At a conference held from March 6-8 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, fifteen human rights organizations promoting religious freedom including the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) met and formed "The Religious Liberty Partnership" to find new ways of working together for the persecuted church.

Chaired by Merwyn Thomas from Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), based in the U.K., the network will meet annually, while a working group of five members will lead various works during the year. The members of the steering committee are the World Evangelical Alliance, Open Doors, Voice of the Martyrs, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, and Christian Solidarity International.

Johan Candelin, the Executive Director of the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission, who joined the meeting said, "This is a historical day. Never ever before has there been this kind of partnership between the main organizations in the world working for the persecuted church. This will make everyone work more effectively, hinder overlapping of work, and strengthen research and information. It also sends a very strong signal of unity to the Christian church. The real winners are of course, our suffering brothers and sisters."

According to Candelin, the creation of this network is a "major victory not only for the organizations, but for the persecuted churches and the free churches that want to work together."

"We could also see the future challenges together and bring our pieces and put them together. Then we will come to see a piece that no one could see alone," he said, emphasizing on the "spirit of unity and deep commitment" among the organizations to work together.

Furthermore, a Charter of Best Practice was formed, which is an agreement of good will among the networking organizations. It has been formed to set up an open standard of communication within the network, in the hope of preventing the harmful spread of rumours, which historically have been a common experience for the persecuted churches.

The partnership is open to hear from other organizations working for religious freedom and religious intolerance issues that may be interested in joining the network, with the hope to provide the suffering church with a greater level of relevant help than ever before.

The next annual meeting is slated for March 2008 in Zurich, Switzerland.

The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) is a network of churches in 128 nations that have each formed an evangelical alliance and over 100 international organizations joining together to give a worldwide identity, voice and platform to more than 420 million evangelical Christians.