Unity as an Act of Justice

Why working in silos weakens impact, and why unity is prophetic, not procedural

Written by Jessica Dewhurst, IPA Executive Director

We are living in a world deeply wounded by division. Across countries, communities, and cultures, people are increasingly separated from one another by fear, suspicion, and manufactured difference. Violence, displacement, environmental destruction, and the erosion of human dignity are no longer isolated crises; they are symptoms of a global system that thrives on fragmentation.

Division is not accidental. It is strategic. Throughout history, one of the most effective ways to maintain power has been to divide and conquer. When people are kept apart, fearful of one another, and focused on their differences, they are less likely to unite, to question authority, or to resist injustice. And so today, we see this actively taking place across the world.

The world teaches us to look at one another and see only what makes us different. When that happens, we forget the most important thing we have in common: our shared humanity.

This forgetting has devastating consequences. When we are taught to believe that “they” are not quite like us, our sense of responsibility weakens. If the rights of one group are violated, we feel less urgency to respond. If land is taken from people who do not look like us, speak like us, or live near us, we are told it is not our concern. If factories are built on ancestral land, poisoning water and making children sick, it becomes easier to look away, because it is not our land, not our children, not our people.

This is how injustice survives. When we are divided, distracted, and consumed by fear of one another, we do not see what is happening behind the scenes. While we are busy fighting each other, power is consolidated, resources are extracted, rights are violated, and the most vulnerable pay the price.

History shows us this pattern again and again. In Rwanda, ordinary neighbours were taught to fear and dehumanise one another until genocide became possible. In apartheid South Africa, race was weaponised to justify exclusion, violence, and the systematic theft of land, dignity, and opportunity. In Nazi Germany, difference was turned into threat, propaganda reshaped conscience, and an entire society was led into atrocity. In the United States, segregation laws and racial hierarchies were used for generations to normalise inequality, deny basic rights, and justify violence against communities deemed inferior. In India, caste-based oppression entrenched social division so deeply that entire communities were denied dignity, opportunity, and protection simply by virtue of birth.

Today, we see this same strategy unfolding again, even if the names and contexts have changed. All over the world, as well as close to home, we see people who are different being detained, removed from schools, separated from their families, and taken from their places of work. We see cultures slowly erased, languages silenced, and entire communities living in fear of expressing who they truly are because of the risk of retaliation. In many places, the law itself has been turned into a weapon, no longer protecting rights, but legitimising their violation. Children are taught, subtly and overtly, not to befriend those who are different, to fear them, or to see them as a threat. Dehumanising language becomes normal, silence replaces solidarity, and suffering is reframed as acceptable when it belongs to “someone else”.

In each of these contexts, injustice was not sustained by hatred alone, but by division. By the careful cultivation of fear. By convincing people that they had more to lose from one another than from those in power.

And yet, history also shows us something else.

What begins to break these cycles of violence is not dominance or control, but courageous acts of unity. History shows us that injustice starts to lose its grip when people of difference refuse the stories they have been told about one another. We see this when Black communities and their allies of many races marched together in Selma, crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge to demand civil rights and dignity in the face of brutal repression. We see it when survivors and perpetrators sat across from one another in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation process, choosing truth-telling and shared humanity over revenge. We see it when families and communities gathered on both sides of the Berlin Wall, dismantling a symbol of division with their own hands as people reclaimed their shared humanity over imposed separation.

In each of these moments, unity was not passive or comfortable. It required courage, sacrifice, and the willingness to stand alongside those whose suffering had been ignored or normalised. It was when people began to see again what they shared, their humanity, their grief, their longing for safety, dignity, and belonging, that justice began to move. When individuals and communities stepped across boundaries, chose relationship over fear, and stood together to say, “not in our name”, the power of injustice was finally disrupted.

In this context, unity is no longer a soft or idealistic concept. It becomes a deliberate, counter-cultural act of resistance.

For those shaped by the spirit and charism of Nano Nagle, unity has never been about organisational convenience or efficiency. It has always been about faithfulness. Nano did not carry light into dark places by remaining comfortable or separate. She crossed boundaries of class, religion, and social expectation, trusting that love made visible could disrupt systems of neglect and exclusion.

This understanding of unity is deeply rooted in the life and ministry of Jesus. Again and again, Jesus crossed boundaries that society insisted should remain intact. He ate with those considered unclean, spoke with women who were silenced, touched those cast out, and welcomed those labelled unworthy. He refused narratives that divided people into insiders and outsiders, deserving and undeserving. Instead, he revealed a way of living where dignity was restored through relationship, and where love was stronger than fear.

Yet in justice spaces today, unity is often reduced to language, something we affirm in values statements and shared commitments, while continuing to work in silos. This kind of unity is safe and performative. It allows us to sound aligned without being accountable to one another. But unity in word only is not unity at all. It does not disturb injustice, and it does not protect those most affected by it.

True unity asks something deeper of us. It calls us into relationship, shared responsibility, and mutual risk. It requires us to resist the instinct to protect our own territory, our own structures, or our own way of doing things at the expense of the common good. In justice work, unity is not a procedural preference. It is a moral and spiritual stance.

When we work in silos, the cost is real. Impact is weakened. Resources are stretched thinner than they need to be. Voices that could be powerful together are diminished apart. And once again, it is those already pushed to the margins who bear the consequences of our fragmentation.

Unity, in this sense, becomes an act of justice in itself. It is a refusal to mirror the same systems of division that injustice depends on to survive. It is a decision to believe that shared witness carries more power than isolated effort, and that light shines further when it is held together.

This is not a call to uniformity. Unity does not mean sameness, nor does it silence context or local expression. Instead, it creates a shared centre that allows diversity to flourish without becoming division. It invites us to hold difference with humility, rather than letting it be weaponised against us.

For faith-based justice work, unity is deeply prophetic. It bears witness to a different way of being in the world, one rooted in dignity, solidarity, and the conviction that we belong to one another. It reminds us that justice is not owned by individuals or institutions, but carried collectively in service of the common good.

Unity also grounds our accountability. When we act together, we remain closer to the lived realities of people and communities, rather than drifting into abstract or disconnected advocacy. Our voices in global spaces are strengthened when they are shaped by shared listening, shared learning, and shared responsibility.

Nano Nagle carried light into dark places not by standing apart, but by stepping toward others. She understood that justice grows through relationship. Her legacy challenges us to resist fear, to step out of our silos, and to choose encounter over separation.

In a fractured world, choosing unity becomes an urgent act of resistance. It pushes back against fear. It disrupts the logic of divide and conquer. It insists that when one group is harmed, all of us are diminished.

The call before us is clear. To resist division. To step out of our silos. To learn to know and love the other. To trust that when we hold our diversity with courage and compassion, our collective light shines far brighter than anything we could offer alone.

This is the work of justice.

And this is the work of unity.