WCC Warned of Link Between Globalization and Violence

Episcopal News Service. August 28, 2002 [2002-196-2]

Leaders of the main governing body of the world's largest grouping of Christian churches expressed concerns on August 26 about how the blind acceptance of market principles can exclude many people in the process of globalization. The meeting of the central committee of the World Council of Churches (WCC) began in Geneva as the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development was starting in Johannesburg.

By submitting all relationships in society to the logic of the market, globalization can break up communities and exclude large numbers of people from participation, WCC general secretary Konrad Raiser said in his opening remarks to the central committee in Geneva. 'The brutal shock of 11 September has suddenly revealed that in a situation of globalization even the seemingly powerful who are enjoying the benefits of economic globalization are vulnerable,' Raiser said. 'For a short while after the events of 11 September there was the vain hope that the shock might lead to recognizing and acknowledging the fundamental condition of mutual vulnerability and thus might become an incentive for new forms of co-operation and solidarity.'

But, he went on, 'the response on the part of people and governments in the powerful industrialized countries has instead been to demand increased security against the threats of terrorism… Where both sides in a conflict consider themselves to be victims of the violence and aggression of the other we enter the vicious circle of violence and counter-violence which justify each other mutually,' said Raiser. 'The violent confrontation of Israel and Palestine provides the most dramatic evidence of this condition.'

'It would be an obvious over-simplification to establish a direct and causal link between the impact of economic globalization and the emergence of international terrorism,' Raiser said. Still, he noted, vulnerability as a consequences of poverty, disease, unemployment and violence was condemning more and more people to a 'perennial experience of victimization under the domination of powerful forces beyond their control…It is this generalized sentiment of being condemned to the status of victims which in turn is being exploited by those who engage in acts of terrorism,' said Raiser.