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“The Pact for the Future, adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2024, lays out some important directions and needed reforms,” notes the statement. “But even deeper and more fundamental reform will be required, including of the Security Council itself, in order to restore the organization’s credibility and to address the historic exclusion of nations still under colonial domination at the time of the 1945 San Francisco Conference.”
Mechanisms for such reform are provided for in the UN Charter (especially Article 109), but they have never been properly utilized, notes the statement.
“Unlike the context in 1925 or in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, many treaties and other normative instruments of international law and many related accountability mechanisms have in the meantime been established,” reads the text. “The rule of law and the independence of the judiciary are being deliberately undermined, to the peril of all who lack such power.”
The WCC central committee requested that the WCC general secretary develop relations and establish forms of cooperation with likeminded governments and institutions to defend and assert the principles and mechanisms of international law, the rule of law, and the independence of the judiciary.
“In this perilous moment, churches and Christians are called not to silently observe the disastrous trajectory of our nations and world towards division, injustice, conflict, and the marring of God’s precious and unique creation, but to raise a prophetic voice, drawing on our faith principles and unity in Christ, and on the heritage of the Life and Work movement,” reads the statement.
Accordingly, the central committee urges “all WCC member churches and ecumenical partners to engage in a Pilgrimage of Justice, Reconciliation, and Unity, not as an abstract slogan, but as an active and urgent witness in our societies and towards our governments against the prevailing culture of conflict, confrontation and division, and for unity and reconciliation.”
The WCC central committee is convening 18-24 June in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Statement on the 80th Anniversary of the United Nations
WCC Central Committee, June 2025
WCC general secretary reflects on daring to hope amid struggle (WCC news release, 18 June 2025)
Welcomed by African churches, WCC central committee opens (WCC news release, 19 June 2025)
