Document
The heritage of the ecumenical Life and Work movement, and the current multilateral cooperation crisis
“I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.” Deuteronomy 30:19
Eighty years ago, delegates of fifty nations were meeting in San Francisco, USA, at the United Nations Conference on International Organization. On 26 June 1945, the conference concluded with the signing of the United Nations Charter, establishing the organization designed to pursue their collectively agreed purposes.
The Charter begins “We the peoples of the United Nations”, and proceeds to affirm a common determination to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, a shared faith in “fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person”, a mutual commitment to “establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained”, and a vision for promoting “social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom”.
Emerging from the ashes of the Second World War, the essence of the San Francisco conference and of the UN Charter is the principle of multilateral cooperation, and the commitment to collective action among the nations to confront global threats and to promote the welfare of all people.
Twenty years before the San Francisco conference, the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work was convened in Stockholm, Sweden, at the initiative of Archbishop Nathan Söderblom. The 1925 Stockholm Conference, held in the period after the bitter and bloody conflict of the ‘Great War’ and before the even greater horrors of the Second World War, addressed many of the same challenges, and articulated a common Christian calling to work for justice and peace in the world. The Stockholm Conference gave rise the ecumenical Life and Work movement, one of the foundations on which the World Council of Churches was established. The significance for the wider world of this movement among the churches was recognized in the award of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize to Archbishop Söderblom.
The Life and Work Centenary Consultation convened by the WCC Commission of the Churches on International Affairs (CCIA) in Athens on 18-22 May 2025 observed that “By their coming together as well as by their discussions, the participants in the Stockholm Conference provided an example and a message of encounter, dialogue, and cooperation as the path to peace, justice, and reconciliation.”
Following this message and this example, the World Council of Churches since its establishment in 1948 – preceded in 1946 by the creation of CCIA – has worked not only to proclaim to the world a message of peace and justice through encounter and dialogue, but to embody and practice it.
Throughout its history WCC has sought to promote and advance multilateral cooperation among the nations as well as among the churches. Moreover, from the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) the WCC has contributed actively to the development and promotion of international law to guard against the crimes, abuses and existential threats so brutally demonstrated in the conflicts of the first half of the 20th century.
Today, those threats are again ascendant, and they challenge the foundational principles on which the United Nations was established 80 years ago.
The Central Committee of the WCC is meeting at a time of converging and escalating global crises. Renewed, intensifying and entrenched conflicts in the Middle East, Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and other places – and the humanitarian crises and violations of human dignity and rights that attend them – once more confront the conscience of the world’s people. Crimes of the worst kind are being committed against individuals and whole communities with little or no accountability. Arms races have resumed, and militarization is increasing. The taboo against the use of nuclear weapons – the most catastrophically, indiscriminately and intergenerationally destructive weapons ever devised by human beings – is being weakened. Economic injustice and inequality are spiralling to extreme and unprecedented levels. New technologies are disrupting not only economies but also social and political systems. And, unforeseen 80 or 100 years ago, the accelerating global climate crisis presents a challenge on a scale never encountered by any previous generation.
The Central Committee recognizes in the context of such an unprecedented convergence of global crises that cooperation among the nations and peoples of the world has never been more urgently and critically necessary. This is a moment in which our actions or inaction – especially with regard to climate justice – will define the future for our children, and their children’s children, and for the whole Living Planet. And yet in this vital moment the institutions and very principles of multilateral cooperation created in the aftermath of the Second World War, and for which churches and Christians around the world advocated and worked, are under sustained attack for short-term self-interested political and economic reasons, compounded by the proliferation of mis- and dis-information.
We observe with deep concern that the political will for multilateral cooperation is especially being undermined by the proliferation of exclusory nationalist movements in many countries particularly in the Global North. We recognize that the emergence of such movements is often a reaction to increasing migration of people from the Global South after the historic and ongoing impoverishment and destabilization of their own countries due to colonial exploitation, neo-colonialism, destructive extractive industries, unsustainable and unjust debt burdens, and the escalating impacts of the climate crisis, all largely originating in the Global North.
We recall the WCC 11th Assembly statements on “The Things That Make for Peace: Moving the World to Reconciliation and Unity” and on “The Living Planet: Seeking a Just and Sustainable Global Community”, and acknowledge that the challenges described therein have only increased in the intervening period, and the responses proposed remain largely unfulfilled.
