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One pregnant woman or newborn dies every 7 seconds: new UN report

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United Nations News
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One pregnant woman or newborn dies every 7 seconds: new UN report

The report, Improving maternal and newborn health and survival and reducing stillbirth, assesses the latest data, which have similar risk factors and causes, and tracks the provision of critical health services.

Overall, the report shows that progress in improving survival has stagnated since 2015; with around 290,000 maternal deaths each year, 1.9 million stillbirths – babies who die after 28 weeks of pregnancy – and a staggering 2.3 million newborn deaths, during in the first month of life.

The report shows that over 4.5 million women and babies die every year during pregnancy, childbirth or the first weeks after birth, equivalent to one death happening every seven seconds, mostly from preventable or treatable causes if proper care was available. The new publication was launched at a major global conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

Health systems under stress

The COVID-19 pandemic, rising poverty, and worsening humanitarian crises have intensified pressures on stretched health systems. Just one in 10 countries (of more than 100 surveyed) report having sufficient funds to implement their current plans.

According to the latest WHO survey on the pandemic’s impacts on essential health services, around 25 per cent of countries still report ongoing disruptions to vital pregnancy and postnatal care and services for sick children.

“Pregnant women and newborns continue to die at unacceptably high rates worldwide, and the COVID-19 pandemic has created further setbacks to providing them with the healthcare they need,” said Dr. Anshu Banerjee, Director of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health and Ageing at the World Health Organization (WHO).

“If we wish to see different results, we must do things differently. More and smarter investments in primary healthcare are needed now so that every woman and baby — no matter where they live — has the best chance of health and survival.”

Fighting for life

Funding losses and underinvestment in primary healthcare can devastate survival prospects. For instance, while prematurity is now the leading cause of all under-five deaths globally, less than a third of countries report having sufficient newborn care units to treat small and sick babies.

In the worst-affected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Central and Southern Asia, the regions with the greatest burden of newborn and maternal deaths, fewer than 60 per cent of women receive even four, of WHO’s recommended eight, antenatal checks.

“The death of any woman or young girl during pregnancy or childbirth is a serious violation of their human rights,” said Dr Julitta Onabanjo, Director of the Technical Division at the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

“It also reflects the urgent need to scale-up access to quality sexual and reproductive health services as part of universal health coverage and primary health care, especially in communities where maternal mortality rates have stagnated or even risen during recent years.

We must take a human rights and gender transformative approach to address maternal and newborn mortality, and it is vital that we stamp out the underlying factors which give rise to poor maternal health outcomes like socio-economic inequalities, discrimination, poverty, and injustice“.

Lifesaving care

To increase survival rates, women and babies must have quality, affordable healthcare before, during and after childbirth, the agencies say, as well as access to family planning services.

More skilled and motivated health workers, especially midwives, are needed, alongside essential medicines and supplies, safe water, and reliable electricity. The report stresses that interventions should especially target the poorest women and those in vulnerable situations who are most likely to miss out on lifesaving care, including through better planning and investments.

Improving maternal and newborn health further requires addressing harmful gender norms, biases, and inequalities. Recent data show that only about 60 per cent of women aged 15-49 years make their own decisions regarding sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Based on current trends, more than 60 countries are not set to meet the maternal, newborn, and stillborn mortality reduction targets in the UN Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.

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Emma Maayan Fanar, Revelation through the Alphabet. Aniconism and Illustrated Initial Letters in Byzantine Artistic Imagination. La Pomme d’or, Geneva 2011.

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Gaston de Persigny
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https://www.pommedor.ch/revelation.html

The book explores aniconic tendencies in the post-iconoclastic lectionaries, with special emphasis on illuminated initial letters, unravelling their sources and models and offering an innovative approach to the enigma of their sudden and widespread appearance in the late ninth- and tenth-century Byzantine manuscripts.

The unique position of illuminated letters, as part of the text on one hand and of the pictorial programme on the other, creates a variety of artistic possibilities concerning their forms and meanings, which transcend other forms of manuscript illumination. The timing of their spreading, notably the end of the ninth century, is not accidental but deeply tied to the fundamental changes in Byzantine art and thought after the iconoclastic period.

