linguistic:translation
International affairs

Tutu also turned his attention to foreign events. In 1987, he gave the keynote speech at the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) in Lomé, Togo, calling on churches to champion the oppressed throughout Africa; he stated that "it pains us to have to admit that there is less freedom and personal liberty in most of Africa now then there was during the much-maligned colonial days." Elected president of the AACC, he worked closely with general-secretary José Belo over the next decade. In 1989 they visited Zaire to encourage the country's churches to distance themselves from Seko's government. In 1994, he and Belo visited war-torn Liberia; they met Charles Taylor, but Tutu did not trust his promise of a ceasefire. In 1995, Mandela sent Tutu to Nigeria to meet with military leader Sani Abacha to request the release of imprisoned politicians Moshood Abiola and Olusegun Obasanjo. In July 1995, he visited Rwanda a year after the genocide, preaching to 10,000 people in Kigali, calling for justice to be tempered with mercy towards the Hutus who had orchestrated the genocide. Tutu also travelled to other parts of world, for instance spending March 1989 in Panama and Nicaragua.

Tutu spoke about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, arguing that Israel's treatment of Palestinians was reminiscent of South African apartheid. He also criticised Israel's arms sales to South Africa, wondering how the Jewish state could co-operate with a government containing Nazi sympathisers. At the same time, Tutu recognised Israel's right to exist. In 1989, he visited Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat in Cairo, urging him to accept Israel's existence. In the same year, during a speech in New York City, Tutu observed Israel had a "right to territorial integrity and fundamental security", but criticised Israel's complicity in the Sabra and Shatila massacre and condemned Israel's support for the apartheid regime in South Africa. Tutu called for a Palestinian state, and emphasised that his criticisms were of the Israeli government rather than of Jews. At the invitation of Palestinian bishop Samir Kafity, he undertook a Christmas pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where he gave a sermon near Bethlehem, in which he called for a two-state solution. On his 1989 trip, he laid a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and gave a sermon on the importance of forgiving the perpetrators of the Holocaust; the sermon drew criticism from Jewish groups around the world. Jewish anger was exacerbated by Tutu's attempts to evade accusations of anti-Semitism through comments such as "my dentist is a Dr. Cohen".

Tutu also spoke out regarding the Troubles in Northern Ireland. At the Lambeth Conference of 1988, he backed a resolution condemning the use of violence by all sides; Tutu believed that Irish republicans had not exhausted peaceful means of bringing about change and should not resort to armed struggle. Three years later, he gave a televised service from Dublin 's Christ Church Cathedral, calling for negotiations between all factions. He visited Belfast in 1998 and again in 2001.