Chapter 14: Development Challenges for the New Millennium: Dialogue and Partnership Issues for Faith and Development Institutions
Katherine Marshall (World Bank)
Introduction
This chapter describes the origin of recent engagement between the faiths and faith-based development organizations, on the one hand, and the large secular development institutions, on the other. It describes the development over the past six years of new forms of dialogue among these groups about the challenges of global poverty. It sets out the challenge to Christian and other faith organizations posed by the Millennium Development Goals, describes the genesis of the World Faiths Development Dialogue, and explores some practical ways for faith-based organizations to become involved in the formulation of policy toward poverty alleviation, notably through the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) process.
Millennium Development Challenges and Goals
In looking to the vital challenges and issues for our times -- war and peace, social justice, the scourge of HIV/AIDS, child welfare, and environmental protection -- the links between the agendas, concerns and core purpose of those who work on international development and those whose central focus is faith and religion are striking and legion. Perhaps no common challenges are as clear as the imperative and urgent need to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the crisis to global governance and support for international development assistance posed by corrupt practices. However, with notable exceptions, dialogue between these two worlds has historically been weak and fragmented, characterized by considerable tension and missed opportunities for positive action. Reflection and action to strengthen the links, and to address some real concerns that have impeded joint action, is critically needed.
The 2000 U.N. Millennium Summit[1], which was preceded by an extraordinary meeting at the United Nations of leaders of the world’s faiths, spurred both new thinking and new engagement among development and faith leaders at the global level about the roles of religion and interfaith dialogue in meeting the core challenges facing humanity, defined particularly in terms of the fight against global poverty. The September 2000 Millennium Declaration by world leaders proclaimed: “We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected.” The Summit put a spotlight on the roles of faith leaders as agents of change, and the lessons to be learned by and from different partners in addressing society's challenges. These challenges were amplified following the events of September 11, 2001 and their aftermath.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) emerged from this engagement of world leaders in 2000[2]. They reflect an effort to frame and encapsulate many global agreements reached in recent decades, and a new determination to mobilize energy, resources and passion behind tangible and quantified imperatives. They are presented in the form of a “covenant” through which progress can be judged. 2015 – not far before us all – is a date when we (as a global community) are committed to take stock of how well we have done to defeat the ancient scourges of want, ignorance, hunger and strife. The goals are straightforward – halve poverty, halt the spread of communicable diseases, ensure that all children go to school and at least finish primary school, work to protect and improve the environment, etc. But they present still a formidable challenge and the current prognosis is that in many areas the MDGs will not be achieved.
The MDGs reflect “ancient wine” in new bottles and labels. They are simple and incontestable goals. They are, however, an essential backdrop to current thinking about the role of the faiths in world development, because they symbolize a new awareness of the need to galvanize stronger global partnerships and an urgent global commitment to making better progress towards social justice. An essential part of this effort must be to appreciate better the complex and varied roles that faith institutions play in the development arena, from contribution to broad ethical and policy debates from global to personal levels (for example in making the human imperative of fighting poverty an obligation of each of us), to on-going derivation of practical insights about interventions at the community and family level. Without faith institutions engaged, the fight to achieve education goals, to address gender inequities, and to combat the scourge of HIV/AIDS, among many others, cannot be won. Therefore, never has the need for thoughtful dialogue been greater[3].
World Bank Dialogue with Faith Groups
The World Bank (one of the leading protagonists in the development “world”) has historically engaged directly with faith institutions in only limited ways. In the course of its efforts to engage more with “civil society”, however, the Bank has begun working with many faith-based nongovernmental organizations on a wide range of development projects.
What has led the World Bank to engage more directly with faith institutions? A first motivation has been new recognition of the important role that faith institutions have played in education, health and the promotion of development more globally, as witnessed in the development of the MDGs. The World Bank and other secular development actors have also recognized the skill and energy that faith institutions bring to poor communities, working to empower poor people and to advance community development agendas. This often wins remarkably high levels of trust. These facts are highlighted powerfully in the Voices of the Poor surveys conducted by the World Bank[4]. In additional to skills and energy, faith institutions also contribute substantial financial resources to development efforts. These flows are notoriously poorly documented, but we know, for example, that over half of the resources within the US philanthropic world flow through faith-based institutions. Finally, the world’s faiths have from time immemorial grappled with the fundamental ethical issues that underlie the development challenge and worked towards greater social justice. Never have such prophetic voices been needed more in the face of the complex challenges that confront us today.
