News and stories

"Please remind the world that we are no longer at war," a high-ranking government official from Sierra Leone told an international ecumenical team visiting churches and ecumenical organizations in Liberia and Sierra Leone from 2 to 8 November.

To achieve reconciliation takes nothing less than the transformation of society, the World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia said in Managua, during a 2-5 November visit to Nicaragua.

With its streets full of bicycle riders transporting luggage or passengers alongside mini buses, Gulu in northern Uganda looks as peaceful as any small African town. However, its inhabitants, who say now they want nothing but peace, have to come to terms with the terrible crimes that were committed here during 22 years of civil war.

In Liberia, Sierra Leone and South Africa, churches have played a major role in reconciliation between groups who had been in violent conflict with each other for decades. Two international ecumenical teams sent by the World Council of Churches (WCC) will visit the three countries during the next two weeks.

An international ecumenical delegation led by the general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, will visit Nicaragua from 2 to 5 November.

Guns have fallen silent in northern Uganda since the signing of a permanent ceasefire. Yet, church leaders are worried about the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) delaying the signature of the final peace agreement, they told an international ecumenical delegation visiting the country.

The plight of people displaced by war will be the main topic of a "Living Letters" visit to Uganda, 27 October to 2 November. An international ecumenical delegation sent by the World Council of Churches (WCC) will discuss with representatives of churches, state and civil society about the protection of refugees, with a specific focus on sexual violence and the vulnerability of children.

On a recent travel to Indonesia, a "Living Letters" team representing the member churches of the World Council of Churches (WCC) discovered seeds of hope for a world without violence. In Sulawesi, the Moluccas, West Timor and other islands they saw how the churches were working side by side with their communities and those of other faiths to bring peace and the improvement of all people.

The concrete wall behind the altar of the Christian Church of Central Sulawesi in Palu, Indonesia still bears marks from two bullets just three inches to the right of a framed cross-stitch portrait of Jesus Christ.

Churches working for peace in Indonesia - a country which over the last decades had to cope with repeated outbreaks of ethnic and religious conflicts, the integration of internally displaced people as well as refugees from outside its borders - will receive a solidarity visit of an international ecumenical delegation sent by the World Council of Churches (WCC) from 17 to 24 July.