In view of the alarming world food situation threatening multitudes of the world’s population with famine and starvation, and recognizing the gospel mandate for Christian people to meet such urgent human need:
The Baptist World General Council, meeting in the Caribbean:
1. Has observed with profound concern and apprehension the continuing suffering and oppression of many in El Salvador;
2. Expresses its utmost sympathy with all those who are caught up in the present conflict.
The General Council of the Baptist World Alliance, realizing that many of the world’s peoples are threatened by starvation — by famine, war and natural disaster which have contributed to their desperate plight — we cannot help but recognize the gospel mandate for Christian people to meet such urgent human need.
We affirm our convictions expressed in the Resolution 1982.5 passed last year in Nairobi, Kenya. This resolution endorsed the statement made by the Baptist Union of Sweden of the same year and drew attention to the Moscow Declaration.
ACKNOWLEDGES the actions of Baptists in our own generation in championing religious freedom for all people, especially those who find themselves in a minority situation;
VIEWS WITH ALARM the denial of the right of religious liberty to minority groups such as evangelicals in Bulgaria, Albania, Iran, Ethiopia and the republics of Central Asia, Christians in China, Indonesia and East Timor; and to the Coptic Orthodox and other Christians in Egypt;
The General Council of the Baptist World Alliance, meeting in Montego Bay, Jamaica, July 4-12, 19922;
HAVING received a report from the Baptist World Alliance Human Rights Delegation to El Salvador in January, 1992, and also from our Baptist sisters and brothers in that troubled country;
The General Council of the Baptist World Alliance, meeting in Amman, Jordan, July 5-12, 1987, welcomes the vision of the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America for the year 2000 A.D. to be recognized as a Year of Peace to mark the beginning of the third Christian millennium.
WHEREAS, estimates of the number of chronically hungry people range from 500 million to one billion, from one-eighth to one-fourth of the world’s population; and
Once again WE EXPRESS OUR PROFOUND CONCERN over international tensions, the armed conflicts in certain regions, the economic burden of large armaments and armed forces, the threat of nuclear annihilation of humanity;
We express our grave disappointment over the breaches of international peace which have occurred in the past twelve months, especially but not limited to, the situation in the Falkland Islands-Islas Malvinas, and in Lebanon, Somalia, El Salvador and Afghanistan, among others.