Foreign Policy Blogs

Diverse Faiths Unite to Say NO to Violence Against Women

There is more news about religion, politics, and the United Nations. This past Thursday, Religions for Peace launched a new partnership with UNIFEM (the UN Development Fund for Women) “to engage communities of faith around the world to lead efforts to end violence against women.” Part of this cooperation entailed signing on to the “Say NO to Violence against Women Campaign.” According to the Say NO factsheet, the economic costs of intimate partner violence in the U.S. exceeds 5.8 billion USD per year. $4.1 billion are for medical services, while almost $1.8 billion are lost in productivity. The Secretary-General of Religions for Peace said that “people of faith around the world believe that it is a moral responsibility to end violence against women.” The Say No to Violence campaign is part of the UN Secretary General's global campaign UNiTE to End Violence Against Women, which runs until 2015. These ambitions are also directly linked to Millenium Development Goal #3, which promotes gender equality and the empowerment of women.

Now, UNIFEM is hoping to collect one million signatures through its SAY NO website.

 

Author

Karin Esposito

Karin Esposito is blogging on religion and politics from her base in Central Asia. Currently, she is the Project Manager for the Tajikistan Dialogue Project in Dushanbe. The Project is run through the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies with the support of PDIV of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. The aim of the project is to establish practical mechanisms for co-existence and peaceful conflict resolution between Islamic and secular representatives in Tajikistan. After receiving a Juris Doctorate from Boston University School of Law in 2007, she worked in Tajikistan for the Bureau of Human Rights and later as a Visting Professor of Politics and Law at the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics, and Strategic Research (KIMEP). Ms. Esposito also holds a Master's in Contemporary Iranian Politics (2007) from the School of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Iran and a Master's in International Relations (2003) from the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (GIIDS) in Switzerland.

Areas of Focus:
Islam; Christianity; Secularism;

Contact