dating Goodbye (good riddance!), we’re still reckoning with the youth groups that raised us. This isn’t a “let’s trash youth groups” piece, though. As a veteran of the youth group trenches himself, Tyler talks with youth ministry experts and alumni who acknowledge the “good intentions” of “giving kids spaces that were spiritually informed, but fun.” And while I personally wish to spare future generations from what I saw when my youth pastor tried to figure out how many marshmallows he could fit in his mouth at one time, fun and games weren’t really the problem. The real problem, Tyler points out, is that this “highly programmatic” style of youth group treated teenagers as either “a demographic to be retained or a problem to be solved.” Or as one expert told him, the history of youth group is really about “social control.” The good news? A chorus of churches and theologians are pushing for us to rethink the way we treat the church’s youth. In short: Youth groups don’t have to be this way. Here’s what else you need to know this week: Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids aren’t showing up in the headlines the way they were earlier this year, but that doesn’t mean the raids have stopped—they’ve just gotten more subtle. But you know what’s not at all subtle? The growing clergy resistance against ICE. In New Jersey, a web of interfaith leaders and volunteers are fighting to give people in a local detention center what the law says they should already have: the opportunity to practice their faith and receive spiritual care. It’s not as easy as it sounds. The new Spider-Man film is fun, emotionally mature, and quietly accepting of a surveillance state. Our outgoing social media assistant makes a case for more poetry in public life. We’ll miss you, Marjorie! Bill McKibben likens the U.S. ocean sensor network to a church planning process. A summer travel PSA: Preach the gospel always, but for the love of God, not by issuing an in-flight altar call on an airplane (no matter what they told you in youth group). Oh, and if you’re wondering, the best outfit for a Sadie Hawkins dance is revealed in the chorus of Relient K’s 2001 hit: “The Sadie Hawkins dance/ In my khaki pants/ There's nothing better.” Reckoning With the Youth Groups That Raised Us (by Tyler Huckabee) We were meant to live for so much more. But we lost ourselves. Read the full article Advertisement Community Notes We’re adding a new section to SojoMail in response to consistent reader feedback about a desire to connect with each other as readers, not just with Sojourners editors! This week, we’ve already seen responses pouring in about Tyler Huckabee’s just-published story on a youth group reckoning. This makes us want to know: What was your experience like with youth groups? Were you a part of one, or have you led one? Let us know by hitting ‘reply’ — we read everything you send to us, and you may even see yours appear in next week’s SojoMail. Our Latest Stories ICE Is Moving More Quietly. Clergy Resistance Is Not (by Bekah McNeel) From Texas to Maine, people of faith are active on every front of resisting deportations and detainment. Read more We Almost Foolishly Dismantled Our Ocean Sensor Network (by Bill McKibben) Doing so would have been like gouging out our eyes at a time when they’re more needed than ever. Read more ‘Brand New Day’ Makes Peace with the Powers of Surveillance (by Tyler Huckabee) Walter Wink argued that the Powers are most dangerous when we stop naming them. Marvel's newest Spider-Man movie is proof he was right. Read more ICE Says Detainees Have Religious Freedom. Faith Leaders Don’t See It (by Sam Hsiaomei Lee) At the Delaney Hall ICE facility in New Jersey, a multifaith coalition is rallying to ensure those detained can worship with freedom. Read more We Need More Poetry in Public Life (by Marjorie Rose T. Lim) In ‘Against Breaking,’ Ada Limón argues the art form has even more potential than we might realize. Read more Preach the Gospel, but Not on a Plane (by Amar Peterman) A new trend among evangelical TikTokers could make your next flight much worse. Read more Advertisements NEW: Throughlines Resource for Group Study of Healing Haunted Histories Bridge the gap between learning about injustice and taking action. Throughlines is a new ten-session curriculum by Elaine Enns and Ched Myers that invites Christians to confront the ghosts of settler colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and white supremacy in their own family and communal histories. Use code SOJOSAVE40 to save 40%. Action Alert: No War With Iran! Contact Congress now to demand peace and an end to the war with Iran. As Christians, we know that each and every life is precious and every step must be taken to avoid bloodshed. Instead of recklessly pursuing a policy of escalation, we demand an end to violence and vigorous oversight from Congress in pursuit of peace. Donate Subscribe Unsubscribe or update email preferences Copyright © 2026 Sojourners. All rights reserved. 611 Pennsylvania Ave SE #342, Washington, DC 20003 Email: sojourners@sojo.net | Tel.: 202.328.8842