Religion and Sustainable Development

The sun has set on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the era of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has dawned. The new global goals represent a timely shift away from the MDGs, which measured progress against blunt averages that masked growing gaps both within and between countries and communities.

The SDGs are a progressive approach to development—a multi-sectoral, rights-based, people-centered approach that knits together diverse global efforts to transform the way development is delivered. The goals are audacious: ending poverty, achieving gender equity, and every nation working to address climate change—all joined by the goals to end AIDS by 2030 and to bring universal health care to every individual.

Critically, none of the SDGs can be achieved in isolation. We cannot address ending AIDS by 2030 if we do not end gender inequity and violence. Climate change and poverty are inseparable. Wrapped around it all is health—which must be treated as a fundamental human right. The SDGs require all of us—governments, multilaterals, the private sector, civil society, and faith communities—to build strong connections between efforts to address health, injustice, inequality, poverty, and conflict.

The articles presented in this special issue on religion and sustainable development explore the evolving role of faith communities in this new era. In his essay “Religion in Sustainable Development,” James Cochrane points out that religion constitutes an integral and inextricable feature of human development, and that to assume that religion can be separated from development is to fundamentally misunderstand what it means to be human.

As the strictly secular framework for development gives way to greater inclusiveness, it is important to recognize the valuable capacities faith-based organizations (FBOs) bring to development work. It is also essential that all partners and stakeholders understand how to work with FBOs to overcome theological and ideological challenges to partnership that are already a part of the landscape.

In recognition of the importance of these relationships, the United Nations (UN) Inter-Agency Task Force on Engaging with Faith-based Organizations for Sustainable Development was formed in 2009 under the aegis of the UN Development Group (UNDG), bringing together several UN entities—UN Population Fund (UNFPA), UN Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), UN Development Programme (UNDP), World Health Organization (WHO), the Joint UN Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS), the UN Alliance of Civilizations, UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), UNHabitat, and UN Environment Programme (UNEP), with the World Bank as an observer. The group has grown and is now referred to as the Inter-Agency Task Force on Religion and Development, IATF for short. Its mandate is to seek and share knowledge, build UN staff and system capacities to partner with faith-based actors, and address questions of religion around the MDGs—and now the SDGs.

UNAIDS has approached the SDGs as nothing less than a seismic shift in political priorities, which offers a major opportunity for the maturing global AIDS response. In essence, this is what we in the movement have been working towards for 30 years, with the extraordinary support of FBOs. Like the SDGs, the AIDS response has been built on the solid foundation of protecting the health and rights of every individual, leaving no one behind. This emphasis on integration, equity, and inclusion is also the bedrock of faith organizations in the sustainable development movement.

As FBOs are central to development work and the promotion of human rights, the expectation that representatives of religious organizations will be held more accountable for the protection and promotion of human rights has increased. In Azza Karam and Katherine Marshall’s essay in this issue, “Religion, Human Rights, and Development: Focusing on Health,” the authors discuss the complexities arising from the interconnected nature of distinct human rights.

Getting on the Fast-Track

Last year, eight months ahead of the deadline, we reached the MDG 6 target to halt and reverse the spread of AIDS and to have more than 15 million people on treatment. Today 17 million people are receiving life-saving medicines.

To meet our most ambitious goal to date—ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030—we developed the UNAIDS 2016–2021 Strategy, “On the Fast-Track to End AIDS,” with key inputs from faith organizations. The Strategy embraces new “90-90-90” treatment targets: by 2020, 90% of all people living with HIV will know their HIV status, 90% of all people diagnosed with HIV will receive antiretroviral therapy, and 90% of all people receiving antiretroviral therapy will have sustained viral suppression.

Reaching this target requires that all HIV testing initiatives focus on where needs are greatest. This demands that we further integrate HIV services with a range of health services—especially those operated by FBOs—leveraging innovation to improve treatment adherence and more comprehensively tackling the health needs of people living with HIV.

This also means scaling up interventions to focus on geographic areas and populations where incidence is high to achieve maximum efficiency and impact. The Fast-Track launches a new era of intersectoral partnerships. It requires a renewed global mobilization of a broad coalition of communities and faiths to demand HIV treatment and to address the stigma, discrimination, gender inequity, and punitive laws that so often form barriers to people coming forward for HIV testing.

In the article “High-level Collaboration Between the Public Sector and Religious and Faith-based Organizations: Fad or Trend?” the authors (Jean Duff et al.) suggest that shared, multi-sectoral goals like the MDGs and the SDGs offer a common framework to harness the unique assets of FBOs, faith leaders, and faith communities. They also note renewed efforts to develop the evidence base to support effective faith-based partnerships.

