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As religious actors and networks of faith-based organisations, who work for the achievement of the Beijing Platform for Action and support the Action Coalitions, we welcome the Generation Equality Forum. We take this opportunity to speak out about our role and recommendations to the UN and its Member States, to the leaders and fellow commitment-makers of the Action Coalitions and the WPS-Humanitarian Action Compact,and to our civil society colleagues.

In 1995, 189 countries adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, a bold and ambitious roadmap for gender equality. In the last 26 years, religious actors have been working from the local to the global, to transform gender norms, implement programmes, reform unjust laws and promote genderjustice.

We lament that some religious actors have also contributed to slowing, or even blocking progress, towards achieving the Beijing Platform for Action. We call upon our constituencies to be accountable for our own human rights violations and to counter anti-rights actors, who are instrumentalising religion.

Commitment to Action Coalitions 

The Action Coalitions are a new impetus to address pre-existing systemic and structural issues, while also seeking to address new challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing inequalities, rising racism, and the climate crisis.

As religious actors rooted in local communities, we understand how forms of repression are interrelated and recognise gender injustice as an intersectional issue; therefore we are pivotal partners in addressing them in local to global spaces and are making significant commitments to the Action Coalitions.

We are called to work in partnership for the protection and promotion of human dignity and to achievegender justice. We recognise that we all benefit from a more gender-equal society.

Gender Based Violence

As people of faith, we are mobilising and equipping our communities around the world to address the root causes of gender-based violence, including promoting prevention and early intervention strategies, decolonising language and scripture, and speaking out against gender injustices. We are also working to serve those who have been subjected to gender-based violence, by creating safe spaces and advocating for their rights.

Economic Justice and Rights 

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed pre-existing structural injustices and inequalities. We are committed to working for economic justice and rights, which is essential for broader social change. This includes tackling systemic issues related to unpaid care work, unequal pay, social protection, and reforming family laws, while also transforming gender norms.

Bodily Autonomy

Religious actors are mobilising to address entrenched gender norms, which act as barriers to bodily autonomy. Religious leaders are often trusted voices in communities, and therefore, have a critical role in transforming gender norms, promoting Comprehensive Sexuality Education, and enabling access to genderresponsive sexual and reproductive health services.

Climate Justice

Ecological degradation and the impact on people and life forms are entwined, they are one phenomenon and must be addressed holistically. Religious actors are powerful forces for climate advocacy, which addresses interconnected issues, such as racial justice, ending gender-based violence, and defending Indigenous rights at local, regional and global spaces. We advocate for a just transition, towards a low carbon economy, which ensures women’s rights are protected and promoted.

Technology and Innovation 

The challenges posed by COVID-19 have awakened us all to the effectiveness of digital technologies but also the limited access that many of our communities’ experience. We are alarmed by the global rise in racism and hate speech in virtual spaces, which is often experienced by women, young women and girls in all their diversity. We all, including religious actors, have a role to play in enabling access to safe online spaces, which we believe are a ‘common good’.

Feminist Movements and Leadership 

We recognise the absolute need to advance the leadership of women, young women and girls in all their diversity, in all spheres of society, including in our faith communities. We are committed to addressing the power dynamics and barriers that currently exist, and to promoting inclusive leadership in the spaces that we occupy and create. We are working with feminist theologians, to strengthen narratives for gender equality. We are also working to support young women and girls of faith to be heard in decision-making spaces. The faith community is and will continue to be an integral part within grassroots led feminist movements, working to break silos, and counter patriarchal backlashes.

Women, Peace & Security and Humanitarian Action 

Women, young women and girls are important stakeholders in peacebuilding, conflict prevention and conflict resolution. However, they are often excluded from participation in peace processes, due to gender norms and tradition, which we seek to transform. We also uphold the critical work of Human Rights Defenders, who are working for peace and gender equality. We will continue to amplify and protect courageous voices, who are boldly speaking out to achieve human rights for all.

Faith in Beijing Call for Partnership 

We call upon you all to work with religious actors and faith-based networks to advance our shared goals forgeneration equality.

