Mr Olara A. Otunnu addressing the WCC central committee.

The United Nations secretary general's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Mr Olara A. Otunnu, has welcomed the cooperation of the WCC and its commitment to support advocacy work on behalf of war-affected children. Mr Otunnu talked with WCC International Relations staff when they met in New York in March this year, during the first preparatory committee meeting of the UN 2001 conference on the "Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects".

His appreciation came against a backdrop of rising international concern about the proliferation of small arms and light weapons resulting in the wanton destruction of human life, property and social order. The special representative had earlier acknowledged the importance of developing an active dialogue and framework of co-operation with the WCC, while presenting his report to the UN General Assembly (1 October 1999) on "The Protection of Children Affected by Armed Conflicts".

Ahead of the UN 2001 conference the WCC is planning a series of regional and sub-regional meetings. The churches, it has been noted, are well placed to address the relevant social, economic and political measures needed to reduce the demand for, and reliance on, small arms by individuals and communities. Therefore, the WCC is actively encouraging its member churches to help curb the proliferation of small arms and light weapons.

The status of the WCC Eastern European Office has been strengthened. The office, which is responsible for WCC programmatic co-operation in Georgia, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, is now officially headed by Mr Miroslaw Matrenczyk. Matrenczyk, who has been working for the WCC as consultant since 1994, becomes a permanent WCC staff person.

This office was established to co-ordinate and implement the WCC's non-emergency work in the Commonwealth of Independent States, with a base in Poland. The mission is to assist churches in the region in developing an effective and community-based diaconal response to social need through the development of social infrastructure, capacity building of personnel and networking of initiatives. Contact: WCC Eastern European Office
ul. Antoniuk Fabryczny 13
PL - 15-762 Bialystok
Tel: ++ 48 85 653 60 06
Fax: ++ 48 85 654 37 47

The Conseil Protestant de Rwanda (CPR) now has an interim general secretary. Rev. Richard Murigande has been seconded to the CPR in response to an appeal made to the WCC by the heads of the CPR member churches.

The Rwanda situation has been a major WCC preoccupation since the genocide of 1994. It is in the spirit of the WCC's commitment to the churches in Rwanda and regional ecumenism that the WCC general secretary responded positively to the request. Murigande will devote 80% of his work schedule to the CPR and 20% to the WCC for one year (Jan-Dec. 2000).

Before his secondment, Murigande served as WCC secretary for African refugees (1987-1988), and later became regional secretary for Africa for the Commission of Inter-Church Aid, Refugee and World Service (CICARWS), a post he held for eleven years (1988-1999).

Discrimination, human rights violations, religious intolerance and violence topped the WCC agenda presented to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) 56th session in March/April 2000.

During the six-week session the WCC raised the above issues, as well as country-specific concerns such as India. This time around the WCC laid greater emphasis on arranging other meetings alongside those of the official commission, including between national and international non-governmental organizations about the situation in Indonesia and East Timor.

The WCC called on this year's commission meeting to undertake a study of the discriminatory practice and policies based on untouchability and the caste system in India, as a manifestation of contemporary forms of slavery in the South Asian region. In its statement the WCC said, "For the last two thousand years the Dalits have continued to suffer humiliation and ill treatment despite the fact that India is the world's largest democracy with a progressive, secular and liberal constitution."

One organization working for the emancipation of Dalits, the Dalit Liberation Education Trust in Chennai, India, whose representatives attended the Commission, reported that, "every hour two Dalits are assaulted, every day three Dalit women are raped, two Dalits are murdered and two Dalit houses burned by upper-caste people".

The WCC also supported NGO representatives from Indonesia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Guatemala to attend relevant parts of the UNCHR session. Three case studies presented to the Commission were drawn from East Timor, Indonesia and Dalits in India.

Created at the eighth assembly of the World Council of Churches, the Special Commission on Orthodox Participation in the WCC has the task of improving that participation both qualitatively and quantitatively. Made up of about sixty people, of whom 50% are from the Orthodox churches and the other 50% from other member churches of the WCC, the Commission is now trying to deepen the fellowship of the WCC.

