Webinar to present new podcast about people on the move

LWF, in partnership with A World of Neighbours network, is launching a podcast about ordinary people doing extraordinary work to support vulnerable migrants and asylum seekers stranded on some of Europe’s remotest borders.

The eight-part series is a follow-up from the ‘Welcoming the Stranger, Living as Neighbors, Shaping the Future’ Conference, which took place in Geneva in June 2022.  The episodes will air weekly in the lead up to World Refugee Day in June 2024.

During the webinar, moderated by LWF program executive for Youth, Savanna Sullivan, A World of Neighbours director Rikko Voorberg will present the series in conversation with some of those interviewed in the forthcoming episodes.

Celebrating 75 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

LWF celebrates 75 years of the Universal Deceleration of Human Rights and reflects on the 76 years of human rights related work within the Lutheran Communion and its humanitarian work.

As a communion of churches deeply engaged in diakonia and the humanitarian and development sectors, the LWF has worked for 76 years to uphold human dignity particularly the vulnerable and oppressed. Legal frameworks such as international human rights and humanitarian law shape the LWF advocacy and humanitarian strategy. With a human rights-based approach to advocacy, the LWF strives to bring grassroots voices and concerns to global decision-making tables and platforms through a local to global approach.

The Human Rights Day broadcast celebrates the human right milestones while providing a look into the ongoing challenges and hopes of the work of advocates and humanitarian workers within the LWF Communion. This celebration further highlights the commitment that LWF has towards promoting human rights together with its member churches and the work of World Service country programs.

Follow online

•  The event will be available online: lutheranworld.org/live

This annual campaign aims to raise awareness about gender-based violence as a human rights issue at all levels, whilst also strengthening local prevention and response work.   

During this time, the Lutheran World Federation provides a platform through which our member churches and country programs can profile and share new and effective strategies to overcome violence against women  and girls.

As part of our support to churches and country programs, we create resources for this work, along with tools to pressure governments to implement commitments made to eliminate violence against women. 

16 days is a campaign which we hope will serve as a springboard for year-round work to end sexual and gender-based violence.

Ecumenical School on Governance, Economics and Management 

Organized by the World Communion of Reformed Churches, the World Council of Churches, the Council for World Mission, the World Methodist Council and the Lutheran World Federation, this training brings together economic actors, church employees, indigenous people and others to learn together about how to advocate for economic justice.  

 The GEM School has the following objectives:

• Identify theological starting points for economic justice (i.e. why and how theology and ethics are deeply related to economic life) 
• Provide a basic understanding of mainstream economic thinking 
• Identify economic models and their consequences in different regional contexts  
• Widen the horizon of economics by introducing ecological, feminist and other pluralistic approaches 
• Develop an interdisciplinary structure for bridging theological and economic thinking and action 
• Lay out the political and strategic implications for churches and their advocacy for an Economy of Life in the context of the Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace. 

This training focuses on tensions between mediation and conflict prevention on one hand and human rights protection on the other  

The goals of this training, organized in partnership with the World Council of Churches, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, Brot für die Welt, Evangelische Mission Weltweit, Misereor, and the United Evangelical Mission, are: 

• To bring together practitioners, academicians and church actors, to learn about conflict transformation and peace building 
• To expose participants to mechanisms of human rights protection and advocacy available to them 
• To explore the tensions between conflict resolution and human rights protection   
• To share good practices and to explore their adaptability in participants’ diverse contexts 
• To network and support further collaboration for peacebuilding, advocacy and human rights protection