1. Recognise the unique role of religious actors, including women and girls, and our power to influence in the communities that we serve. Our platforms can be used to transform gender norms and to mobilise our diverse constituencies towards achieving gender equality at every
2. Increase funding and resources to enable strategic partnerships at all levels with religious actors, who have strong track records of working for gender equality and fulfilling the Beijing Platform for
3. Enable all stakeholders to engage critically in the gender and religion nexus, including working with men and boys, and religious leaders, to advance action towards achieving the Beijing Platform for Action and Agenda 2030.
4. Co-develop gender justice policies, strategies and programmes with religious actors, whichstrengthen intersectional approaches to institutional changes and
5. Partner with us to promote feminist theologies that promote equality and counterbacklashes to achieving gender equality, in particular, when anti-rights actors areinstrumentalising our religions to block progress.
6. Recognise us as a reference point, who can enable partnerships with local communities, and share our learnings from working with religious and traditional leaders to be catalysts for social change.
7. Partner with us to amplify the unique voices and perspectives of young women of faith within policy and advocacy forums and debate.
8. Join us in national, regional, and global advocacy, as we seek to reform and implement laws and policies to address systemic inequalities, and to advance gender equality in all spheres of
9. Address the lack of gender-disaggregated data and accountability mechanisms to strengthen our collective efforts and understanding of policy and programmatic impacts to advance gender
10. Work with us to tackle systemic racism, wherever it is encountered as we will never achievegender equality without racial justice.

Signed:

1. Act Church of Sweden
2. ACT Alliance
3. Alliance of Inclusive Muslims
4. Anglican Communion
5. Buddhist Tzu Chi
6. Centro Regional Ecuménico de Asesoría y Servicio – CREAS
7. Christian Aid
8. Ecumenical Women
9. The Episcopal Church
10. Islamic Relief
11. Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities
12. Loretto Community
13. Lutheran World Federation
14. Mercy International Association – Global Action
15. Mothers’ Union
16. Muslims for Progressive Values
17. The Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers
18. Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd
19. Salvation Army
20. Side by Side: Faith movement for gender justice
21. Sisters of Charity Federation
22. Soka Gakkai International (SGI)
23. UNANIMA International
24. United Religions Initiative
25. IVAT International
26. World Association for Christian Communication
27. World Communion of Reformed Churches
28. World Council of Churches
29. World Evangelical Alliance
30. World Jewish Congress
31. World Vision
32. World YWCA

New report calls for strategic partnerships with religious actors working for gender equality.

At a time of rising fundamentalisms, which are pushing back hard against women’s rights at every level and across the world, a new report ‘Looking Back to Look Forward: The Role of Religious Actors in Gender Equality since the Beijing Declaration’ argues that understandings of the gender-religious nexus is critical for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 5: Gender Equality.

The report, authored by Dr. Nora Khalaf-Elledge, reveals how religious actors have advanced and hindered gender equality since the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action and Declaration in 1995 and provides a critical and contextualized understanding of how religion and gender politics are intertwined in all countries, high and low-income alike.

The pushback

The report addresses how patriarchal gender norms continue to be packaged in the language of religion because it legitimises them. Nearly 84 per cent of the world’s population identify with a religious group and anti-rights actors are mobilising religious language to block or even reverse progress on gender equality. Religious language can make patriarchal practices appear divinity-ordained and unchangeable.

For example, although 189 states have ratified the 1981 Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), many countries still maintain reservations to specific articles of the convention. Over 60 percent of the 440 recorded reservations are religion-based.

The potential

The report also profiles the work of religious actors, who are advancing gender equality from maternal health to LGBTQI+ rights. The examples given in the report show how religious leaders and actors are often trusted voices within communities and can act as critical change-makers, in advocating for stronger gender just laws, challenging social norms, acting as moral compasses and legislators and stepping in, when governments fail to provide social protection.