Italy again protracts the resolution of the Lettori case

By
Henry Rodgers
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Over a month from the deadline given by the European Commission for the payment of settlements to foreign-language lecturers(Lettori) for decades of discriminatory treatment, the Meloni government last Thursday passed a Decree-Law that sets a 90-day period within which administrative arrangements to pay the compensation must be finalized.

In its January press release announcing the advance of infringement proceedings to the reasoned opinion stage, the Commission reminded Italy that the settlements were due in accordance with the sentence in enforcement case C-119/04, the last of four rulings of the Court of Justice of the European Union(CJEU) in favour of the Lettori in a line of litigation that extends back to the seminal Allué ruling of 1989. Like all enacted Italian legislation, the Decree Law was published in the Gazzetta Ufficiale.

Article 38 of the Decree Law updates a 2017 law, the terms of which legislated for the adoption within 90 days of an interministerial decree the provisions of which were to resolve the Lettori question. Six years on the Decree Law amends the 2017 law to allow another 90 days for another interministerial decree to resolve the question. The legislation also provides for penalties for non-cooperating universities.

As May 30th approaches, a day the Lettori have come to call Pilar-Allué Day in ongoing commemoration of her 1989 CJEU victory on that date, Lettori in universities across Italy reacted furiously to the latest protraction of the settlement of the case. The response of retired Scottish lecturer Anne Marie McGowan, who over a 40-year teaching career at La Sapienza University Rome and Tor Vergata University Rome never worked under conditions of parity of treatment, was representative.

Anne commented: 

“Implicit in the updating of the 2017 law is a recognition that a Lettore law which has been almost six years on the statute book has never been implemented. Over this six-year period many colleagues have retired. Others have passed away without ever having received justice. And these six years are just the tail end of a timeline of evasion of Treaty obligations that extends all the way back to Allué. The Commission just cannot continue to indulge Italy’s effrontery and protraction.

The article “Italy, A Test Case of the Efficacy of Infringement Proceedings against a Most Intransigent Member State” gives the context to a case which is troubling scholars of the infringement proceedings and the EU conscience. The Art. 228 enforcement procedure and the attendant pecuniary penalties were designed to bring closure for non-implementation of prior first-stage infringement rulings. But the present infringement proceedings were opened for evasion of an actual enforcement ruling. Thus, Italy’s intransigence gives scope for a merry-go-round of evasion which can continue indefinitely under present arrangements.

Placing the right to parity of treatment in the context of the overall rights of European citizens, the commission states that the right “is perhaps the most important right under community law and an essential element of European citizenship”. The Lettori case clearly demonstrates that this supposedly sacrosanct Treaty right can be withheld over the course of a worker’s entire career. Further, it can be withheld with impunity under present arrangements.

“La Sapienza” University of Rome provides an instructive example of misreadings of EU justice which have tried and exasperated Lettori all over Italy. “La Sapienza” was one of six sample universities whose employment contract was used by the Commission to successfully prove discriminatory working conditions in infringement case  C-212/99. Follow-on enforcement case C-119/04 for non-implementation of  C-212/99  was to award the Lettori a reconstruction of career based on the minimum parameter of part-time researcher or more favourable conditions won.

Yet, the La Sapienza administration never subsequently inserted a clause in the employment contract to acknowledge the C-119/04  ruling.  A reconstruction of career based on the minimum parameter of part-time researcher would have resulted in a salary lower than the contract salary. Hence the administration held that by allowing its Lettori employees maintain the contract salary it was awarding the more favourable treatment prescribed in the enforcement ruling. The glaring error in this reasoning was that the contract had been ruled discriminatory by the CJEU and the more favourable parameters won before local courts should have been awarded, as Commission correspondence to the “La Sapienza” Lettori confirms.

Implementing the CJEU enforcement ruling merely entails identifying the beneficiaries of the Allué jurisprudence, their years of service, and the appropriate parameter for calculating the settlement for reconstruction of career. It baffles the Lettori that a task of such administrative simplicity has not yet been accomplished. It baffles the Lettori too that the Commission has indulged byzantine and unworkable arrangements on the part of Italy which have complicated the payment of the settlements.

Asso. CEL.L, a La Sapienza-based union, is an official complainant in the Commission’s infringement proceedings against Italy. With the assistance of FLC CGIL, Italy’s largest trade union, it conducted a national census of working and retired Lettori which documented to the Commission’s satisfaction the non-payment of the settlements for discrimination due under the CJEU case law. The two unions will shortly meet to decide a joint response to the recent Decree Law.

