[17 March 1999]

BWA leaders endorse statement on issues facing at-risk children

By Wendy Ryan

WASHINGTON (BP)–The Baptist World Alliance executive committee
endorsed “The Oxford Statement on Children at Risk” during its
March 8-11 meeting in Washington.

The statement asks Christian churches to be aware of problems
facing children globally, to support programs to assist at-risk
children and to pray regularly for these children and their
families.

Recommended to the executive committee by the BWA’s Baptist World
Aid committee, the Oxford Statement was adopted at a consultation
on children at risk in Oxford , England, two years ago involving
51 representatives from 38 evangelical ministries from Africa,
Asia, Europe and North and South America.

Among United Nations statistics on children cited at the BWA
meeting:

— more than 35,000 die every day from malnutrition.

— 40 million lose their lives each year by abortion.

— 100 million are abandoned each year and 10 million are
sexually exploited.

— nearly 2 million are killed in war each year and countless
more maimed.

Among other challenges facing at-risk children are drug and
alcohol abuse, child slavery and lack of education, the BWA
executive committee was told.

Already as part of the BWA human rights program, Thorwald
Lorenzen, chair of the BWA Human Rights Commission, has written a
booklet, “The Rights of the Child,” detailing many of the
problems children face and relaying firsthand accounts of BWA
visits to countries where children suffer especially from war.
This booklet is available from the Baptist World Alliance.

In news on another children’s project, Karl Heinz Walter, general
secretary of the European Baptist Federation, reported more than
3,255 children from Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine, countries
most affected by the 1997 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, have been
hosted by Baptist churches in Europe. Walter said studies have
shown beneficial results to children who are able to leave the
affected areas and go away for a vacation and healthful care.

Relief for debtor nations, African development, racism and other
justice and development concerns also were addressed during the
BWA executive committee meeting.

The BWA executive committee again called on Baptists to support
Jubilee 2000, a resolution on relief to debtor nations approved
during BWA General Council meeting in Durban, South Africa.

The BWA president and general secretary will write the alliance’s
192 member bodies and ask them to take action on the resolution
that asks the world’s richer nations to forgive the debts of 30
of the poorest nations as part of the biblical concept of Jubilee
and as a gift to them to begin the new millennium.

Donald Lawrence, president of the BWA youth department who
supports Jubilee 2000, said, “In Jamaica, we spend more on debt
repayment than on development,” while Paul Montacute, director of
Baptist World Aid, said much of the money given for hurricane
relief in Latin America is being used for debt repayment.

“Development is the critical area of need,” said George Younger,
BWA representative to the United Nations in New York, who
underscored especially developmental needs in Africa.

Younger said the United Nations has made the needs of Africa a
special focus and he called on the BWA to do the same. “The BWA
cannot neglect Africa,” he said, “and we must move to the point
where the whole developing world is the focus for our
evangelistic and humanitarian activity.”

African Baptist leaders supported the call for Jubilee and asked
for prayer especially for Angola, Rwanda and Sierra Leone,
countries torn apart by civil war.

Nigerian Baptist leader and BWA Vice President Osadolor Imasogie
also asked Baptists to pray for the newly elected democratic
leader in Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo. Baptists are giving him
their support. Obasanjo, educated in Baptist schools, has said
his three and a half years’ imprisonment or, “sabbatical,” as he
has described it, renewed his Baptist faith and made him more
patient and tolerant.

Imasogie, who describes himself as “a personal friend of the new
president,” said he translated three books Obasanjo had written
in prison, one of which had been smuggled out to Imasogie.

Frank Adams, general secretary of the All Africa Baptist
Fellowship, said African Baptist leaders in their meeting last
July in Durban, South Africa, called on Baptist churches in
Africa to develop and live out an understanding of the gospel
that will address the poverty, war, unemployment, AIDS and other
needs of Africa.

Theodor Angelov, former president of the Bulgarian Baptist Union
and former president of the European Baptist Federation, said
freedom in Europe has created “a new iron curtain of poor and
rich countries.”

“We must help the poor and the hundreds of refugees,” Angelov
said.

Supporting the call of the BWA Summit of Baptists Against Racism
held in Atlanta in January, the executive committee agreed to
take a motion to the July General Council meeting in Dresden,
Germany, that would make the first 10 years of the new millennium
“A Decade to Promote Racial Justice” around the world.

BWA General Secretary Denton Lotz said BWA also will be providing
specific suggestions to member bodies to help in the fight for
racial justice.

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