wfn.org | WCC - Church of Christ in the Congo targets new ministry

["Sheila Mesa" <smm@wcc-coe.org>]

to uprooted people

World Council of Churches
Press Feature, Feat-01-16
For Immediate Use
20 September 2001

Church of Christ in the Congo targets new ministry to uprooted
people

Raymond Bitemo

When fighting broke out between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda and
Burundi in 1994, about a million refugees fled into what is now
called the Democratic Republic of the Congo (RDC). In 1996,
widespread fighting in the RDC between rebels and government
forces caused further refugee displacement. The devastating civil
conflict in the RDC was renewed in 1998 and fighting continues
sporadically, exacerbating the severe problem of uprooted people
- refugees and internally displaced - in the region.  

As well as doing all it can to try to stop the war, that it sees
as the root cause of uprootedness in the Democratic Republic of
Congo (RDC), the Church of Christ in the Congo (ECC) held an
extensive consultation in Kinshasa, 5-16 August to educate its
leaders and members on the issue of uprooted people and develop
practical responses.  

The ECC is a member of the World Council of Churches (WCC); the
August consultation was followed by a meeting of the ECC
executive committee that focused on the same issues. This article
by Raymond Bitemo is the last in a series of three articles on
uprooted people in the DRC, and part of a longer series on
refugees and internally displaced persons. Bitemo, from
Congo-Brazzaville, was forced to flee his home but now again
lives in Congo-Brazzaville.  

"What is the church doing?" was the question on most
participants' minds on the third day of a consultation on "The
church and the stranger: the Church of Christ in the Congo (ECC)
and the care of uprooted people in the RDC" held in Kinshasa from
5 to 16 August.  Their concern was expressed after they had
listened to a litany of the problems encountered by uprooted
people in the RDC, as recounted by church delegates from the
provinces.  

Responding to the question, "We're on our knees," ECC national
secretary Mgr Marini Bodho admitted. "The size of our country
with its 2,345,000 sq. km., the difficulties of communication,
the war going on in most of the neighbouring countries... all
these things make it difficult for the ECC to help uprooted
people."   

Each of the 62 member churches and communities of the ECC in the
provinces nevertheless tries to offer moral and spiritual support
to uprooted people, and some western churches are distributing
food, clothing, agricultural implements and seed through the
local churches.  But according to a report from the provincial
synod of South Kivu, "The churches' work with refugees is further
complicated by an increase in the number of refugees, and by
tensions developing between refugees and local populations over
humanitarian aid."  For his part, Bruno Miteyo, deputy director
of the Catholic humanitarian organization Caritas, expressed the
view that "none of our churches is doing very much".  A possible
solution, he said, might involve "pooling our efforts with the
ECC to strengthen our capacity for intervention".  

"No country can tackle this alone," argued Professor Georges
Lantam of the University of Lome (Togo) in reference to the
problems encountered by uprooted people in other parts of the
world.  "The problem of uprootedness can only be solved through
international solidarity in humanitarian terms and respect for
the legal provisions applying to uprooted populations," he said. 

Recurring and massive humanitarian crises  

Since independence in 1960, the history of the DRC, then called
Zaire, has been marked by crises - rebellions, red diarrhoea,
resource pillaging and, wars - causing large-scale forced
displacements of the population.  Faced with these recurrent
tragedies, the Church of Christ in Zaire (ECZ) in 1973 set up a
Directorate for Refugees and Emergencies (DRU) whose mission was
to receive, protect and support displaced people and refugees.  

The DRU's main partner was the national office of the UN High
Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), but the service closed down in
the nineties, having mismanaged UNHCR funds.  As of 1975, many
church agencies that until then had supported the ECZ's various
ministries entirely withdrew their support; others maintained a
"bilateral" link with one or other ECZ department.  During this
period, the WCC continued to support the church's ministries,
including the DRU, the latter being part of an Africa-wide
programme run by the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) and
supported by the WCC.  When the ECZ became the ECC in January
1999, this service was reopened as the Ministry of the ECC for
Refugees and Emergencies (MERU), still under AACC direction and
with WCC support.   

Call for commitment

The new body relies on voluntary contributions from ECC member
churches and, above all, on local and overseas partnerships. 
MERU now coordinates all the ECC's efforts to help displaced
people and refugees from war-torn neighbouring countries,
providing them with accommodation, food, medical care and other
services.   

Five internally displaced persons and refugees per day are
referred by the government rehabilitation service to MERU for
medical care in the centres run by ECC member churches.  MERU is
one of the operational partners involved in a long-term
intervention programme set up by the local office of the World
Food Programme (WFP) to help uprooted people.  Along with the
government, WFP and other churches, MERU is also part of a
national coordinating committee for humanitarian affairs chaired
by the Roman Catholic Church.  

Addressing the meeting, the national director of MERU, Rev.
Millengue Mwenelwata, said he hopes that what will come out of
the consultation will be "commitment by the leaders of the
Protestant communities to provide support for uprooted people,
and renewed interest and support for the ECC's work from its
various partners".  Such commitment and support is all the more
important in a context in which international humanitarian NGOs
are tending to hand over responsibility to competent local NGOs. 
 

The meeting made several recommendations on strategies for
strengthening the operational capacity of MERU's national office.
 These included redefining its legal and institutional framework,
strengthening structures and organizing meetings in the provinces
and local communities, holding a "national day of uprooted
people" to make people more aware of the problems, ensuring
transparency in the handling of donations, mobilizing aid locally
and from overseas.  The WCC and the AACC were prominent among the
twenty or so outside partners mentioned.  The ECC for its part
will need to be realistic about what it can do as it takes up the
challenge of its ministry to uprooted people.   

For further information, please contact Karin Achtelstetter,
Media Relations Officer,  Tel:  (+41.22) 791.61.53,  Mobile: 
(+41) 79.284.52.12

**********
The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a fellowship of churches,
now 342, in more than 100 countries in all continents from
virtually all Christian traditions. The Roman Catholic Church is
not a member church but works cooperatively with the WCC. The
highest governing body is the assembly, which meets approximately
every seven years. The WCC was formally inaugurated in 1948 in
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Its staff is headed by general
secretary Konrad Raiser from the Evangelical Church in Germany.

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