UN calls on Adventist church during negotiations

PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea — A United Nations peace monitoring group has assigned the Seventh-day Adventist Church to the “front line of the peace process,” according to Pastor Richard Rikis, president of the church in the war-torn South Pacific island of Bougainville.

Adventists were asked to take the lead in reaching out to community members and various clans that continue to display hostilities toward each other despite a declaration of peace signed in 1998. Church members will involve themselves in one-on-one and group meetings, using cultural approaches that can help the peace movement spread, Rikis said in a recent telephone interview with Adventist News Network (ANN).

It is a significant responsibility for the church, since U.N. peace monitoring groups are planning to leave the island in late July and the rest of the U.N. staff will depart at the end of the year, Rikis noted. The conflict began in the late 1980s over compensation claims by landowners against the owners of the now-decommissioned Panguna copper and gold mine. One reason the Adventist Church was chosen is because it is the only church that was organized during the 10-year civil war. According to Adventist members, the church was able to operate due to its impartiality during the civil war and met with both sides during the conflict.