by Grove Harris, M.Div.
As part of the Temple of Understanding’s women’s initiatives, we are offering programming again this year in the context of the UN’s efforts to eliminate violence against women.
The UN Secretary-General, on the 2024 International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls, stated:
“The epidemic of violence against women and girls shames humanity.Every day, on average, 140 women and girls are killed by someone in their own family. Around one in three women still experience physical or sexual violence. No country or community is unaffected. And the situation is getting worse.” Read his full statement here.
The press conference featured powerful speakers Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda, UN Women Deputy Executive Director, Delphine Schantz, Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, New York Office, and Kalliopi Mingeirou, Chief of the Ending Violence against Women Section, UN Women, and the recording is available here.
This year’s 16 Days of Activism theme is #NoExcuse. UNiTE to End Violence against Women: “The 16 Days of Activism is an opportunity to revitalize commitments, call for accountability and action from decision-makers, as the world approaches the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 2025 – a visionary blueprint for achieving gender equality and women’s and girls’ rights everywhere. Read more about the UNiTE Campaign framework, “Towards 30 years of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action: UNiTE to End Violence Against Women and Girls.”
It is important that we all are aware of the full extent of domestic violence against women and also the many forms of violence against women in public life. And that we explore the root power dynamics and the responsibilities towards redress.
These issues are not new. For example, back in 2019, a side event inside the UN on the role of religious actors in preventing gender-based violence (more detail here) drew on the report, Plan of Action for Religious Leaders and Actors to Prevent Incitement to Violence that Could Lead to Atrocity Crimes. This plan developed through an extensive process, lays out specific plans that include prevention, strengthening, and building, specifically for religious actors, to maximize their efforts toward preventing violence. Let us not forget that this work is already laid out for taking responsibility for limiting speech, not the right to freedom of speech, but the responsibility to curtail hate speech. As the UN Secretary General writes in the forward:
Atrocity crimes do not generally happen suddenly or spontaneously. The processes leading to them take time to unfold – time we should use to act on the warning signs. One of the most common of these signs is the dissemination of hate speech – messages in public discourse and the media, including social media, which spread hostility and encourage people to commit violence against specific communities, often based on their identity.
Women are more than a specific community; they/we are half of the human race, and yet we are targeted based on identity due to poisonous unequal power relations. The violence against women around the globe is an atrocity.
Dr. Azza Karam’s latest op-ed piece, It’s About our Entire Planet: The Pandemic of Violence Against Women, is a powerful call to listen to those who have been pointing out the centrality of unequal power relations, the connection between the impunity to destroy women with the destruction of our planet, and the obvious mutual benefit if men and women can work together to end this violence. She lays out the risks to our very existence on the planet if we continue to only work in our silos and leaves us with a hopeful action plan:
As we consider the collective responsibilities, we need to strengthen our multilateral institutions – not only secular ones but also those that deliberately seek to partner with different civil society organizations, including those who work to mobilize multi-faith and multi-stakeholder collaborations.
An example of such a multi-stakeholder and global effort is the first Women, Faith and Climate Change Network, launched at the COP 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. The Network brings together faith-based and secular, women and male allies, working with governmental, non-governmental and intergovernmental partner institutions, elevating the influence of female faith leaders (including Indigenous ones) to maximize knowledge and impact, to right the power imbalances in each of these diverse institutions, as they work together to eliminate the violence perpetrated against our planet.
More about the roots of this movement are online here.
The combined reach and influence of women of faith networks is enormous. Participants estimated that their networks reach over 73 million people, including groups like Mothers’ Union, with over 4 million members in 83 countries, the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation USA and its 6 million women, Brahma Kumaris with 600,000 women members and UISG with its 600,000 Catholic sisters across the globe.
The initiative is unique in its diversity, and its focus on practical action and collaboration. It aims to increase the visibility of the vast ongoing women led practical climate action and grassroots and national level, scale up best practices, foster radical collaboration among diverse women of faith networks, and mobilize women of faith in support of mass mobilisations of women for climate action. – Women, Faith and Climate Network
By acting for the climate, we act for our own planetary home, for our own bodies, for our own future, and to redress the exploitative past. And if the focus is on women mobilizing leadership, there is always room for men to mobilize in tandem, in partnership, in solidarity, in mutuality. There are no excuses. The violence, the environmental devastation and the authoritarian impulses around the globe require people of faith to stand against hatred, to stand against violence, to stand against ecocide on a massive scale. Perhaps we were all born for this moment.