UN Sec. General’s “biggest data gap in the world” affects persecuted Christian women

Women to women conference in Ethiopia, February 2018.
The UN Secretary-General last week called it ‘the biggest data gap in the world…what UK writer Caroline Criado Perez calls “default man” thinking: the unquestioned assumption that men are standard, and women the exception. Very often, women are not counted, and their experiences don’t count”. And this lack of ‘counting’ . . . Read More

“I was last to come out alive”- Kenyan student on her life-changing injuries from Garissa

Reachel Ginkonyo, in Kenya, in a wheelchair after surviving the Garissa massacre, April, 2015
Four years ago, on the eve of Good Friday – the day on which Christians remember Jesus Christ’s crucifixion – 143 Kenyan university students were killed, singled out by Al-Shabaab gunmen for their Christian faith. Four more died after armed forces arrived, making it the deadliest terrorist incident in Kenya . . . Read More

‘In context of gender justice, women’s right to freedom of religion pretty much ignored’

Anurima Bhargava (USCIRF) and Helene Fisher (Open Doors) at UN NGO Committee on Freedom of Religion or Belief CSW side event, 14 March, 2019
She is a woman who can be identified only as “Z”, for her security. She is a Christian in India, a country that is overwhelmingly Hindu. And she is a lawyer defending women and youth from exploitation by landlords and employers, so she was pleased when she got the opportunity . . . Read More

For persecuted Christian women, violence is compounded by ‘shaming’

Women to women conference in Ethiopia, February 2018.
It would be hard to argue the world is unaware that Islamic State fighters used rape and sexual violence as a weapon of war against Iraq’s Yazidi women: Nadia Murad shared the 2018 Nobel Prize after she told the world of her personal ordeal at their hands. However, testimonies from . . . Read More

As Nigeria votes, family and churches urge candidates to remember Christian teen Leah Sharibu

Leah Sharibu was 14 when she was abducted, Feb 19, 2018
One year since the Christian teenager Leah Sharibu was abducted from her boarding school in north-eastern Nigeria by an Islamist group, a coalition of groups have called on presidential candidates to tell Nigerians how they plan to secure her release. “We are urging the political parties and their candidates that . . . Read More

Gender-based violence used in persecution of global Christian community

GETTY: Pakistani women protest against twin suicide bombings in Lahore, March 2015
  In the five worst of the 2019 World Watch List’s 50 most difficult places to be a Christian (North Korea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya and Pakistan), vulnerabilities which are linked to men and women’s social status create space for harsh religious persecution, report the List’s analysts at Open Doors International. . . . Read More

CAR: Children hurt as another displaced persons camp attacked

As many as 100 civilians lost their lives in an attack on a refugee camp and cathedral in Alindao last month, said Amnesty International. (Photo: Catholic Church in CAR)
A church-run camp for displaced people in south-eastern Central African Republic was attacked on Tuesday, 4 December, less than three weeks after 60 people, including two priests, were killed in an attack on another camp. Tuesday’s attack took place in the town of Ippy, which is 200km north of the . . . Read More

Persecution of minority Christian women ‘hidden, complex, and interwoven with “everyday” discrimination’

Women's suffering because of their faith is often in daily life. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)
Five new reports – about Egypt, Ethiopia, Iraq, Colombia and the Central African Republic – unmask the multiple domestic, societal and state dynamics used in the persecution of Christian women and girls in each country. When viewed individually, the tactics used against women – from subtle discrimination surrounding access to . . . Read More