wfn.org | WCC FEATURE: A world safer from nuclear danger in 2009? Yes!

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World Council of Churches - Feature

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>For immediate release - 27/01/2009 09:18:59

WILL THE WORLD BE SAFER FROM NUCLEAR DANGER IN 2009? MANY,
INCLUDING CHURCHES, SAY YES.

>By Jonathan Frerichs (*)

Prepare for some good news in 2009. Despite the terrible start
in Gaza and other endemic conflicts, governments committed to
shared security are set to reach an historic milestone this year.
Specifically, the number of countries protected by
nuclear-weapon-free zones is set to jump to 110 countries from 56
at present. 

The change will come from an African capital, like Windhoek or
Bujumbura, as soon as two more governments ratify the treaty
making Africa a nuclear-weapon-free zone. Churches are promoting
the step, and linking Africa's action to the need for similar
progress in the Middle East.

"This will be good news on the nuclear front for Africa and the
world," notes Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat, a senior African
statesman. Kiplagat is leading a World Council of Churches (WCC)
initiative to help bring the Africa Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone
Treaty into force, with church action nationally to support an
international goal. 

A recent ecumenical delegation to Namibia received a positive
response from top government officials there. Ratification of the
Africa treaty will mean that the whole southern hemisphere and
adjoining regions are protected. Latin America and the Caribbean,
Southeast Asia, the South Pacific and Central Asia have also set
up zones that exclude nuclear arms and related activities. 

The focus on collective international security has been growing
for months, with ecumenical participation of different kinds.
"The commitment of world religions to shared security means
bringing governments to make good on their promise to free the
world of nuclear weapons," WCC president for Asia Soritua Nababan
told a summit of world religious leaders in Japan on the eve of
last year's G-8 meeting. 

The advent of a new administration in the United States has
already helped push nuclear treaties higher on the world agenda.
Curbing nuclear fuels and banning all nuclear tests will be
central issues at major United Nations conferences the WCC will
attend in Geneva and New York in 2009. For churches, the trend
means that 60 years of disarmament policies reinforced by all WCC
Assemblies have a future again after years of frustration. 

"You will see fundamental transformation of US nuclear
policies," an adviser to President Obama during his election
campaign, Joseph Cirincione, told groups including the WCC at a
European Parliament conference last month. "These will include
reaching out early to the Russian government and negotiating deep
cuts in nuclear arsenals," said Cirincione, who is president of a
fund that builds civil society capacity in the field, the
Ploughshares Foundation. 

In a major address late last year, UN secretary general Ban
Ki-Moon called the abolition of nuclear weapons "a global public
good of the highest order". He said progress would come via the
rule of law, including treaties establishing nuclear-weapon-free
zones in Africa and, unavoidably, the Middle East. The UN leader
noted the essential role of the main nuclear arms control treaty
(known by its acronym, NPT) and the UN Conference on Disarmament
in Geneva. Ecumenical and interfaith delegations attend both
forums regularly.

To promote the nuclear-weapon-free zones in Africa and the
Middle East, the WCC has established contacts in 50 countries
with representatives of governments, civil society and religious
groups. 

The Middle East project is based on cooperation among the three
Abrahamic faiths, including some of the signatories of a historic
letter from Muslim to Christian leaders in 2007 which condemned
weapons of mass destruction. Both the Africa and Middle East
initiatives implement WCC Assembly and governing body
resolutions. 

>Uranium, a dangerous resource

"Africa has enormous nuclear resources as well as a calling and
commitment to disarmament and to keeping out nuclear weapons,"
says Ambassador Kiplagat. Namibia, for example, is on course to
become the world's largest exporter of uranium. Its leaders are
eager to protect the resource from outside control. 

The Africa nuclear-weapon-free zone would provide countries like
Namibia with safeguards over security, environment and commerce.
Without such regulation, a country with this rare and dangerous
mineral may face a situation where uranium is traded like blood
diamonds, United Congregational Church in Southern Africa
president Andre September noted during the WCC meetings in
Namibia. 

Professor Tinyiko Maluleke, chairperson of the South Africa
Council of Churches, told the WCC delegation that in Africa
nuclear energy and armaments have to be seen "through different
lenses – in relation to a 'people's budget', for example, and
against the need for human security and for environmental
protection." South Africa is the only African state that has had
nuclear weapons.

"It is an exercise of faith to meet the common threat that
nuclear arms pose to human life, to all forms of life and to the
stewardship of God's creation," WCC president Nababan told the
world religious leaders summit in Japan last year. 

Nababan noted that reducing the nuclear threat now will bring
benefits in different fields. He said that churches see the
nuclear crisis as a political, economic, environmental, and
spiritual crisis. 

It is political, he said, because the world is divided into a
few nuclear "haves" and many nuclear "have-nots"; economic,
because nuclear weapons programs are the costliest items in the
world's largest military budgets; environmental because, like
climate change, nuclear weapons are a misuse of energy that is
sufficient to threaten life on the planet; spiritual and
psychological because nuclear weapons demand of their owners the
opposite of what God intends for the human community.

Recent moves against nuclear weapons also include a global civil
society initiative to eliminate nuclear arsenals, called "Global
Zero"; 500 cities in 2008 joining an anti-nuclear coalition
called Mayors for Peace which now links 2,600 city governments; a
new European Union proposal for a global ban on nuclear testing
and on fissile material production; UK churches lobbying against
their government's renewal of its nuclear arsenal; and a recent
ecumenical conference in Seoul that challenged churches to
respond globally to nuclear threats against nations. 

Churches and related groups that work against nuclear and other
weapons of mass destruction are contributing to the WCC Decade to
Overcome Violence ( http://overcomingviolence.org ), to its final
regional focus on Africa and to the 2011 International Ecumenical
Peace Convocation. The 2011 event takes place in the Caribbean,
which is part of the world's first nuclear-weapon-free zone.

>[1,018 words] 

(*) Jonathan Frerichs, WCC programme executive for nuclear
disarmament and the Middle East, is a member of the Evangelical
Lutheran Church in America.

>WCC advocacy for justice and accountability:
>http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=3109

>International Ecumenical Peace Convocation
>http://overcomingviolence.org/iepc

WCC Assembly minute on the elimination of nuclear arms:
http://www.oikoumene.org/?id=1956 

Opinions expressed in WCC Features do not necessarily reflect
WCC policy. This material may be reprinted freely, providing
credit is given to the author. 

Additional information:Juan Michel,+41 22 791 6153 +41 79 507
6363 media@wcc-coe.org

The World Council of Churches promotes Christian unity in faith,
witness and service for a just and peaceful world. An ecumenical
fellowship of churches founded in 1948, today the WCC brings
together 349 Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican and other churches
representing more than 560 million Christians in over 110
countries, and works cooperatively with the Roman Catholic
Church. The WCC general secretary is Rev. Dr Samuel Kobia, from
the Methodist Church in Kenya. Headquarters: Geneva, Switzerland.