Kurt Rollin is Asso. CEL.L representative for retired Lettori. Like Anne Marie Mc Gowan, he never worked under parity of treatment conditions over the course of his teaching career at “La Sapienza”.  Reflecting on the Meloni government Decree Law, Mr Rollin said:

“The Commission, guardian of the Treaty, holds that the right to parity of treatment is the most important right under the Treaty. In a comedy or novel, a plot in which a wily state evades and eludes the prescriptions of a supranational authority might come across as funny. But Italy’s protraction and disregard of its Treaty obligations to the Lettori has human consequences which are anything but funny. The Commission must now immediately refer the case to the Court of Justice.”
Lettori case decree-law of Gazzetta Ufficiale pagesDownload

Almost $15 billion needed for earthquake recovery in Syria

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United Nations News
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Almost billion needed for earthquake recovery in Syria

The Syria Earthquake Recovery Needs Assessment (SERNA) puts the total damages and losses at almost $9 billion, said El-Mostafa Benlamlih, UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Syria, who led the effort alongside the UN Country Team.

“The UN has been working tirelessly to respond to the series of powerful earthquakes that hit Türkiye and Syria in February 2023, and is dedicated to working with both local authorities and the international community to improve our coordinated response and identify recovery priorities to help affected communities recover from the disaster,” Mr. Benlamlih said.

Tracking disaster risk priorities

Stemming from a collaborative effort among 11 UN agencies, funds and programmes working in Syria, the report aims at assessing the earthquakes’ impact on 38 sub-districts across five governorates of the country.

The assessment highlighted key damage and losses estimates across sectors and governorates, recovery, and disaster risk reduction priorities and implications for disaster resilient early recovery across Syria.

It also provided details on the extent of the losses and recovery needs caused by the earthquake to an already frail infrastructure and services across Syria as a result of 12 years of conflict.

Mr. Benlamlih warned that in the absence of recovery, “we can expect the number of people in need of humanitarian assistance to rise significantly by 2024”.

Millions rely on aid

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the Türkiye-Syria border area on 6 February, followed by another one nearly as strong. One of the biggest disasters to impact the region in recent times, tens of thousands of people were killed and many more injured, with thousands of collapsed buildings leaving countless people exposed to unforgiving winter conditions.

The earthquakes struck as the humanitarian crisis in northwest Syria was already at the highest level since the conflict began, with 4.1 million people relying on humanitarian assistance to survive.

Learn more about what the UN is doing to help Syria here.

SERNA: UN’s Assessment for Syria’s Earthquake Recovery

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Sudan crisis: Guterres condemns looting of main WFP compound in Khartoum

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United Nations News
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Sudan crisis: Guterres condemns looting of main WFP compound in Khartoum

In a statement issued by his Spokesperson, António Guterres noted that “most, if not all, United Nations agencies and our humanitarian partners, have been impacted by large-scale looting”, since the military power struggle between the national army and rival RSF militia began, which fighting now entering a fourth week.

Speaking to journalists at the daily UN briefing on Monday, Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq, said that it was mainly office and computer equipment that had been stolen at the weekend, by so far unidentified looters.

Close to a quarter of WFP food stocks looted

He reminded that overall, some 17,000 metric tonnes of food had been taken, mostly in the first few days of the fighting, worth at least $13 million – but probably a good deal more than that, once a full inventory can be taken.

Mr. Haq said that WFP had pre-positioned around 80,000 tonnes of grain and other foodstuffs before the violence began on 15 April, emphasizing that the looting was depriving civilians of potentially life-saving aid.

He confirmed that no food supplies were stolen during the weekend’s looting spree.

“This is the latest violation of humanitarian facilities since the start of the crisis”, said the UN chief’s statement.

“The Secretary-General reiterates the need for parties to protect and respect humanitarian workers and facilities, including hospitals. Civilians and civilian infrastructure must be protected in order to save lives.”

He said that the “needs of the Sudanese people, who are caught up in a humanitarian catastrophe, must come first.” 

UN and partners work to expand aid effort

Mr. Haq said the UN and humanitarian partners were “working to expand humanitarian operations”, including improving the distribution network of aid around Sudan, “as we respond to rapidly growing needs.” 