Recommendations

Co-published by ACT Alliance with Act Church of Sweden, Islamic Relief Worldwide and Side by Side, in partnership with the International Partnership on Religion and Sustainable Development, the Joint Learning Initiative on Local and Faith Communities and Sexual Violence Initiative GBV Hub, and Goldsmiths, University of London, the report provides the following recommendations:

• Choose partners who are leaders on gender issues in their contexts: International collaboration and partnerships are pivotal for achieving all SDGs, especially now as the world tries to recover from the global COVID-19 pandemic. Achieving SDG 5 is deeply interconnected with achieving all SDGs.
• Encourage religious literacy: Development agencies need to provide training throughout their organizational structures that conveys a basic understanding of the ways in which religious discourses are context-specific, historically situated, internally diverse, continually reinforced and altered by both internal and external factors.
• Conduct comprehensive gender analyses prior to projects and partnerships: A comprehensive, context-specific, and theory-based gender analysis can highlight the religion-gender intersection in each locality and facilitate the inclusion of religious actors. It can also uncover the patriarchal power dynamics behind religious arguments supporting gender inequality.

Generation Equality

As world leaders, institutions, civil society, and faith actors virtually gather at the Generation Equality Forum in Paris, we must find common ground and together work to counter rising fundamentalisms, strengthen progressive movements within faith communities and demand the necessary steps required for achieving the Beijing Platform for Action.

Find the report here

The first online session with UN climate talks ended on June 17. Parties had, for three weeks, tried to make progress in the talks, leading towards the upcoming summit (COP26) in Glasgow in November. And they failed.

I must admit that conditions for a breakthrough were bad from the start. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, negotiations had to take place online, with difficulties because of internet access, time zones and technique. It was also agreed that talks this time would not delver any decisions, so what could we expect?

I may be naïve, but reading recent climate science reports, and looking at ongoing climate related disasters around the world, I had hoped parties would have taken the opportunity to scale up ambition, to search for diplomatic solutions, and to ensure that the climate emergency would be taken seriously. Unfortunately the talks, to a large extent, instead became a space for presenting existing positions.

But lack of progress in online negotiations should not be an excuse for climate inaction. Each party should now do their homework, and make sure that their country is moving forward with scaled up ambition.

Concretely that means revision of national climate plans. Recent research reminds us that we are rapidly moving towards a 1.5 degree temperature increase, and all parties, including those who have already submitted their national plans, should consider what more can be done in the coming five years, to reduce global warming.

Their homework also includes an increased focus on adaptation, and climate change induced loss and damage. As a broad alliance of developing countries stressed during the online talks, loss and damage is not getting enough attention on the UN agenda. At the same time more and more people face climate related disasters each year, which, with lack of adaptation, may lead to loss and damage.

But neither mitigation, nor adaptation or loss and damage related activities in developing countries, can happen unless the required support is made available. Developed countries are lagging behind with their existing commitments to mobilise climate finance, and this is a big concern for developing countries, and poor and vulnerable communities, urgently lacking support. Developed countries must mobilise the support which has been promised, and they must do so now.

The next climate summit will take place in November, in Glasgow, in Scotland. That meeting will be important, and it must deliver a success. Parties have already presented their positions, and it is now time to search for solutions, which can promote international cooperation and a scaled up climate ambition. I hope all parties will do their homework, before the summit November.

Mattias Söderberg, Senior advocacy advisor in DanChurchAid. Mattias serves as co-chair of the ACT Climate Justice Reference Group.

ACT Alliance joins with Lutherans around the world in congratulating Rev. Anne Burghardt on her election as the new General Secretary for the Lutheran World Federation, based in Geneva.

LWF is a key part of the ecumenical family, and of the ACT Alliance, as it represents 148 Lutheran churches around the world in 99 countries.  LWF’s humanitarian, development and advocacy work is globally recognized and a valued part of ACT’s identity and work.

“I am very pleased at the election of Anne Burghardt,” said Rudelmar Bueno de Faria, General Secretary of ACT Alliance. “her appointment is a benchmark for the Lutheran Communion and the entire ecumenical world, as she is the first woman to lead a global communion. I am looking forward to working closely with Anne in this time when prophetic theology and diakonia are crucial.”

