ACTION 5: FOCUS THE LENS ON GBV WITH THE ANGLICAN COMMUNION

Episcopal Relief and Development partners Anglican Diocese of Aru in the Democratic Republic of the Congo create a poster of GBV program strategies and interventions.

Faith

For just as a body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body —Jews or Greeks, slaves or free —  and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. 

Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less part of the body.

1 Corinthians 12:12-15

Fact Sheet

• About 17% of Zambian girls aged 15 to 19 are married, compared to only 1 percent of boys of the same age group.^[1]
• 32% of Kenyan young women aged 18 to 24 and 18 percent of their male counterparts reported experiencing sexual violence before age 18.^[2]

Reflection and Action

In 2020, the Anglican Communion launched a notable series of webinars to mark the 16 Days of Activism. Speakers included the Most Rev. Thabo Cecil Makgoba, archbishop of Cape Town and metropolitan of the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, who encouraged people of faith to make fighting gender-based violence (GBV) within the church part of the liturgy: “If it is read, if it is sung, if it is prayed, it is believed.” Series themes included: addressing GBV around the communion and engaging men in ending GBV.

Footnotes

^[1] https://www.un.org/africarenewal/news/zambia-fighting-gender-based-violence-fresh-cases-continue-emerge
^[2]https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2018/may/gender-based-violence-in-kenya