In Blue Nile State, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and partners are supporting health and nutrition programmes, including immunizations, screening and treatment for malnutrition, as well as pregnancy care and reproductive health services, he told correspondents.

In North Darfur, he said medicine, water and other items had gone to around 20 healthcare facilities, as well as sanitation and hygiene support, with at least 100,000 litres of water trucked in. 

 

WHO aid begins to flow

On Friday, 30 tonnes of medical supplies were delivered to Port Sudan by the World Health Organization (WHO), together with the United Arab Emirates, he continued.

“The shipment contained enough trauma, essential medicine and emergency surgical items to reach 165,000 people via 13 major health facilities. It is WHO’s first air delivery to Sudan since the conflict erupted.”

He added that customs clearance had been secured last week for around 80 tonnes of medical supplies that were offloaded in Port Sudan – where the UN and other agencies are basing operations and creating a large hub, following relocation from Khartoum.

These supplies include intravenous fluids and supplies for the treatment of traumatic injuries and severe acute malnutrition.

Customs clearance essential

“With more humanitarian shipments expected to arrive in Sudan in the coming days and weeks, we call for customs clearance to be expedited to ensure that life-saving assistance can reach people in need as quickly as possible”, said Mr. Haq.

WFP operation continues

Last week WFP restarted its operations in Sudan to meet the needs of 384,000 pre-existing refugees, host communities and both pre-existing and newly internally displaced people across Gedaref, Gezira, Kassala and White Nile, Mr Haq said.

“This is the first time WFP will be providing emergency food assistance in Gezira, where we are seeing freshly displaced families fleeing the conflict in Khartoum.” 

Thousands of people have crossed into South Sudan as they flee ongoing conflict in Sudan.

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Mali: Ban slavery by law, say top rights experts

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United Nations News
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Mali: Ban slavery by law, say top rights experts

In a call to the Malian authorities to prevent people from being born into slavery, the experts said that the country is the only one in the Sahel region without specific legislation criminalizing enslavement.

“Nothing can justify slavery, whether it be culture, tradition, or religion”, said the experts, Tomoya Obokata, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, and Alioune Tine, Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Mali.

A ‘widespread’ practice

While there is no data on the number of people born into slavery according to Mali’s National Commission on Human Rights, the experts’ statement highlighted estimates from some organizations of at least 800,000 victims, including 200,000 living “under the direct control of their ‘masters’”.

The rights experts stated that descent-based slavery was “widespread” in the central and northern regions of the country, including Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal. They also quoted examples from the western Malian region of Kayes, where regular attacks on people considered slaves have resulted in death, injury and displacement.

An array of violations

“Continuing to support slavery in the 21st century contradicts the repeated commitments made by Malian authorities to respect, protect and fulfil human rights for all”, insisted the rights experts, who report to the Human Rights Council in an independent capacity.

In a previous statement, the experts had stated that people born into slavery in Mali  are compelled to work without pay, can be inherited, and are deprived of basic human rights.

The experts quoted a recent study by Mali’s national human rights institution documenting the human rights violations and abuses related to slavery by descent. Those include “acts of violence, assault, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, public humiliation, insults, intimidation, kidnapping and rape committed daily by ‘masters’ against ‘slaves’”.

The study also found evidence of victims being barred from using basic social services, from water pumps to health facilities.  

Call for legislation and justice

The experts welcomed recent convictions of individuals for slavery-related crimes and stressed that a specific law criminalizing slavery by descent would help end impunity, “facilitate the prosecution of perpetrators and increase the protection of victims”.

“Slave ‘masters’ must be held accountable for their actions, compensate victims and restore their rights and dignity,” the experts said.

The experts’ call echoes recommendations made during the Interactive Dialogue on Mali at the Human Rights Council’s latest session in March, and as part of the review of Mali’s human rights record under the Universal Periodic Review process earlier this month.

Special Rapporteurs and other UN Human Rights Council-appointed rights experts, work on a voluntary and unpaid basis, are not UN staff, and work independently from any government or organisation.

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UN calls on Taliban to end corporal punishment in Afghanistan

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United Nations News
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UN calls on Taliban to end corporal punishment in Afghanistan

“Corporal punishment is a violation of the Convention against Torture and must cease,” said UNAMA’s human rights chief Fiona Frazer, stressing that the UN is “strongly opposed” to the death penalty.

