Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence
SAIV A Public Service Project Coordinated by the Center for Partnership Studies
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
You can help end a global epidemic that is devastating the lives of millions of people, wreaking havoc on families, communities, and society at large. This epidemic is intimate violence. It affects us all, not only because of its enormous health, social, and spiritual costs, but because ending it is essential to creating a more peaceful and equitable world.
We call this epidemic intimate violence because it takes place in family and other intimate relationships. A recent United Nations study reported that violence against women and children is the most pervasive violation of human rights in the world today. In the United States alone at least four million women a year are physically abused, and it is estimated that violence against women is even higher in some world regions.
The Spiritual Alliance to Stop Intimate Violence (SAIV) can be a vehicle for spiritual leaders, both well-known and grassroots, to unite in calling for an end to intimate violence by stating clearly that it is immoral, intolerable, and must be stopped.
We ask that you use your position of influence through your speeches, your writings, and your connections to do this, and that you call on others to do the same. We ask that you add your voice to SAIV to protect the human right to physical safety, emotional security, and spiritual dignity in our own homes and families. Your powerful voice will help both victims and perpetrators regain their essential human dignity and lay the foundation for a more peaceful and equitable world.
We ask that you speak out against intimate violence for the sake of those unable to speak for themselves, and for all of us – for it is in intimate relationships that we first learn and continue to practice either respect for human rights or the acceptance of abuse as "just the way things are."
Please join us to help end the global epidemic of intimate violence. We thank you.
Riane Eisler
Author of Tomorrow's Children,
The Power of Partnership,
Sacred Pleasure and
The Chalice & The Blade
President, Center for Partnership Studies
Betty Williams
Nobel Peace Laureate
President,
World Centers of Compassion for Children