Other Articles & News

2003, Ecumenical Forum of European Christian Women

Called to Compassion and Freedom: Christian Women Shaping the Future of Europe

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Called to Compassion and Freedom – Christian Women Shaping the Future of Europe

A Message from the Sixth General Assembly of the
Ecumenical Forum of European Christian Women
held in the Czech Republic 25 August – 1 September 2002

Compassion and freedom are a gift of God, to women and men, said Bishop Jana Šilerováá of the Czech Hussite Church. Dr Gret Haller, from Switzerland, Human Rights Ombudsperson for OSCE to Bosnia Herzegovina, urged women to participate fully in politics and in the whole life of the state, in order to help shape the future of Europe. She said that our contribution could challenge existing patterns, which were often one-sided and male dominated. The senator of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, Jaroslava Moserová, drew attention to the duty and power of women, in their capacity as mothers and educators, to break the vicious cycle of hate which passes from generation to generation. A paradigmatic view of relationship and community came from the Bible Study on Philippians 2:1-5 by Carmen Marquez, a Spanish theologian. The image of the Triune God provides a pattern for human communities, through unity in diversity.

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2003, Roma

The Roma in Central and Eastern Europe Today

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The Roma in Central and Eastern Europe Today. An Appalling Situation

Richard Crowson

For the last three and a half years I have been working with the Roma in the Czech Republic, and my eyes have been opened to an extent I would never have believed possible.

The circumstances of the Roma in Central and Eastern Europe today are absolutely appalling. One basic aspect of their plight is that they are readily distiguishable by their colour, and have thus provided an easy target for persecution over the centuries. They were targeted for genocide persecuted by the Nazis; at the end of the Second World War there was not a single Roma left in the Czech lands; all those there today are recent immigrants, mainly from Slovakia. Today throughout Central and Eastern Europe they are subject to overt discrimination, exacerbated in a context of growing right-wing nationalism: far-right groups explicitly target them. They are routinely excluded from cafes, swimming pools, dance halls. Most of the countries concerned have passed anti-discriminatory legislation, in line with EU norms; but these laws are routinely ignored as far as the Roma are concerned.

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2002, Rights - Religious, Human

Religious Rights and Religious Freedom

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Religious Rights and Religious Freedom

Freedom of Religion in the World Today

Kevin Boyle

This is an important time to discuss the subject of religious freedom in the world: it was in the context of religion that the western world (previously largely remote from terrorism, if we exclude these islands) absorbed the horror of the attacks of 11 September in the United States. In the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights we were correct at an early point to label the attacks as crimes against humanity in international law. Militant Islam espoused and executed those attacks and undoubtedly the nexus long evidenced in history of different religions being linked to violence and conflict was reinforced worldwide. The 11 September attacks were carried out in the name of God and in the aftermath it is not the most propitious time to envisage greater religious freedom Indeed under the banner of counter-terrorism we have seen a backlash against various religions, including Islam, in many countries.

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2002, World Council of Churches

The Challenges facing CEC and the WCC

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The Challenges Facing the Conference of European Churches and the World Council of Churches

The Challenges Facing the Conference of European Churches (CEC)

Keith Jenkins

The main challenges currently facing CEC relate to the European Union.

Work is now proceeding in the EU’s ‘Convention on the Future of Europe’. Its report will contain recommendations for the restructuring of the EU – perhaps a draft constitution or constitutional treaty for the Union.

One reason why restructuring is necessary is the imminent expansion of the EU. Structures originally designed for six countries creak with 15 and will be paralysed with a bigger membership.

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2002, Belarus, Ukraine

The Religious Situation in Belarus in 2002

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The Religious Situation in Belarus in 2002

Vera Rich

Belarus is supposed to be a secular state. President Lukashenka describes himself as a nonbeliever, but aims to reintegrate Belarus into the Soviet Union, and he sees an alliance with the Orthodox Church as useful in this respect. The latter is an exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate), and its head is still Filaret of Minsk, as it was in Soviet times.