An example of how FBOs are proving to be important complementary partners to national governments in achieving the SDGs are the partnerships between networks of faith-based health service providers in Africa and national governments. These networks are significant providers of health care in some of these countries as described by Olivier and Smith in the article “Innovative Faith-community Responses to HIV and AIDS: Summative Lessons from Over Two Decades of Work.” A number of these networks have now created memoranda of understanding with their national governments, establishing more formal terms of reference for the partnership and mechanisms for funding, drug supply, and the training, retention, and exchange of staff between national and faith-run hospitals.

Synergy and Friction

The SDGs provide a range of opportunities for FBOs to engage. There are many areas of potential synergy, especially in delivering holistic health services. This growing interest from international organizations to build partnerships with FBOs has made for a crowded and growing field, but it is also a mine-field. The influence of religion in areas such as sexual and reproductive health, gender equality, and in situations of conflict and crisis can be both extremely positive and profoundly negative. It is important that in the rush to leverage new faith-based partnerships, international partners draw on the wisdom and experience that already exists within the UN system—and in particular the IATF—rather than pushing ahead with naïve enthusiasm. Rushing in where angels fear to tread can make sensitive and explosive issues and situations worse.

As explicitly explored in the July 2015 Lancet paper, “Controversies in Faith and Health Care” (Tomkins et al. 2016), these areas of friction include family planning, child protection (especially child marriage, female genital mutilation, and immunization), harm reduction, violence against women, stigma and discrimination around sexuality and gender identity, sexual and reproductive health and services, end-of-life issues, and faith activities, including prayer.

Where religious doctrine is an integral part of the conflict, faith-based actors engaging in development may be compromised or face conflicts of interest. Significant work has been done on the role of FBOs in situations of conflict and violence by a working group of the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities. The group launched their findings in the report, “Faith-based Interventions in Peace, Conflict and Violence: A Scoping Study” at the World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016 (JLIF&LC 2015).

One issue that disturbs me more than almost all others we see day-to-day are the life-threatening problems and barriers faced by adolescent girls. In addition to being disproportionately more likely to acquire HIV than their male peers, girls face sexual violence, educational and economic discrimination, and lack of health services. These gender disparities are explored in the article “Getting Dirty: Working with Faith Leaders to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence” (LeRoux et al.). Issues of gender violence and discrimination provoke numerous other concerns around sexuality, reproductive health, and patriarchy that can be tricky for partners to negotiate—but they have to find a way. When it comes to ending the violence and oppression that millions of women and girls face every day, we cannot be mute. We must do whatever we can to shatter the silence, putting all of our energy into speaking out, loudly, with one voice.

Two other delicate areas for international partners and governments in their work with FBOs are the dilemma of how funds are used and proselytization. The UNAIDS Secretariat came together with representatives from UNAIDS cosponsoring organizations and major faith communities in 2007 to develop a Framework for Partnerships Between UNAIDS and Faith-based Organizations Working on HIV (see UNAIDS 2009). The Roles and Responsibilities section of this document (UNAIDS 2009, 16) provides an agreed set of parameters for engagement that attempts to address these and other issues. They include bringing people living with HIV into programming and decision-making processes; advocating for universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care, and support services; and adhering to principles of respect, transparency, and evidence-based practices.

Faith partners in the consultation and resulting Framework were keen to point out that they too have concerns about partnering with international organizations and governments. They stressed that these responsibilities should be reciprocal and also include advocating for the integration of FBOs in national AIDS responses, respecting the faith and values of FBOs, and working to overcome institutional reluctance to partner with FBOs, among other mutually beneficial parameters.

Over the past year, we have seen a number of key technical strategies and political declarations adopted by countries and stakeholders that will enable us to move forward with programmatic action to achieve the SDGs. It is a very exciting moment, and from where I sit, it is clear that FBOs are unique and unequalled in the ways they contribute to these global efforts. It would be a disgrace to not mobilize and utilize all they can offer right now. But to be successful, there are three specific challenges we need to meet:

• Finding a way forward together, rising above ideological differences to eliminate sexual violence and address the needs of adolescent girls so that they can take control of their own sexual and reproductive health and to be able to decide when and who they marry, when and how many children to have, and how to protect themselves from HIV infection.

• Harnessing the positive power of religious faith to turn back the tide of religious extremism that fuels violent conflict and drives stigma and discrimination.

• Findings ways to partner more effectively with the health and educational infrastructure managed by religious bodies and their vast community networks.

I hope you will find the articles and cases explored in this issue to be as thought-provoking as I have. I look forward to strengthening our work together as we build a sustainable future for people living in all corners of society—even the most hidden and particularly those being left behind.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michel Sidibé

Michel Sidibé has served as Executive Director of UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations since 1 January 2009. Under his leadership, UNAIDS works to ensure that no one is left behind in the response to HIV, and that everyone in need has access to life-saving services. He has been instrumental in securing global commitments to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030 as part of the Sustainable Development Goals.