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2001-66

News Briefs

Chiluba guest speaker for Youth Week

     (Times of Zambia) Zambian president Frederick Chiluba cautioned his 
country's youth not to be used for "evil vices" and called on them to desist from 
violence during Youth Week prayer at the Anglican Cathedral of the Holy Cross in 
Lusaka, Zambia.

     "The youth should not be used for evil things, only those which will build 
our country," Chiluba said. "The greatest virtue you have is to speak and keep 
the word of God, without that you will be lost." He added, "Violence should also 
not be allowed to be part of our experience as a nation. When impatience grips 
the youth, they are driven into doing undesirables, youth should be patient and 
evolutionary."

     The Rev. Jackson Katete, an Anglican priest, issued a challenge to youth to 
stand firm and show the government that they were capable of running the affairs 
of Zambia.

     "We the youth are disappointed in many areas in this country, we want to be 
given the opportunity to have experience to lead. We are tired of being referred 
to as the youth, the leaders of tomorrow--tomorrow is today," he said.

Church leaders encourage a "rethinking" about AIDS

     (African Church Information Service) Governments need to work in close 
collaboration with religious communities if they are to carry out effective 
HIV/AIDS programs, a World Council of Churches (WCC) team told participants at a 
United Nations meeting.

     The WCC team attended a February 26-March 2 consultation in New York City in 
preparation for a special session of the UN General Assembly June 25-27.

     "After 20 years of watching the AIDS pandemic evolve all over the world we 
need a radical rethinking of the ways we respond," the group said in a statement. 
"Faith-based organizations have credible leadership, existing structures and 
effective channels of communication that are present at all levels of society."

     The team acknowledged that religious communities "too often" maintain an 
"awkward silence" about the way AIDS is transmitted. But these communities also 
have a capacity to bring about changes in behavior because "sexual behavior is 
deeply influenced by moral and religious convictions."

     Gideon Byamugisha, an Anglican priest who tested HIV-positive in 1992 and 
who directs a health program for the diocese of Namirembe, reported that in 
Uganda, the "combined prevention approach" has led to "increased abstinence 
levels, reductions in casual sex and increased condom use."

  

   

Churches prepare to discuss illicit trade in small arms

     (African Church Information Service) While disarmament advocates continue to 
seek reductions in nuclear bombs and missiles, the World Council of Churches 
(WCC) Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) wants delegates 
to the July 9-20 United Nations conference to recognize the human significance of 
damage done by uncontrolled small arms and light weapons.

     Anglican bishop Dinis Salamao Sengulane of Mozambique articulated the WCC's 
position, along with Mennonite Ernie Regehr of Canada, at the second of three 
"prepcoms" held January 8-19 at the United Nations.

     Although they kill only one person at a time, Mozambique has found "small 
arms doing big harm," Sengulane said. He stated that people in his country have 
not only read news reports or pondered statistics, but have suffered the deaths 
of their parents and their sons and daughters because of the uncontrolled 
presence of small arms.

     He spoke about a Mozambican church project called "swords into 
ploughshares." After his country's long armed struggle to win independence and 
then conflict between government forces and rebels, huge amounts of guns 
remained. With financing from Canada, Germany, Japan and other countries, 
Mozambique's churches gave farm tools or sewing machines to people who turned in 
guns, thus going beyond simply talking to actually doing disarmament.

     "We collected over 100,000 weapons," Sengulane reported. He said that police 
and military officials made the guns unusable, and in some cases the guns 
themselves were turned into artistic works. "Why can't this be done globally?"

     Regehr, who directs Project Ploughshares at Canada's Institute of Peace and 
Conflict Studies, said the governments of sub-Saharan Africa are "strongly on 
board" the move to get international action on the issue, while the European 
Union is "generally supportive."

     The WCC and the NGOs it works with hope the summer conference will issue a 
declaration acknowledging the urgency of the problem, adopt a plan of action 
"that gives credence to that declaratory statement" and then provide for a review 
process.