Lukashenka has given the Orthodox Church many privileges, many of which are unconstitutional. For example any religious publishing house in Belarus has to have the approval of the Orthodox Church, whatever its denomination. The president has often denounced the Roman Catholic Church as a tool of NATO and anti-Belarusian. More and more restrictions are placed on foreign clergy. Now the situation is that no ‘servant of a foreign religion’ can go to Belarus without the permission of the government’s Committee for Religious Affairs. There has been an attempt by two or three priests of the Orthodox Church to link up with the Autocephalous Belarusian Orthodox Church based in Canada.

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2002, Ukraine

Ukraine in 2002

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Ukraine in 2002

Sarah Birch

Introduction

In the area of today’s Ukraine there is a tradition of foreign rule and of resistance to it. Before the Soviet period Ukraine had had only fleeting and unstable experience of autonomous statehood. In the twentieth century Ukraine was formed in stages, following the First and Second World Wars, on the ruins of collapsed empires. Ukraine gained territorial integrity for the first time as part of the Soviet Union, and won autonomy as a sovereign state only following the Soviet collapse in 1991. This fitful formation has left a number of social and cultural marks on the republic:

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2001, Europe, European Union

Eastern Europe’s Churches and the Challenge of E.U. integration

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Eastern Europe’s Churches and the Challenge of EU Integration

Jonathan Luxmoore

Introduction

Westerners generally do not realise how central a foreign policy issue the question of EU membership has been in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. It is the nexus around which all economic and political discussion has taken place. There are no significant differences between the centre-right and the former communists (the centre-left) on the issue; only some fringe parties are opposed to EU membership. The candidate countries watch each other like hawks, especially in the context of EU Commission reports on the extent of their readiness to join. Visiting EU ministers are always asked same first question: ‘When do you think we’ll be allowed to join?’

Five post-communist countries have been negotiating membership since March 1998: the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland and Slovenia (in addition to Cyprus and Malta). Five others have opened negotiations since – Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia – and some of these are now catching up. The Nice summit in December 2000 agreed that enlargement could take place from 1 January 2003, and Poland hopes to complete the process in time for the European Parliament elections in 2004.

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2001, Europe (general), European Union

EU Expansion: a Mainly Political Perspective

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EU Expansion: a Mainly Political Perspective

Ken Medhurst

Before the fall of communism in 1989 there had been three successive EU enlargements which expanded membership from the original six countries (the Benelux countries, the Federal German Republic, France and Italy) to include a total of twelve. These enlargements involved Britain, Denmark, Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain.

The collapse of communism in principle created a wholly new situation entailing the possibility of a major eastward expansion. The reunification of Germany and the consequent incorporation of the former GDR into the EU was a harbinger of subsequent opportunities and difficulties.

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2001, Europe, Europe (general)

Peace and Reconciliation in Europe

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Peace and Reconciliation in Europe

Richard Seebohm

Introduction

I have spent the last three years as Representative in Brussels of the Quaker Council for European Affairs, lobbying the European institutions on the subjects of peace, human rights and economic justice. One of our outcomes was a club of 17 NGOs with whom we set up the European Peacebuilding Liaison Office. It began work in January 2001, with the task of information-sharing in order to link the non-violent conflict resolution capabilities of the NGOs with the evolution of European Union policies for crisis management.

It is one thing to avert crises, but quite another to solve the problem of enabling people who have been intent on destroying each other to learn once more to live alongside each other.

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2001, Truth Commissions

The Work of Truth Commissions

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The Work of Truth Commissions

Roberta Bacic

Notes on Truth Commissions

Truth commissions have been set up in countries that have endured violent conditions and where human rights have been systematically violated. In these countries the new political regime, where there has been war, or transitional governments, where there has been a dictatorship, do not have a judicial system capable of dealing with the consequences of the past. The existing systems cannot be relied upon to prosecute those responsible for previous human rights violations, because usually violence has been perpetrated by the state and its institutions, including the Justice Department. At the very least these institutions have been culpable for their silence, ignoring or denying the violence.

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