The Central Committee affirms that in every age and every generation, Christians are continuously called to renew their witness for peace, for justice, and for the integrity of creation. At the same time, we recognize the unprecedented dimensions of current global threats, and the imponderable consequences of inaction.
The WCC Central Committee, meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, on 18-24 June 2025, sounds an alarm, stressing the emergency of this moment and calling all people of goodwill to the defence of the principles that undergird our collective peace and security, our shared responsibility for protecting the Living Planet, and our common vision for justice, dignity and equal rights for all.
We highlight the legacy of the ecumenical Life and Work movement, our Christian ethics and faith principles, and our unity in Christ as a transnational community of faith, as sources and bulwarks of these principles.
On this 80th anniversary of the establishment of the United Nations, and 100 years after the 1925 Stockholm Conference, the Central Committee,
- Reaffirms the WCC’s fundamental commitment to and support for multilateral cooperation among the nations of the world as the only adequate means of addressing the challenges confronting the global community and the Living Planet, and for the United Nations as the leading instrument for such cooperation.
The United Nations is certainly a flawed instrument, with the flaws built into the design, reflecting the dispensation of powers and national self-interests of the victors at the end of the Second World War. This is particularly evident in the construction of the UN Security Council, in which the leading world powers of that time arrogated to themselves permanent membership and veto powers, which have historically and particularly in recent times too often been exercised to exempt themselves and their closest allies from the obligations and responsibilities which should be common to all. Likewise, double standards in the application of international law, especially human rights law, has diminished the perceived legitimacy of these rules in the minds of those against whom these double standards have been exercised.
The Pact for the Future, adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 2024, lays out some important directions and needed reforms. But even deeper and more fundamental reform will be required, including of the Security Council itself, in order to restore the organization’s credibility and to address the historic exclusion of nations still under colonial domination at the time of the 1945 San Francisco Conference. Mechanisms for such reform are provided for in the UN Charter (especially Article 109), but they have never been properly utilized.
The Central Committee therefore:
- Supports and aligns itself with all genuine efforts to reform the United Nations so as to strengthen its effectiveness and efficiency as a vehicle for multilateral cooperation, not to weaken it.
We take note of the UN Secretary-General’s UN80 reform plans, which include the constructive consolidation of some closely related mandates and structures. However, we underline the importance of ensuring that the UN’s capacity to deliver on its central purposes of peace and security, human rights, and development must not be compromised by an excessive focus on cost-cutting. Moreover, technical reform processes without the underlying political will cannot ensure real and constructive reform.
Therefore, the Central Committee:
- Appeals to the nations and governments of the world to recognize the gravity and urgency of the current global situation, and the urgent necessity of intensified multilateral cooperation to meet the constellation of converging global crises, putting aside competition, division, isolationist nationalism, and confrontation, and recommitting to such cooperation through an adequately resourced United Nations.
Unlike the context in 1925 or in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, many treaties and other normative instruments of international law and many related accountability mechanisms have in the meantime been established. Especially in a context of renewed and escalating divisions and confrontations, these laws and mechanisms can serve as important guardrails and protections against aggression, oppression and abuses by the powerful. However, for the same short-term and self-interested reasons, these laws and mechanisms are also under attack. The rule of law and the independence of the judiciary are being deliberately undermined, to the peril of all who lack such power.
Therefore, the Central Committee,
- Requests the WCC General Secretary to develop relations and establish forms of cooperation with Governments and institutions to defend and assert the principles and mechanisms of international law, the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.
In this perilous moment, churches and Christians are called not to silently observe the disastrous trajectory of our nations and world towards division, injustice, conflict and the marring of God’s precious and unique Creation, but to raise a prophetic voice, drawing on our faith principles and unity in Christ, and on the heritage of the Life and Work movement.
Accordingly, the Central Committee:
- Urges all WCC member churches and ecumenical partners to engage in a Pilgrimage of Justice, Reconciliation and Unity, not as an abstract slogan, but as an active and urgent witness in our societies and towards our governments against the prevailing culture of conflict, confrontation and division, and for unity and reconciliation.
He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8
