IARF Endorses Statements on Women’s Rights and Minority Religious Identity
IARF Applauds Rejection of Bill to Repeal FGM Ban in The Gambia
The National Assembly of Gambia
Since our call for support of the Petition Against FGM Ban Repeal in The Gambia, which the Nala Feminist Collective started, the situation has evolved positively. The third reading of the bill was initially planned for July 24.
IARF, an organization uniting liberal religious groups from diverse faith traditions across the globe, stands firmly against human rights violations, particularly those justified under the guise of religious or cultural practices. We are pleased to report that the bill to repeal the ban on FGM was rejected on July 15, and the planned third reading on July 24 will not take place.
IARF and its member organizations congratulate Parliament Speaker Fabakary Jatta and the National Assembly of The Gambia for this wise decision. This outcome has an impact beyond The Gambia and will continue to forward the dignity and self-determination of all human beings.
We remain committed to supporting efforts that protect human rights and bodily integrity worldwide.
Context
Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) is a practice that involves the partial or total removal of external female genitalia for non-medical reasons. It affects an estimated 200 million women and girls worldwide, with more than three-quarters of females aged between 15 and 49 in some regions having undergone the procedure. The practice can lead to severe immediate risks such as pain, shock, hemorrhage, and infections, as well as long-term consequences for sexual health and mental wellbeing.
The Gambia’s 2015 ban on FGM/C was a significant milestone in the global effort to eradicate this harmful practice. The recent attempt to repeal this ban had raised alarms among human rights organizations globally. The IARF, as part of its commitment to human rights and religious freedom, had engaged in advocacy efforts, including drafting formal communications to Gambian authorities expressing concern over the potential repeal.
The rejection of the bill to repeal the FGM/C ban not only maintains crucial protections for women and girls in The Gambia but also reinforces the country’s commitment to international human rights standards. This decision aligns with various human rights conventions ratified by The Gambia, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
9th Annual UN Symposium on the Role of Religion and Faith-Based Organizations in International Affairs
The Ninth Annual Symposium on the Role of Religion and Faith-based Organizations in International -affairs attracted more than 600 people. It was held online on January 24, 2023 exploring the theme “Securing People’s Wellbeing and Planetary Sustainability”, and was organized by the World Council of Churches and a coalition of around 27 faith-based organizations, institutions and UN-partner organizations with experts on climate change, disarmament and other relevant topics related to the SDGs.
The annual symposium on the role of religion and faith-based organizations in international affairs was initiated in 2015, parallel to the SDGs by the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and the WCC. Today the symposium co-organizing entities and partners have grown to include denominational, ecumenical, multireligious and faith-based groups including long-time co-organizers ACT Alliance, Religions for Peace, Islamic Relief-USA and the United Religions Initiative. From 2017 onwards the Interfaith Task Force on Religion and Sustainability Development – currently representing 27 entities within the UN system cooperated as a co-organizer. The annual symposium was conceived as a space to focus on how religious and partner faith-based organizations could reinforce engagement around shared concerns of human dignity, human rights and sustainable development. It serves as an event for conversation to identify and deepen the multidisciplinary aspects of the permanent general theme on human rights and human dignity. The symposium is held annually on a date in January close to the birthday (January 15) of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Rev. Dr. Liberato C. Bautista, assistant general secretary for UN and international affairs, Methodist, President of the Conference of NGOs in Consultative Relationship with the UN (CoNGO) opened the over five hours lasting symposium and reminded of former symposiums: the 6th symposium 2020 was intended to reflect on the planned processes to review progress 25 years after the Beijing Platform for Action and the state of multilateralism at the 75th anniversary of the UN, but was postponed. Given the importance of the theme, a smaller but well-resourced workshop for faith-based organizations was held instead. In 2021 a virtual symposium focused on accelerating Gender Equality, Equity and Justice. The succeeding 2022 symposium was also held virtually on a theme focused on “Mobilizing Moral Influence and Governance to end the Systematic Injustices of Racism, the Legacy of Colonialism and Slavery”.
The themes identified with work by faith-based organizations are not alien to UN partners. The active collaboration by faith-based organizations, UN partners and member-states underscore the concern for joint and concerted action and transformative solidarity among all actors.
Some UN officials and leaders of civil society reflected why faith-actors are critical actors:
Maria Fernanda Espinosa (former President of UN-GA) reflected the necessity to retool and spiritually reground the UN system. Backsliding is happening in almost all SDGs. What does keep us back? Either are we paralyzed and dispaired or the crisis is pushing as to act. It is a multiple crisis. We have knowledge and technics to make it better. The big gap lies between knowledge and action. If faith as religion or faith in humanity, UN or other is motivating and pushing us to action, do not accept that science is the leader, that was the case for a very long time.
Beatriz Schulthess (Priestess, Founder and President of Indigenous Peoples Ancestral Spiritual Council and member of Qulla/Kolla Nation and Co-president Religions for Peace) informed that indigenous people gathered and asked, what sustainability could mean. They discovered that it means what they always were doing. But other cultures decided that it means to serve themselves at the detriment and damage for other cultures.
Prof. Dr. Azza Karam (General Secretary Religions for Peace) moderated the panel on “Framing Human Security as Shared Security for People and the Planet”. She explained that she started her work at UN 20 years ago to show how relevant the role of religion is.
