Gender Justice Advocate Ms. Aissatou from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon at the 2023 LWF Assembly in Kraków, Poland. Photo: LWF
LWF urges churches and partners to join the campaign to end sexual and gender-based violence
(LWI) - Now is the time to unite and act to end gender-based violence which is a both a sin and “one of the most pervasive violations of human rights.” In a message to launch this year’s 16 Days of Activism campaign, the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) General Secretary Rev. Dr Anne Burghardt calls on churches, ecumenical partners, government leaders, faith communities and individuals to join the fight against sexual and gender-based violence that affects one in every three women worldwide.
In her video message, Burghardt stresses that behind every statistic is “a person, a story, a life forever changed.” In conflict zones and humanitarian crises, she notes, the numbers are even more shocking with over 70 percent of women and girls at risk. Three decades on from the Beijing conference and Platform for Action, which called for decisive action to end such violence, the LWF pledges to step up its advocacy and support member churches to help achieve this goal.
Behind every statistic is a person, a story, a life forever changed.
Anne BURGHARDT, LWF General Secretary
The 16 Days campaign is an annual initiative which runs from 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, to 10 December, International Human Rights Day. The LWF has a long history of engagement with the campaign, organizing events, sharing resources and supporting member churches and country programs across the globe to promote awareness, healing and transformation.
Beijing +30
This year, the campaign takes place on the eve of the 2025 commemoration of the landmark 1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women which produced a Platform for Action with 12 critical areas of concern, including violence against women and girls. Adopted by 189 nations, the Platform for Action is the most comprehensive global agenda for the achievement of gender equality.
On 25 November, the LWF will kick off the 2024 campaign with an event in Geneva, co-hosted with the World Council of Churches exploring the way advocates in El Salvador and Iraq are working to support survivors and hold their governments accountable to their commitments to end gender-based violence. The church and country program in El Salvador, as well as LWF Iraq have submitted so-called ‘shadow reports’ on the human rights situations in their countries ahead of the UN’s Universal Periodic Review of those two nations. Both reports raise concerns about the alarming levels of violence against women and girls.
On 9 December, as the campaign comes to a close, the LWF will launch a consultation marking 10 years since the adoption of its Gender Justice Policy. One of the goals of the three-day event will be to identify strategies for continuing to build gender-just relations, theologies, churches and societies. The policy, which is available in over a dozen different languages, explores the theological and biblical foundations of the struggle for gender equality, as well as offering tools for implementation that can be adapted by churches in their different regional contexts.
