You would be forgiven for missing a few important news stories last week on violence against women due to all the important focus and attention on the Nigella Lawson story. (See Peter's blog here on this and whether you should intervene). Here we want to make sure you haven't missed out. A quick summary of what happened and what was released.

UN Security Council Resolution 2106 (UNSCR 2106) - unanimously passed

Monday saw the month meeting of the United Nations Security Council. June's meeting was chaired by the UK, specifically the Foreign Secretary, William Hague. Mr Hague has been leading on a Preventing Sexual Violence initiative with the aim of reducing impunity for perpetrators of sexual violence in conflict. See our blog here on this. As a part of this initiative the G8 leaders agreed that sexual violence against women constituted a grave breach of the Geneva convention meaning that international jurisdiction would apply & perpetrators would have no place/country to hide.

The Foreign Secretary planned to take this to the UN Security Council in June when the Uk was holding the rotating Presidency of the Council. William Hague, in conjunction with Zainab Bangura, the UN Special Representative on ending Sexual Violence in Conflict, tabled Resolution 2106 on Women Peace and Security.  This was unanimously passed by the Security Council. You can read the details of the resolution in full here

This issue now is for countries to implement it. This was unanimously passed so there should be no reason why countries do not make plans to implement it. In the UK we have a National Action Plan to implement UNSCR 1325 on Women, Peace and Security which is reviewed annually by an All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) chaired by Nicola Blackwood MP. We will keep a watchful eye on how this new resolution impacts on and is included in the UK  National Action Plan going forward.

What about you and your country. Could you ask your government representative how they plan to implement this resolution?

WHO stats

The World Health Organisation, in conjunction with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, released a report in June called 'Global and regional estimates of violence against women: Prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence,'. This report highlighted the levels of intimate partners violence around the world and the associated and direct health effects of the violence. It is devastating, yet too familiar, reading. See here for the WHO infographic of the stats.

In summary the stats show the following:

• violence by an intimate partner is the most common type of violence affecting 30% of women worldwide
• 38% of all women who were murdered were murdered by their intimate partner
• 42% of women who had experienced physical or sexual abuse by their partners had injuries as a result
• 23.2% of women in high income countries experience intimate partner violence, in SE Asia it's 37.7%, Africa 36.6%, 29.8% in the Americas, 25.4% in Europe & 24.6%* in the Western Pacific

What is our response to this?

What do we think when we read these statistics? Shocking? Familiar? Do you know anyone who could be affected? The report goes onto look at the health implications of these levels of violence and response by the health sector. Here at Restored we think about the implications for our churches, for us as Christians and what are response could and should be given these levels of violence against women.

We have asked in the past to make those statistics real by thinking of the number of women in your church, family, groups of friends that could be affected. Perhaps we need to shift our thinking to how many men in our church, family, groups of friends are perpetrating the abuse and what are we doing about it? First Man Standing is one response from Restored which we encourage men to get involved in ending violence against women. We are also beginning to think through whether it is feasible to create a Christian perpetrator programme to enable men to get help and change. This requires a lot of resources, preparation and planning.

News stories

There have been quite a number of news stories in the UK highlighting the issue of abuse. The reactions to the Nigella Lawson incident have been one of shock whilst raising the issue of whether to intervene. See Peter's blog here on this. It has raised awareness of abuse and the fact that it can affect anyone, even a nationally treasured domestic goddess like Nigella.

Other news stories focussed on the school teacher who kidnapped a pupil and took her to France. He was convicted and sentenced to prison. Different national newspapers reported the news differently. Some focussed on the love the teacher and pupil had without seemingly recognising the fact that the teacher abused his position of power and groomed the 15 year old pupil. You will note that we have not used his name in this blog, just as we didn't use the name of the perpetrator in the Derby Deaths blog. We do not want to promote notoriety for the convicted by repeating their name.

In Churches Too

Do we think that these statistics and stories operate solely outside the church? With the levels that we see we expect, and indeed our experience when we speak at places is, that there is domestic abuse happening in our churches. It is difficult to find hard statistical evidence to back this up. We are investigating the possibility of this with a university but the cost is high.

The evidence we do have and know is from a 2002 Methodist Church report in the UK with the research conducted by Roehampton University. See here for the report. This states:

• 1 in 4 female respondents reported experiencing domestic violence ( the same level as the British Crime Survey)
• In 53% of cases the perpetrators were husbands or male partners
• 54% had experienced abuse upto 5 years & 21% upto 10 years (unclear whether this includes men)

An Evangelical Alliance report in 2012 (see here) found that 10% of people had experienced physical abuse and 7% admitted perpetrating physical abuse. Note that this is one type of abuse and does not include all other forms of abuse. It cannot be compared to the the 1 in 4 statistic suggesting it is less because the report does not include all forms of abuse.

So what is our response to this? This year Restored is launching a campaign called 'In Churches Too' with the message of 'because domestic abuse happens in churches too'. We will be releasing five film shorts or videos aiming to raise awareness of domestic abuse, its impact and dispel some of the myths around domestic abuse. The first of these will be released very soon so watch out on our YouTube site and on our specially dedicated section In Churches Too.

To learn more about Restored, or to give to its work visit http://www.restoredrelationships.org/