The Episcopal Church advocates at the United Nations alongside the Anglican Communion and ecumenical and interfaith bodies. The Church’s advocacy priorities reflect the ongoing needs, not only of its members, but all the people its members serve.
Since 2018, racial reconciliation has been a top advocacy priority. The Episcopal Church partners with ecumenical and interfaith partners to ensure that the work of racial reconciliation is a unified, global effort. The Church participates in international meetings and observances related to racism, intolerance, and the international slave trade.
For the past few years, the Church has partnered with an annual ecumenical delegation led by the World Council of Churches to attend UN briefings with the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance and the Working Group of Experts of People of African Descent.
In 2019, the Church began to build its formational and advocacy roles in defending human rights by offering workshops and trainings, engaging with the UN Human Rights Council, contributing to a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance and reporting human rights violations to the UN Human Rights Council.
The Episcopal Church is working actively with human rights experts in the US and the Human Rights Council to document human rights violations and racism against people of African descent and people of color, most recently to document police brutality and crowd control responses to protests in various parts of the country since May 2020.