Messages & Statements on Global Issues

Dear students, movements, faith-based communities, and friends of the World Student Christian Federation,

Christmas returns each year, but it never finds the world unchanged.

We celebrate it while wars continue, while entire peoples live under occupation, and while life becomes increasingly fragile for millions. Each of our more than ninety member movements receives this season from different places, shaped by distinct memories, wounds, and hopes.

And yet, at Christmas, we choose to remember together.

For those of us who stand within the Christian tradition, Christmas is not only a date on the calendar. It is an unsettling and hopeful memory: the birth of a vulnerable life within an imperial order, and the beginning of a promise that does not impose itself by force. The Gospel does not remove us from history; it interrupts it—God entering the world without occupying the center of power.

This memory has accompanied our Federation for a long time. Since 1895, for more than 130 years, generations of students have chosen to walk together as part of this movement. Remembering this today is not about celebrating ourselves, but about recognizing that we belong to a shared story shaped by ecumenism, questioning, renewal, and perseverance.

As a Federation, we do not celebrate Christmas to escape the world, but to see it more clearly. We do so through our commitment to peacebuilding, through accompaniment in contexts of conflict and polarization, and through the defense of human dignity against exclusion, racism, patriarchy, ecological destruction, and deep economic injustice.

It is within this horizon that, on 19 December, WSCF launched its Peace Campaign, which will continue throughout 2026:

“Reclaiming Otherness: Youth Building Peace with Justice.”

A simple but demanding question continues to accompany us: what does it mean to truly recognize the other in a world that so often renders people invisible or disposable? Reclaiming the otherness of the other is not an abstract idea, but a daily political and spiritual practice. For WSCF, unity has never meant uniformity, nor peace the absence of conflict.

We are also honest about our limits. Sustaining a global federation like WSCF is not easy. We are widely spread, deeply diverse, and rely primarily on the commitment of young people and on limited financial resources. How we organize ourselves, remain accountable, and care for our common life is part of the challenge we continue to face together—and part of the witness we offer.

Christmas reminds us that hope does not arrive fully formed. It is entrusted, protected, and shared. In a time that pushes us toward fragmentation and fear, choosing to remain connected across movements, regions, and generations is already a meaningful act of resistance.

As we approach the end of 2025, we do so with memory rather than certainty: memory of those who came before us, of the struggles that shaped us, and of the questions that remain open.

May this Christmas be more than a pause.
May it be an act of shared remembrance.
And may it strengthen us to continue walking together, as one federative family, building peace with justice.

With peace, solidarity, and Christmas greetings,

Marcelo Leites
General Secretary
World Student Christian Federation

CHRISTMAS PRAYER FOR PEACE + GLOBAL PEACE CAMPAIGN LAUNCH

On 19 December, we gathered online with students and Senior Friends from across the globe for the WSCF Christmas Prayer for Peace, marking the official launch of our Global Peace Campaign: “Reclaiming Otherness: Youth Building Peace with Justice.”

During the prayer, we lit candles together across regions, symbolising our shared commitment to peace with justice, remembrance of those affected by violence, and hope rooted in faith and solidarity. The gathering reminded us that young people are not passive witnesses to injustice, but agents of liberation, building peace grounded in dignity, faith, and justice. Reclaiming Otherness calls us to recognise the “Other” not as a threat, but as a call to responsibility, compassion, and transformative peace.

Thank you to everyone who joined us in prayer and commitment. The journey continues.

► Click to watch “WSCF Christmas Event 2025”!

We invite you to watch and share the Global Peace Campaign video:
“Reclaiming Otherness: Youth Building Peace with Justice”

► Click to watch “Global Peace Campaign Video”