wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] PC(USA) missionary receives Wallenberg Award

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Note #8001 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

PC(USA) missionary receives Wallenberg Award
03475
November 6, 2003

PC(USA) missionary receives Wallenberg Award

Haruun Ruun honored for peacemaking accomplishments in Sudan

by Alexa Smith
and John Filiatreau

LOUISVILLE - The Rev. Haruun Ruun, a Presbyterian Church (USA) mission worker
who has worked tirelessly for peace in his native Sudan, is the 2003
recipient of the prestigious Spirit of Raoul Wallenberg Humanitarian Award.
The award will be presented by Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria during a Nov.
8 ceremony at the American Swedish Historical Museum in Philadelphia.

Ruun, a mission co-worker jointly appointed by the Reformed Church in America
and the Church of the Brethren, is the executive secretary of the New Sudan
Council of Churches (NSCC), an ecumenical organization that represents seven
Christian denominations in southern Sudan, including the Sudanese
Presbyterian church.

 The Wallenberg Award, presented once every three years by the American
Swedish Historical Society, is named in honor of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish
diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews from Nazi death camps while
serving at Sweden's legation in Budapest in 1944 and 1945. He was arrested by
Soviet authorities in 1945 and was never seen again.

After receiving the award from Princess Victoria, the heir to Sweden's
throne, Ruun will present the museum's first Raoul Wallenberg lecture at
Philadelphia's Gershman YM-YWHA at 1:30 p.m. on Nov. 9. The lecture is
co-sponsored by the Gershman Y and is open to the public. Admission is $10
and reservations are recommended.

Ruun was nominated for the award by the staff of the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, which wrote that he "has courageously
accepted the danger of being a peacemaker so that others can live and have a
genuine hope of peace coming some day to Sudan."

Ruun delivered a lecture at the Holocaust Museum in 2001, concluding: "Let me
hope that somehow human beings will face the reality and the fact that we
have been created to live in this world, to share whatever is in this world
for us in the rightful way, in the peaceful way, the dignified way, for the
good of mankind."

The award recognizes Ruun for many years of peacemaking work in war-torn
Sudan. The latest initiative of the NSCC concerns peace monitoring. The
council is also developing plans to offer peacemaking and peacekeeping
training for church members.

The council was established in 1989 in Torit, Sudan, but was driven out of
the country by government troops in 1992, relocating its headquarters to
Nairobi, Kenya. It helps member churches deliver social services, education,
disaster relief and pastoral care to the people and churches of Sudan.

The Sudan People's Liberation Army has been fighting since 1983 for
independence for southern Sudan. International agencies estimate that the war
has killed 1.5 million people and displaced 4 million in a country of about 2
million Christians, 26 million Muslims and 9 million people who hold to
traditional religious beliefs.

Under Ruun's leadership, the council has focused on people-to-people peace
initiatives, tenaciously maintaining a non-political stance. By bringing
various Sudanese ethnic groups together to work out their differences, its
efforts have brought ceasefires in many longstanding local conflicts.

Historic tribal rivalries, intensified by Arab militia groups supported by
Sudan's government in Khartoum, have kept the largely Christian southern part
of the country divided and frustrated the various groups' common desire for
self-determination.

The NSCC under Ruun's leadership also has opposed oil exploration in southern
Sudan, which it claims has destroyed countless homes and villages and forced
many Sudanese off their land without compensation; and relentlessly opposed
the institution of slavery, which persists in the country.

Ruun is a Sudan native with U.S. citizenship. He was evacuated from Sudan for
medical reasons as a boy (he had injured his right arm, which later was
amputated), and was prevented from returning home by an outbreak of war. He
was first elected as the NSCC executive secretary in 1995. He also has been
the chair of the Sudan Interior Church General Council, and has served as a
liaison between international agencies and the Sudanese government.

Ruun's father was a chief of the 3 million-member Dinka people, an ethnic
group that has borne the brunt of government violence. He and many others in
his family were killed by Islamic militants in the mid-1960s in an earlier
phase of the civil war.

One of the NSCC's signal accomplishments has been making peace between the
Dinka and the Nuer, two of the largest tribes in southern Sudan, who share a
long border between their ancestral lands.

The PC(USA) has had mission workers in Sudan for more than a century.

Ruun studied Christian communications at Daystar International Institute in
Kenya before earning a bachelor of arts degree in Bible studies from Columbia
Bible College in South Carolina. He later earned a masters degree in
education and a doctor of ministry degree from Columbia Biblical Seminary. He
has served as chaplain-in-residence in South Carolina's Department of Mental
Health and is certified as a pastoral educator by the Academy for Pastoral
Education.

He was honored in 2001 by Human Rights Watch, a rights organization that
works in 70 countries, for opposing human-rights abuse in Sudan.

He and his wife, Mary Akwot Ajak, live in Columbia, SC, and have five
children.

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