Children from the La Esperanza indigenous community in the department of Arauca in Colombia. The LWF has been supporting communities like this which have been displaced by the decades-long armed conflict in the country. © LWF/DWS Colombia/M. Sjögren
General Secretary: Incorporate Principles for Just, Sustainable Peace
The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) has welcomed the announcement of peace talks in Colombia and urged that the dialogue incorporate principles for a just and sustainable peace.
In a public statement issued today, LWF General Secretary Rev. Martin Junge expressed thanksgiving and hope that the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are entering into peace talks.
The LWF Council meeting June 2012 in Bogotá had been “deeply moved by the challenges and difficulties of people living in poverty in the context of Colombia’s long-standing conflict,” which has forcibly displaced one out of every ten of the nation’s inhabitants, Junge said.
The LWF’s highest governing body in between Assemblies had observed with concern the disproportionate effect of the violence and social injustice on women, children, indigenous people and Afro-Colombians, he added.
Junge called for the negotiations between the Colombian government and the armed opposition groups “to incorporate the principles for a just and sustainable peace” outlined by the LWF Council at its 2012 meeting.
“Every Colombian citizen needs to have the opportunity to take part in the peace-building process,” Council members had affirmed.
Also, the peace-building process needed to happen “from the highest level to the grassroots, as well as from the grassroots level upwards.”
A change of mindset was crucial as well, stated the Council, proposing that “the imagery of dialogue” replace “the imagery of violence.”
Further, victims should not be excluded for they “play a key part in the dialogue of peace.”
The general secretary underlined the LWF’s commitment to “working together for a just, peaceful and reconciled world,” as laid out in the communion of churches’ vision statement, and echoed the Council’s appeal to Lutherans around the world “to pray and engage with and for the churches and people of Colombia.”
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