Such a network would allow Christians to share information and launch advocacy campaigns targeted at churches. We have obligations as wealthier nations and as countries that signed the Geneva Conventions to protect refugees, but more importantly, we have obligations as Christians. The United Nations estimated that 52.5 million people worldwide lived in refugee-like conditions in 1999. Delegates at the World Evangelical Fellowship's 11th General Assembly, meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, demanded that the leaders of the world's most industrialized nations agree a new deal on debt as a matter of urgency. There are countries spending more on repaying debt than on health and education.
Debt still means that children of the poor are dying of preventable disease.
The General Assembly of the World Evangelical Alliance meets every four years and brings together representatives of various regional and national evangelical alliance and fellowships. The World Evangelical Fellowship is celebrating its own Jubilee - having been formed 50 years ago in 1951. It grew into the largest-ever global protest with 24.3 million petition signatures from 160 countries. Adopting this resolution in our Jubilee year sends a signal around the world that evangelical Christians want to speak for justice in the face of the negative impact of global finance and global structures. The resolution states that the international community must commit itself to achieve growing justice in world trade, particularly in arms, that fuels conflict and causes widespread poverty and suffering.