Churches in South Sudan are appealing for humanitarian assistance, amidst fears that the consequences of climate change, macro-economic shocks, and the war in Sudan could sink the country further into the worst humanitarian crisis since independence.
In Renk, a small South Sudanese town on the banks of the White Nile, churches are working to help thousands of people fleeing the war in the neighbouring Sudan.
As South Sudan readied to welcome visiting world Christian leaders, church officials in the country articulated a range of expectations, including a strong call for peace and reconciliation.
At the World Council of Churches 11th Assembly in Karlsruhe Germany, Jackcilia Salathiel Ebere will be carrying the voices of women from South Sudan who are crying for peace and justice.
Elisama Wani Daniel, from the Province of the Episcopal Church of Sudan, spoke about the prophetic role of the church in helping the people of South Sudan, which he describes as “a country that has gone through many struggles in its history.”
When heads of Churches in South Sudan unveiled the Action Plan for Peace in the Rwandan Capital, Kigali in 2015, the immediate aim was to stop the war.
A church leader in South Sudan is urging the international community to keep its focus on the growing humanitarian crisis in the world’s youngest nation, as the globe beams its attention on the conflict in Ukraine.
While the World Council of Churches (WCC) deeply appreciates peace-building efforts in South Sudan, the WCC is also calling attention to the dire circumstances in which the people of South Sudan are still forced to lead their daily lives.
An ecumenical leader in South Sudan has appealed to the world not to give up on his country, which during the first decade of its independence has repeatedly slid backward into political and ethnic violence.
South Sudan came into existence ten years ago this week, but there is little to celebrate for the world's newest nation, Rev. Fr James Oyet Latansio, general secretary of the South Sudan Council of Churches.
A two-day conference in Buea, Cameroon, has empowered religious leaders to offer vital input into a peace plan in the divided nation. Rev. Samuel Fonki Forba, president of the Council of Protestant Churches in Cameroon, said that the conference helped religious leaders build their capacity in the area of peace.
When a group of Cameroonian religious leaders from both English and French-speaking communities, both Christian and Muslim, met to discuss the crisis in the Anglophone western provinces of Cameroon, they committed themselves to being "diplomats of peace.”