Audrey Kitagawa criticized the five belligerent veto nations in the Security Council which since its foundation fended off threats of wars and failed with Russia. “How can we support the security council?” she asked. NGOs, Faith-based and multifaceted institutions all should speak in one voice to protect human rights. Religious faith leaders should cooperate with governments for the security of people and their coexistence. Although this is difficult. Humans are egoistic.
Bishop Heinrich Bedford Strohm (Moderator oft he Central Committee of the World Council of Churches, Lutheran Church of Bavaria) encouraged that religion not only reaches the heads of people but their hearts. Therefore religious communities are so important in questions of human wellbeing and planetary sustainability for questions about life-style and behavior. They only can successfully put forward if political change is connected with a change of mind, of hearts. He is persuaded that churches and religious communities in general are ideal agents for the world wide civil society. They are deeply rooted in local communities and at the same time they live in a global horizon in strengthening their faith in God who created heaven and earth. Bedford Strohm reminded the WCC Consultation on Justice, Peace and Safeguard of Creation in 1990 in Seoul: all appeals in this connection were already made as recommendations and only now they reached governments. The Assembly of WCC in Karlsruhe 2022 has again emphasized and focused on the necessary change to be made.
Archbishop Gabriele Giordano Cacca (Apostolic Nuntius and Permanent Observer of the Holy See at UN) considers the crisis, out of a Christian understanding, as an imbalance of the human heart. Truth is that God created every human being to his (her) image. We should carry responsibility about our actions, for the four pillars for peace are: truth, justice, freedom and solidarity.
Amanda Ellis (former Ambassador, New Zealand) reminded that women are still excluded from preace processes and negotiations. Her question is: “Can human security become an unifying paradigm for humanity?” This question was taken up into further consideration.
7th Annual Symposium on the Role of Religion and Faith-based Organizations on International Affairs
By the Rev. Dr. Esther R. Suter, IARF’s Main Representative to the UN
On 26.1.2021 the 7th annual symposium on “the role of religion and faith-based organizations on international affairs” took place with a zoom and live-stream programme. The title “2021: A defining year for accelerating gender equality, equity and justice” attracted more than 1000 persons, more than ever before. The following international institutions and organizations were involved: World Council of Churches, ACT Alliance, Islamic Relief USA, Seventh-Day-Adventists, United Religions International, Methodist Church General Board, Soka Gakkai, UN-Women, UNFPA and some more religious and church partners. The speeches and discussions were dominated by the C-19 pandemic and gender issues, but the key subject was intersectionality. This means the overlap and simultaneity of various categories of discrimination of a person such as discrimination by racism, sexism, antisemitism or else which are not separate issues. Azza Karam, General Secretary of Religions for Peace, who moderated the first of four sessions, emphasized the necessity of the multi stakeholder collaboration to accelerate gender-equality, equity and justice. Gender-based violence has increased through the Covid-19 pandemic. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, UN-Under-General Secretary of UN-Women – she has experience through coalition and movement building among global leaders in public and private sectors and with civil society – is driving the role of women in leadership and ending discrimination and violence against women and girls. She pointed to the actual redefinition of the whole life-style which is caused by the pandemic. Faith-based organizations will have to work now in using a healing influence on society of which they are part. Since 2015 the evaluation of the Declaration of Beijing (1995 – 4th UN-World Conference of Women) and following recommendations showed clearly that progress was first made and later pushed back, while much resistance came up from some societies and countries. Some NGOs working for gender equality began then to form alliances with religious institutions and religious leaders mainly in those countries in which most resistance came up.
For Rudelmar Bueno de Faria, General Secretary of ACT Alliance, changes of norms and attitudes are required especially through the work with Men and Boys, a key challenge that already shows success. He analysed three forms of fundamentalisms: religious, political and financial fundamentalisms. ACT Alliance includes the life experience of women in its work for changing faith narratives in the sense of gender-justice. It is necessary to deconstruct “toxic interpretations of sacred texts” that undermine the sense of equality, he told.
Alice Wairimu Nderitu, UN Special Advisor on the prevention of genocide, prevention of violence and for reconciliation process, explained that she often is the only woman in peace negotiations including resolution 1325. It is an enormous challenge to her to transfer the influence of women from grassroot to higher levels so that they can contribute to gender-equality and peace. Especially the gender-inequality has enabled atrocity crimes (ethnic cleansing).
Anwar Khan, President of Islamic Relief USA, explained that Islamic Relief started as an organization with their own experience with women and rape as tactic warfare in armed conflicts (Bosnia). This encouraged them to a commitment for gender justice for women. He spoke of their collaboration with Imams at grassroot level and with UN. There is a need of religious formation for this basic local work, for grassroot people are not progressive. A faith-based organization has to connect the basis and bring their values to a gender-transformative table.
Laura Janner-Klausner, Senior Rabbi to Reform Judaism, emphasized from her rich experience the resilience of faith leadership: it is worth while to resist. The difference in use of language from women has changed men and women. The question of justice is for her: why are people hungry? And the answer aims to a change of structural conditions.
Ibrahim Salama, High Commissioner for Human Rights and UN-Rapporteur, thinks that the intersectionality of religion and human rights is the weakest link. For him it is wrong to keep the two fields separated as unmixable or not coming together. A religious interpretation of human rights existed and it happened to make use of a narrative between these two traditions. But the attempt to find a common narrative is not done with promising general principles but rather in form of a legal basis. To reconstruct narratives means to admit that from both sides human interpretation and critical reflexion are involved. But synergies are actually most missing.