The new General Secretary will begin her term on November 1, 2021, serving for seven years. 

“I am excited to work in close collaboration with Anne in the coming years,” concluded de Faria. “The success of ACT Alliance is the work of our members, and LWF has a long and successful history of working to meet the needs of the most vulnerable in the world.  We know that work will thrive under Anne’s leadership.”

Fernanda Zúñiga Keim, Lutheran Church in Chile, recorded vlog for ACT as we continue to follow the climate negotiations happening this month online in preparation for COP26 in Glasgow later this year.  The English translation of her vlog is below:

According to the IPCC, climate change will not only affect the different regions of the world differently, but also the different generations and genders, and it is in this sense that the poorest population will be more affected by the consequences of climate change. And according to the United Nations, 70% of this population are women and a large percentage of them are young women, therefore climate change does have a gender and generational perspective, which is why I believe that it should be a priority in everything related to climate change.

I want the importance of ensuring gender justice in the climate field to be recognized, where the real impact of gender policy is seen, not only as those who suffer the consequences of the climate emergency, but also because gender does have a real impact on adaptation and mitigation measures. Women should not be included only because we are more vulnerable to the climate emergency, but because we bring different perspectives and experiences to the work.

Growing up in a faith community has allowed me to analyze and observe different aspects of climate change and how it affects people. For example, how there are communities that are not represented or how their voice is often minimized. In this sense, being part of a faith community has given me the duty to raise my voice for those who are most unprotected, it invites me to look out for those who need it most and has allowed me to find meaning in my work within the church, seeking to raise my voice for those who do not have the means to do so.

The ACT Palestine Forum has published the following statement on health care access to Gaza:

The ACT Palestine Forum is deeply concerned about the devastation caused by the recent military operations in the Gaza Strip. The loss of lives, displacement of tens of thousands of people, destruction of civilian buildings and healthcare infrastructure, deprivation of access to basic humanitarian needs including food, water and sanitation is unacceptable. The widespread trauma among all people, especially children, must be addressed.   

The healthcare system in Gaza has been already under pressure because of COVID-19. Closed checkpoints have hindered access to life-saving medical supplies, equipment and personnel. It is imperative to ensure that life-saving treatment for seriously ill patients can be delivered. This includes treatment for cancer patients from Gaza, who have been denied access for necessary treatment at hospitals in East Jerusalem. 

This week, the Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH), a specialist hospital for advanced cancer treatment run by the Lutheran World Federation, a member of the ACT Alliance, planned an emergency oncology support mission to Gaza. Its staff were denied access by the Israeli Military Authority. The purpose of the mission was to provide support and consultations to cancer patients who could not get their medication on time due to the lengthy closure of the Erez Checkpoint caused by the recent hostilities on Gaza. 

This is unacceptable. These patients must be given permission to travel across the border or doctors allowed to administer treatment in Gaza. 

The ACT Palestine Forum condemns the denial of entry for medical and humanitarian professionals into Gaza. This contradicts key principles under international humanitarian law and international human rights laws. 

The ACT Palestine Forum calls upon 

• the Israeli government to allow humanitarian access for medical staff urgently needed for lifesaving and emergency assistance, including medicine for cancer treatment 
• the international community to take immediate action in support of a long-lasting solution to this conflict, which includes ending the military occupation and securing equal rights for all. 

ACT Palestine Forum 

The main objective of the ACT Palestine Forum (APF) is to increase the effectiveness and impact of the humanitarian assistance and development work being undertaken by members through improved coordination. In its joint advocacy on behalf of the members of the forum, the APF seeks to spread awareness of the humanitarian consequences of the Israeli occupation and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to promote humanitarian access for goods, personnel and services. 

ACT Alliance 

The ACT Alliance is a global alliance of more than 140 churches and church affiliated organizations working together in 125 countries to create positive and sustainable change in the lives of poor and marginalised people regardless of their religion, politics, gender, sexual orientation, race or nationality in keeping with the highest international codes and standards. 

