3rd September 2013
UK and Holy See: It’s Time to Act Together
One of the highlights of the United Nations General Assembly in September will be an event hosted by Foreign Secretary William Hague and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to launch a high level political and ambitious declaration on the need to keep up the international momentum on tackling sexual violence in conflict. This event follows the powerful G8 declaration in April 2013 committing G8 countries to act, and the subsequent warm support from Pope Francis in June for this British initiative.
The declaration at the UN will be action orientated and substantive. We welcome the support of international “Champions” on this issue from countries as diverse as Brazil, Croatia, Mexico, Liberia and Jordan. We hope to demonstrate a clear commitment by the global community, including the Holy See, to support and take urgent and immediate action to end the use of rape and sexual violence as weapons of war.
Support has also come from many Catholic organisations, and this week the Supplement Donne, Chiesa, Mondo (“Women, Church, World”) of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano has published in both print and on-line editions, in English and Italian, an article by William Hague on this critical issue. As the Foreign Secretary makes clear: “The Catholic Church has an influential voice and together we can challenge the culture of impunity and silence which has allowed others to hide behind arguments that sexual violence is an inevitable consequence of conflict”. It’s time to make that happen.
Thank you Ambassador for your continuing concern for the situation of women in the world. We all have reasons to be indebted to England for working for the rights of women in general.
The Church, however, continues to lack credibility when speaking of the rights of or of alleviating the plight of women. As long as the Church, through its very structure, continues to send out the message to the world that women are necessarily subordinate to men (while men are only circumstantially subordinate to other men), it will continue to justify violence against women because it continues to send out the message that women are naturally subordinate to men. Consequently, it sends out the message that if women do not do what men want it is lawful to coerce women into submission.
If the Church is not willing to introduce fundamental changes into the way in which women are treated in the Church in the short term future, the international community will have the duty to require that it adapts to human rights principles and respect of the human dignity of women as human beings who are not necessarily subordinate to men in any sphere at all, and that includes the religious sphere.