2019 international peacemakers

Congolese Peacemaker follows her father’s lead standing up for women

People used to tell Monique Misenga Mukuna’s father that he did not have children because he had more girls than boys — 11 girls and three boys, to be precise. In many African cultures, including Mukuna’s native Democratic Republic of Congo, women and girls have second-class status, not enjoying many of the advantages of men and boys. Mukuna’s father wasn’t having that.

Surrounded by hopelessness, her message is one of hope

As a young Palestinian Christian woman living in the occupied West Bank, Muna Nassar sees those around her losing hope each day. But hope is just what she wants to talk about when she joins 13 other international peacemakers traveling the U.S. this fall speaking to congregations, mid-councils and educational institutions as part of the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program.

She works to bring healing to those around her

In a country where people are traumatized by poverty, political instability and economic decline, Rev. Lydia Neshangwe is a leader in bringing healing to those around her.

Peacemaker has helped educate thousands in southern Africa

Mabuchi N. Dokowe has 6,204 children. Four of them are her own she is raising with her husband in Lusaka, the capital and largest city in Zambia. The other 6,200 are students in 32 community schools in the southern African nation that she oversees as the director of community schools for vulnerable and marginalized children for the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP), Synod of Zambia.

Peacemaker working for a unified Korea

When many South Koreans think of their neighbors to the north, the phrases that come to mind are not so neighborly: “horned monsters” or “a demon to be removed,” writes the Rev. Moon-Sook Lee, who has held several ecumenical and Presbyterian posts in South Korea over the past three decades.

Peacemaker has been working for racial justice in Europe

Recent controversies over migration at the United States’ southern border have been mirrored by similar fights in Europe, including England, where a surge of asylum seekers from the Syrian conflict brought the issue to a boil in 2015.