Women, Faith and Humanitarian Interventions

Project goals

The network focusses on women’s spaces and the ways that practical and religious needs can be met for women in situations of humanitarian crisis.

Through a series of workshops and publications, the network brings together scholars and stakeholders to produce a set of strategic initiatives for future action and recommendations for gender and faith responsive humanitarian programming. The network’s goals and objectives are:

  1. To initiate and extend an international network of scholars, activists, faith leaders and policy stakeholders who will establish dialogue and form collaborative links in order to support the prioritisation of women’s faith needs in situations of humanitarian crisis.
  2. To identify the religious resources (texts, theologies, rituals) which are most meaningful to the empowerment of women in developing countries and situations of humanitarian crisis and explore ways in which these texts might be effectively deployed in different settings.
  3. To develop strategies for confronting areas where insufficient public attention is paid to the particular needs of women for religious practice and faith.
  4. To ascertain future initiatives which will be able to address the needs on the ground and prioritise the role of faith in providing support.
  5. To make recommendations to international humanitarian organisations for humanitarian programming which is responsive to both gender and faith in the protection of rights.
  6. To draw on expertise across disciplines and to identify where issues involving women and faith have been addressed in the integration of refugees and training of NGO workers and cultural mediators at various points in experience of refugee women, from their home countries to various camps and places of settlement, especially Jordan as the network case study location, though including in the EU and UK.
  7. To develop ways to empower groups of women and girls cross the spaces identified in the network: women in grassroots environments and refugee camps in terms of their practical and religious needs; women and girls as change agents and leaders in humanitarian action, drawing on religious resources and connecting to key spokespersons; women as scholar-advocates; protecting the rights of women and girls globally as human beings, and ensuring that humanitarian policy is effective in protecting women’s rights to equality and the practice of religion.