The Commission held its inaugural meeting in Morges, Switzerland, at which it decided to divide its work between four sub-committees. Two sub-committees (I and IV) met for three days (6-8 March) in Ma'arat Saydnaya, near Damascus, Syria.

While sub-committee I dealt with how existing WCC structures might be adjusted for better representation of all the churches, sub-committee IV was looking towards new models which might be workable in the WCC, such as the ones being used at national and regional levels.

However, recommendations already filtering out of the sub-committees say that WCC decision-making should be based more on consensus than majority voting, suggesting new models of representation based on families of churches in order make the WCC more active and responsible.

Apart from discussions, sub-committee members visited several Orthodox Churches and pilgrimage sites in Damascus. They attended Divine Liturgy at the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch in the centre of Damascus' old town. The primate, His Beatitude Patriarch Ignatius IV Hazim, received the participants afterwards for discussion on the situation of churches in the Middle East, their relations with each other and with Islam. Also, a visit was organized to the Women's Monastery of God near Saydnaya, a centre of piety for both Christian and Muslim pilgrims.

The dates for the other sub-committees have been fixed for 29 July -3 August for sub-committee II, and 22-24 August for sub-committee III. While sub-committee II will be meeting in the Czech Republic to discuss the style and ethos of life together in the WCC, sub-committee III will come together at the Orthodox Academy, Crete, to discuss theological convergence and differences between Orthodox and other traditions in the WCC.

Each sub-committee is expected to report to the plenary meeting, scheduled for 23-25 October in Cairo, Egypt. Since the mandate of the commission runs for at least three years, it is expected that the meetings will shuttle back and forth between the sub-committee and plenary level before a final report is submitted to the central committee of the WCC.

The end of June 2000 sees the start of a new phase in social development, as the United Nations holds a Special Session of the General Assembly entitled: "World Summit for Social Development and beyond: achieving social development for all in a globalizing world". The objective is "an overall review and appraisal of the implementation of the outcomes of the Summit and to consider further actions and initiatives".

This meeting in Geneva comes five years after the Social Summit in Copenhagen. The Geneva rendez-vous, however, faces a number of challenges as it tries to pump new dynamism into social development issues. "We have to move forward with something new, or we will not move at all," says Albert Gyan of the Catholic Church of Ghana, who is following the debates within the UN Commission on Social Development as part of a WCC team preparing for the Geneva meeting.

In the run-up to the Geneva meeting June 26-30, the WCC and its member churches are planning to be more present than before, to push for concrete steps towards social development. Special warm-up sessions are presently fine-tuning the effective participation of NGO representatives.

The Justice, Peace and Creation team of the WCC has recently prepared a dossier entitled "There Are Alternatives to Globalization". This document proposes that churches use Geneva 2000 (as it is now called) as an opportunity to emphasize the goal of eradication of poverty, challenge the neo-liberal ideology, call for the cancellation of foreign debt and advocate for measures against the massive flow of speculative capital in the "casino economy".

As the UN assesses the results since Copenhagen, the WCC's agenda for Geneva 2000 focuses on the debt issue and on international financial institutions. Looking back over what has happened in the five years since Copenhagen, "I see very little, almost nothing" says Bernardo Mandlate, Methodist Bishop from Maputo, Mozambique. A series of NGO advocacy and lobbying activities continued over that period within the framework of the international campaign for debt cancellation.

For example, the WCC responded to the tragic situation in Mozambique by calling for a total cancellation of the country's debt. The acting general secretary of the WCC, Yorgo Lemopoulos, called for "a form of international solidarity which goes beyond charity to offering justice to this beleaguered nation; to make 'jubilee' a reality and create conditions for them to build houses and inhabit them, to plant vineyards and harvest their fruits." The appeal calls on the WCC member churches in the G8 nations to put pressure on their governments to forgive their bilateral debts with Mozambique and to advocate with multilateral creditors for total cancellation of money owed by Mozambique.

Berma Klein Goldewijk and
Bas de Gaay Fortman
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Kyriaki Karidoyanes Fitzgerald, editor
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