Religious Engagement in Development: What Impact Does it Have?

Abstract

Religious involvement in humanitarian aid and development takes countless forms, varying by country, traditions, and sector. Research and operational evaluations have expanded in recent years, with some sectors far better documented than others, notably health and peacebuilding. There are, however, substantial gaps in evidence, most significantly regarding local and non-formal involvement. Pandemic preparedness and response are critical issues ready for further development. Family planning, a USAID priority, exemplifies sensitivities but also positive examples and potential. Experience of religious engagement on women’s empowerment including specific issues like gender-based violence (GBV) and child marriage, can be complex, but their importance warrants particular attention. Child protection poses similar issues.

Keywords:

• faith-based organizations
• USAID
• humanitarian assistance
• healthcare
• peacebuilding
• gender equality

Acknowledgments

Support for the production of this research paper was provided by the US Agency for International Development and the US Institute of Peace. Its publication as part of a special open-access issue of The Review of Faith & International Affairs was made possible through the additional support of the Templeton Religion Trust.

Disclaimer Statement

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the US Agency for International Development, the co-conveners, or the United States Government.

Notes

1 See, for example: UNICEF (n.d.), Santeto (2020); and DFID-funded real-time research on this under way in Pakistan at https://www.poverty-action.org/recovr-study/state-engagement-with-religious-leaders-effective-covid-19-crisis-response.

2 See Berkley Center/WFDD/JLI repository of resources on faith responses to COVID-19 at http://bit.ly/faith-and-COVID-19.

3 For the series, see https://www.thelancet.com/series/faith-based-health-care.

4 See https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2015/10/22/religion-and-views-on-climate-and-energy-issues/.

5 COP conferences refer to “Council of Parties” The UNFCCC is the United Nations entity tasked with supporting the global response to the threat of climate change (UNFCC stands for United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change). https://unfccc.int/process/bodies/supreme-bodies/conference-of-the-parties-cop.

6 See http://www.arcworld.org/.

7 See https://slidelegend.com/queue/the-bristol-commitments-alliance-of-religions-and-conservation_59ddaf6b1723dd77602df18d.html.

8 See https://creationcare.org/.

9 The Earth Charter motto is “Turning Conscience into action for a thriving earth.” https://earthcharter.org/.

10 See for example the Indigenous Environmental Network https://www.ienearth.org/.

11 The Pachamama is the highest divinity of the Andean people, concerned with fertility, plenty, the feminine, generosity and ripening crops. The English translation is “Mother Earth;” in Quechua and Aymara the term means earth, cosmos, universe, time, and space.

12 For a summary, see Kaiser Family Foundation (2021). For a larger discussion, please see Rodger (2018).

13 See https://www.ccih.org/cpt_resources/ccih-publications-on-family-planning/ and FP2020 (2019).

14 See https://arigatouinternational.org/en/.

15 Two examples are VIVA, Together for Children, https://www.viva.org/about-us-na/ and The Salesian Preventive System of St. John Bosco (Don Bosco), http://www.donboscowest.org/pedagogy/preventive-system.

16 See Magner et al. (2015). For guidance on how to engage with religious communities, particularly Muslim, see Shoulder to Shoulder (2018), and other resources at https://www.shouldertoshouldercampaign.org/resources.

17 For a discussion on human trafficking and recommendations see https://www.g20interfaith.org/modern-slavery-and-human-trafficking/.

18 Talitha Kum at https://www.talithakum.info/.

19 For example, the Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians, and the inter-religious network African Women of Faith Network. See also Hayward and Marshall (2015).

20 See https://www.musawah.org/.

21 The idea of “spiritual needs” and “spiritual assistance” has long been used in international humanitarian law around the roles of religious personnel, known (with Christian bias) in the Geneva Conventions as “chaplains.” See for example ICRC (1975).

22 For example, see Additional Protocol 1, Article 15, paragraph 5.

23 The specific bounds of appropriate efforts to evangelize (proselytize) are quite well defined in the humanitarian sector, drawing on international humanitarian law. These boundaries are far less clear in the development field where the general principles are quite widely accepted but where there has been little specific discussion of boundaries of appropriate behavior and considerable disagreement including tension as to the possible risks and harms involved.

24 See ,for example, the recent conference for religious chaplains on IHL at the Vatican which included religious professionals from other faiths at https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/bollettino/pubblico/2019/10/31/191031a.html.

25 See WHO EPI-WIN Guidance documents at https://www.who.int/teams/risk-communication/epi-win-updates.

26 During the COVID-19 emergency issues on treatment of the dead have arisen in several settings, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh among them.

27 For example: Advice and Guidance to the Fighters on the Battlefield – A Fatwa by His Eminence Sayyid’ Ali Al-Sistani, The Holy City of Najaf, Iraq, 12 February 2015 at https://www.sistani.org/english/archive/25036/; Pope Francis’ Statement on the 70th Anniversary of the Geneva Conventions, Vatican City 11 August 2019 at https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-08/pope-francis-recalls-70th-anniversary-geneva-conventions.html.

28 For details of the initial conference of Buddhist leaders and ICRC and the background paper for the conference, see https://www.icrc.org/en/document/reducing-suffering-during-conflict-interface-between-buddhism-and-international.

29 This section based on Banchoff, Vail, and Marshall (2020).

30 See Caritas Internationalis at https://www.caritas.org/ and Action for Churches Together at https://actalliance.org/.

31 See The Humanitarian Forum at https://humanitarianforum.org/.

32 The phrase “speaking truth to power” comes from the Quakers but encapsulates the prophetic vocation of all faiths.

33 See Seeds of Peace, published monthly by the International Network of Engaged Buddhists. https://inebnetwork.org/engagements/seeds-of-peace/.

34 See https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/ipeoples/freepriorandinformedconsent.pdf.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Katherine Marshall

Katherine Marshall has worked on international development for some five decades. A senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs and Professor of the Practice of Development, Religion, and Conflict in the School of Foreign Service, she also directs the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD), whose mission is to bridge gulfs separating the worlds of development and religion. A long career at the World Bank was as an operational manager.

Sudipta Roy

Sudipta Roy is a Senior Researcher at the World Faiths Development Dialogue at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affair. He is currently co-leading several research and learning programs in South and Southeast Asia that focus on religious dimensions of development, freedom of religion and belief, and social cohesion. Sudipta also directs the American Institute of Bangladesh Studies—a consortium of higher education and research institutions in the United States and Bangladesh.

Chris Seiple

Chris Seiple (Ph.D., The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy) is President Emeritus of the Institute for Global Engagement and Principal Advisor to the Templeton Religion Trust’s Covenantal Pluralism Initiative. A former U.S. Marine infantry officer, he has served as a Senior Fellow for Comparative Religion at the University of Washington’s Jackson School of International Studies, as Senior Advisor to the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Evidence-Based Summit on Strategic Religious Engagement (2020), and as Co-Chair of the U.S. Secretary of State’s “Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group” (2011–2013).

Hugo Slim

Hugo Slim is Senior Research Fellow, Las Casas Institute for Social Justice, Blackfriars Hall, University of Oxford. He has combined a career in academia and humanitarian agencies, including Save the Children, the UN, the ICRC, Oxfam GB, and the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development. He was Reader in International Humanitarianism at Oxford Brookes University and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He is a Visiting Professor at Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University and Academic Director of the Oxford Consortium for Human Rights.