The World Council of Churches (WCC), with an open letter and prayer, shared its hopes for peace on the eve of the first summit between the U.S. and Russian presidents, which will take place in Geneva on 16 June.
The work of the World Council of Churches (WCC) related to disarmament continues to endure and expand, even as the world faces increasing injustice and tensions that threaten peace on a daily basis.
Banning nuclear weapons is something like climbing a mountain. The summit of this mountain – agreement on a ban treaty – is now clearly in view at United Nations negotiations in New York.
Nearly 70 percent of the world’s countries have now begun negotiations to ban nuclear weapons. One-hundred-thirty-two governments from all regions took part in the first-ever such talks at the United Nations on 27-31 March. There is concerted opposition to the talks from nuclear-armed governments and their allies.
“Negotiate a legally-binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons”. Do it “in 2017”. Make sure the negotiations are “open to all states” and include civil society. These are key points in a much-disputed report adopted last week by a United Nations working group of more than 100 countries meeting in Geneva.
On the occasion of US President Barack Obama’s visit to the Japanese city of Hiroshima on 27 May, WCC general secretary Rev. Dr Olav Fykse Tveit sent greetings, noting that this is a time when signs of peace and justice are sorely needed.
When Stephen Sidorak speaks about “A Pilgrimage of Justice and Peace to Japan on a Matter of Life and Death” his voice rings with passion, commitment and regret along with a yearning that nuclear weapons must never be used in anger again.
The nuclear attack on Hiroshima, Japan in 1945 revealed the brutality and dangerous logic of war, money and power, according to an Indigenous Anglican bishop from Canada.
Seventy years after nuclear fireballs exploded over two Japanese cities, an ecumenical group of pilgrims has come to Hiroshima to listen to those who survived and renew the struggle against their own countries’ continued reliance on nuclear weapons.
“It is time to abandon all support for retaining nuclear weapons. It is time to refuse to accept that the mass destruction of other people can be a legitimate form of protection of ourselves,” said Bishop Mary Ann Swenson at the Peace Memorial Cathedral in Hiroshima.
Church leaders from seven countries currently making historic choices for or against outlawing nuclear weapons will embark on a pilgrimage in early August to the two Japanese cities that were decimated by atomic bombs 70 years ago.
Four weeks of negotiations on nuclear weapons came to a close on Friday 22 May, as the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty ended without a formal agreement. Despite the outcome, a bright new prospect towards a world without nuclear weapons has emerged in the form of a Humanitarian Pledge, now endorsed by 107 states, which promises “to fill the legal gap for the prohibition and elimination of nuclear weapons”.
After a concerted examination of the evidence presented at the Vienna Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons and two earlier conferences, 44 of the states present called for a ban on nuclear weapons. The host government Austria added momentum with a specific, cooperative pledge to “fill the legal gap for the prohibition of nuclear weapons” and eliminate them.
A reflection on the recent United Nations meeting on the Non-Proliferation Treaty, by Jonathan Frerichs, WCC programme executive for peace building and disarmament, and member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
World leaders at the United Nations last week backed two steps in relation to the Arms Trade Treaty, promoted by churches, to make people safer through new laws to control deadly weapons.
