Manila (Fides Service) - Women Working for World peace, or www.peace , is the name of a Movement started in the Philippines by religious and lay women. Among some 24 organisations which have joined the ecumenical movement, there are the Association of Major Superiors of the Philippines, the National Council of Churches and Women of the Independent Native Philippine Church. Inaugurating the initiative on 6 February, at Quezon City, Manila, Canossian Sister Edna Machailas, recalling her experience as a missionary in the diocese of Dili, in East Timor, announced that among the members of www.peace there are eighty Catholic nuns who work with NGOs, social services, the media. "All these Sisters - she said - have experienced war and they have seen and dread death and destruction of the poor and the innocent". The organisers of the movement who are planning various initiatives against the war on Iraq, recall some 1.4 million Filipinos working in the Middle East region and 65% of these women, whose lives would also be endangered. "These women who are forced to go overseas to find work already suffer the pain of separation from their families - the organisers say - and now they risk also suffering along with many others the consequences of an unjust war". PA (Fides Service 17/2/2003 EM lines 24 Words: 314)