She called on the de facto authorities to establish an “immediate moratorium” on executions.

Flogging and stoning

In a new report, UNAMA said that it had documented “a range of forms of corporal punishment” carried out by the Taliban since their return to power on 15 August 2021 after dislodging the democratically-elected Government, “including lashings or floggings, stoning, forcing people to stand in cold water, and forced head shaving”. In the last six months alone, 274 men, 58 women and two boys have been publicly flogged.

According to the report, the legal system in Afghanistan is currently “failing to safeguard minimum fair trial and due process guarantees”.

UNAMA warned that the Taliban’s refusal to grant licences to women defence lawyers and the exclusion of women judges from the judicial system are impacting women and girls’ access to justice.

Violating international law

Corporal punishment has been defined as “any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort, however light”.

The prohibition of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment is considered a fundamental principle of international law, the report reiterated.

Sentenced to ‘100 lashes’

Between 15 August 2021 and 12 November 2022 alone, UNAMA documented at least 18 instances of judicial corporal punishment carried out by de facto provincial, district and appeals courts.

“Within the 18 documented instances, 33 men and 22 women were punished, including two girls; the vast majority of punishments, for both men and women, related to adultery or ‘running away from home’ and all women and girls who were punished were reportedly convicted of such offences,” the report showed.

In general, punishments consisted of 30 to 39 lashes for each convicted person. However, “in some cases, people received as many as 80 to 100 lashes”, according to the report.

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BitterWinter.org exposes how FECRIS fabricated a cover-up of Russian links

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Newsdesk
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FECRIS – Yet once more, the specialized human rights magazine BitterWinter.org, founded by expert Massimo Introvigne, broke the news this morning with the latest “fabrication” of FECRIS. We encourage readers to access the full article in the following hyperlink.

The antireligious organization FECRIS, practically funded in full by French government agency MIVILUDES (currently in the portfolio of France’s State Secretary of Citizenship Sonia Backes ) used “make-up” to cover up their links to “lunatic lawyer” Alexander Korelov, who participated in their conference as a speaker.

In Alexander Korelov‘s words, “former Ukraine” is still “part of my country, the USSR.” The program of a 2017 conference is changed retroactively by FECRIS to remove his name and remarks.

Readers of “BitterWinter” are likely familiar with the insane Russian attorney Alexander Korelov, who in 2022 erroneously asserted that the Jehovah’s Witnesses were planning a coup to overthrow the Putin dictatorship. Korelov frequently advises or defends prominent anti-cultists in Russia, such Alexander Dvorkin and Alexander Novopashin, when they are charged of defamation by organizations they label as “cults.” Korelov identified himself in 2017 as a “lawyer of RATsIRS,” which was the FECRIS Russian chapter at the time.

FECRIS has lost more than 50% of its listed members, from 49 groups to 19 groups

Introvigne’s magazine informs that FECRIS has a new list of member associations that were “recognized at the General Assembly held in Marseille on March 24, 2023,” which excludes its prior Russian affiliates.

In addition to the Russian organizations FECRIS has lost altogether more than 50% of its listed members, going from 49 groups on December 3rd 2022, down to 19 groups as of March 24th 2023).

The fact that the Russian anti-cult organizations have been legally expelled and their offensive ideology rejected is not mentioned, though. And despite FECRIS’s assertion that associations not on the March 2023 list can no longer claim to be a part of the organization, Novopashin continues to disobey this directive and maintains on his website a claim that his group “represents FECRIS in Russia.”

The Christian messages of authority in the coronation of Charles III

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News desk
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Charles III and his wife Camilla were crowned in London, making him the fortieth monarch in British history. The coronation and anointing ceremony took place in Westminster Abbey. The previous coronation took place seventy years ago, on June 2, 1953, when Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, received the British crown at the same venue.

The main event of the ceremony – the anointing of the king with holy oil was performed by Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury. He anointed Charles’s head, hands and chest with oil consecrated by Orthodox Jerusalem Patriarch Theophilus at the Holy Sepulcher (here), emphasizing the connection with the Old Testament royal anointing, and placed the crown on the monarch’s head. During the anointing, a Byzantine choir conducted by Alexander Lingas, a teacher of Byzantine music, performed Psalm 71, and after the coronation, Charles III was blessed by the Orthodox Archbishop of Thyatira and Great Britain Nikitas.