The UNFCCC climate negotiations started again on May 31, 2021 against a background of predicted forecasts that are not good, in fact, bad: 

• The World Meteorological Organization reports a 40% chance that global temperatures could reach 1.5 degrees C years sooner than the decade long timeframe given in 2018, and a 90% chance that they will exceed 2016 temperatures, the highest on record.
• The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center also reports that never in their history have they recorded more internally placed people than in 2020. We can expect the storms, floods, droughts, forest fires, hurricanes, heatwaves, disrupted cultivation and harvest cycles we have recently seen to intensify.
• Extreme weather now displaces more people than war or conflict. Climate change has disrupted food supply, and increased the number of people facing hunger, which had been falling for several years.  690 million were undernourished in 2019 but this could rise to 840 in less than a decade, based on current trends.  

Some bright spots have also emerged:  Last week, also, a Dutch court ordered Shell, one of the world’s largest oil companies, to cut carbon emissions from its oil and gas extraction by 45% by 2030, the first major judicial verdict of its kind.  On the same day, investors in Chevron mandated that the company cut its emissions.  Climate advocates and activists cheered, me included.  

These are positive steps, but they do not halt the pace of warming which outstrips original predictions.

ACT Alliance’s Climate Justice messaging about urgency and scaled up climate action now need to get through to the right people, at the right time.  Our team is therefore paying close attention to the talks currently underway.  We especially want to hear more how governments – from both developed and developing countries – plan to mitigate the destructive impact of climate change on specific groups or improve their resilience to it.

It’s only been one week so far, but already we have some cause to be worried.  In their opening comments, for example, few delegates included mention growing gender gaps, the needs or contributions of vulnerable or impoverished groups.  Some have questioned the full participation of civil society organizations in the discussions.  This was an inauspicious start. 

Negotiating an international treaty across 197 countries is inevitably a political and technical discussion.   But governments also have a moral, ethical and legal responsibility to fulfil obligations to their citizens, and safeguard rights. 

Evidence is increasing, for example, of the disproportionate impact of climate change on women and girls.  Vulnerability, risk, as well as the capacity to adapt to climate change are rooted in social codes often highly disadvantageous to women and girls, and very hard to change.  In some environments, it is men and boys who are more affected.

Research also shows that other groups are at risk of being disproportionately affected during rapid and slow onset climate change: migrants, refugees, people living in camps, indigenous, disabled, migrants, refugees, gender non-conforming fluid communities and LGBTQI.  

Communities that are historically vulnerable for social, cultural, political or economic reasons will need special protections and services to prevent a further downward slide into poverty or human rights abuses.  

These considerations must be incorporated across all national climate and adaptation plans but are often missing.

Governments can and must pay closer attention to the human dimension of climate change.  They can take steps to ensure broad consultation, participation from diverse sectors, invest in gender analysis and budgeting, research, and develop an evolving understanding of who is at risk, where, how and why.   They can promote gender transformative practices in adaptation and mitigation that respect human rights and build resilience from the ground up.  They can listen more to affected communities which often have their own solutions and just need technical and financial support to do so.   Scaled up climate finance from developed countries is critically needed to make this happen.

Promoting rights and equity is a win – win strategy.   Countries which have invested in gender equality and rights have better economic and environmental outcomes, and lower carbon footprints.  Equity is also better for business.

This human face is baked into the Paris Agreement, whose opening framework acknowledges that climate change is “a common concern of humankind”.   Articles 7.5 and 7.9 of the agreement call on parties to adopt participatory, transparent, gender-responsive approaches which protect vulnerable groups and communities, while preserving ecosystems, while Articles 8.4 and 11, 12, respectively, reference vulnerability, resilience, capacity building, public participation, and transparent, country owned processes.

As we enter week two, ACT Alliance will continue to remind government delegates of how climate justice can still be achieved.

Jasmine Huggins is Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer at Church World Service.  She covers climate and gender justice issues and is based in Washington D.C.