The ceremony contains a lot of Christian symbolism and messages about the nature of power. Here are some of them:

The procession at Westminster Abbey was met by the Archbishop of Canterbury and reached the entrance of the church, accompanied by the reading of Psalm 122 (121): “Let us go to the house of the Lord”, whose main message is peacemaking: the new monarch comes in peace and to establish peace .

The King swore an oath on the King James Bible and was then given a Bible to remind him of God’s law and the Gospel as the rule for the life and government of Christian monarchs. Kneeling before the altar, he said the following prayer, which emphasized the Christian view of government as a service to people, not violence over them: “God of compassion and mercy, Whose Son was not sent to be served, but to serve, give me grace to find in Your service perfect freedom, and in this freedom to know Your truth. Grant me to be a blessing to all Your children, of every faith and persuasion, so that together we may discover the ways of meekness and be led along the paths of peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

A child greeted the king with the words: “Your majesty, as children of the kingdom of God we greet you in the name of the King of kings”, and he replied: “In his name and according to his example I came not to be served, but to serve” .

The main regalia that the monarch received was a golden sphere with a precious cross, which symbolizes Christendom and the British monarch’s role in protecting the Christian faith. The king also received two golden sceptres: the first has a dove on its tip, symbolizing the Holy Spirit – an expression of the belief that the monarch’s authority is blessed by God and must be exercised in accordance with His laws. The dove scepter is a symbol of spiritual authority and is also known as the “scepter of justice and mercy.” The other ruler’s scepter has a cross and symbolizes secular power, which is Christian. All three regalia, as well as the Crown of St. Edward, have been used at the coronation of every British monarch since 1661.

The king was also presented with the sword of state, upon receiving which he said a prayer for widows and orphans – again as a sign that peace is the highest value to which every Christian ruler should strive, and war leaves death in its midst.

With his coronation, Charles III became head of the Church of England. From the 16th century, when the Anglican Church severed relations with the Roman Catholic Church and was declared the state religion, the British monarchs began to head it, thus cutting off the Pope’s right to interfere in the life of the monarchy. Ecclesiastical leadership of the Church of England is exercised by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Charles III was also given the title “Guardian of the Faith”.

Illustrative photo: Orthodox icon of All Saints.

The Danish government waived a law requiring all sermons to be translated into Danish

By
Gaston de Persigny
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0

The Danish government has rejected a controversial draft law that had been under discussion for the past three years and would have required all religious sermons in Denmark to be translated into Danish. The law aimed to prevent the spread of sermons that contained calls for hatred, intolerance and violence, especially in Muslim communities.

Over the past fifteen years, the Danish authorities have made efforts through changes in immigration legislation, especially for clerics, to limit the access of radical imams to the country. Although the laws were provoked by the actions of radical Islamists, they extend to clerics of all religions, including Christianity, providing proof of an educational qualification from a legitimate public university, financial independence, etc.

This was also the case with the bill that required all denominations to translate their sermons into Danish. This week it was finally rejected by the Minister for Church Affairs Louise Schack.

In March this year, the chairman of the Danish People’s Party asked the minister for church affairs to investigate whether the law could be drafted so that it did not affect all religious communities that preach in a language other than Danish, but only those mosques where “speaks only in Arabic, loudly preaches against women, democracy, Jews and other minority groups, or where violence and terror are spread.” The government did not find such an option for the operation of the law and it was finally rejected.

In January 2021, the Conference of European Churches (CEC) expressed deep concern in a letter to Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Minister for Church Affairs Joy Mogensen about a proposed new initiative to make it mandatory to translate sermons from other languages into Danish.

The KEC reminded that as an international European church organization they have always encouraged the use of the mother tongue in a religious context, helping migrants to integrate and form communities that support them and help them navigate the new social environment of which they are now a part .

“From a political point of view, we see such legislation as an unjustified negative signal regarding religion and the role of religious communities in society. Moreover, it would be an indication to non-Danish European peoples and Christian communities that their religious practice and presence in Denmark is being questioned and considered unequivocally problematic,” the address said. “Why should German, Romanian or English communities with a long history in Denmark suddenly translate their sermons into Danish? This would damage Denmark’s image as an open, liberal and free nation built on the Christian heritage of individual rights and responsibilities.”

Photo by Chris Black:

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