Reflections on the role of faith institutions have also been spurred by the sometimes highly visible and often contentious questioning of World Bank policies and programs towards debt, structural adjustment and cost recovery from faith institutions. Voices from pulpits, temples, and Friday prayers ricochet in both developing and developed countries. Globally, faith groups influence global public policy in many ways, including the orchestration of major global summits and the building of consensus for development aid (witness their impact through the Jubilee 2000 campaign on poor country debt and at global meetings on HIV/AIDS).
The World Bank today is keenly aware that faith institutions are important players on development issues, with whom better dialogue is needed. These institutions have much to offer development practitioners in responding to the challenges of poverty and social justice.
The World Faiths Development Dialogue
An effort to further dialogue began about six years ago (in February 1998) at Lambeth -- the lovely old Palace on the Thames River, where an ancient gnarled fig tree reminds visitors of the times when King Henry the VIII provoked radical changes in England’s relations between church and state. Jim Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank, and George Carey, then Archbishop of Canterbury, invited leaders from the world’s major religions to discuss how they viewed the global challenge of poverty. The first meeting of the group, at Lambeth, was rather tentative and strained. Many faith leaders were critical of the World Bank, especially its promotion of what was termed “structural adjustment”, and concern about the growing weight of debt on poor countries was widespread. World Bank officials were frankly baffled and frustrated by the much of the criticism since they saw themselves in the vanguard of the fight against global poverty. All participants were forced to recognize how far apart the worlds of faith and of development had grown. More than 50 years of development history had brought very little organized cooperation between them, leaving them with vocabularies that seemed to come from different planets. But the meeting brought into the light a deep sense that these worlds were joined in a common purpose in the fight against poverty.
The sequel to this meeting was a continuing and focused process of dialogue, looking both to define broad objectives and ethical imperatives and to derive lessons from practical, on the ground experience with working in poor communities. Three areas illustrate these initial efforts and their promise. Working through the World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD), a consultation process provided ideas and concrete suggestions to two major policy exercises led by the World Bank, the World Development Reports on Poverty in 2000 and Services to the Poor in 2003. The role that faith communities have played in the emerging process of country poverty strategies has been brought into the light. Finally, exploratory interfaith groups in Guatemala, Ethiopia and Tanzania have showed that concrete challenges such as national health policy, approaches to food security, and articulation of common ethical principles for the education system can unite groups long divided by history and conflict. The WFDD remains a small organization, based in the UK, with a permanent staff of only four people, but its network spans the globe and it offers great promise as a bridge among different actors committed to global social change[5].
The effort to engage in robust dialogue, leading to action, has been driven by the strong personal commitment of the two leaders concerned (Jim Wolfensohn and George Carey). The dialogue is grounded in the deeply felt common purpose that was the central outcome of the 1998 Lambeth meeting. The World Bank articulates its mission in two phrases: “our dream is a world free of poverty” and “to fight poverty with passion and professionalism”. Every major world religion has as a central anchor in compassion for those who suffer, a deep obligation of the fortunate to help those in need, and a fire for social justice. Beyond the common starting point lie worlds of complications – in how the World Bank and other institutions view and fight poverty, and in how religions explain it and exhort us to respond. But the core is there: this is a central problem for us all. The dialogue builds on three other strong areas of common concern: the deep engagement of faith institutions in social services, a recognition that faith institutions have a special “ear” for voices of the poor because they are so present in poor communities and are trusted by poor people, and the strong common concern for building peace – both preventing conflict and rebuilding when it comes to an end.
After the Lambeth meeting, the path proved more complex than expected. The idea of dialogue, seemingly straightforward and sensible, drew sharp criticism, mainly from the secular development actors. Why was this so? Most important was fear that the engagement with religious organizations might exacerbate inter-religious tensions that were fueling conflict and even affect the rise of fundamentalist movements, associated in the developing world with terror and in the developed world with controversial stances on such issues as women’s reproductive health rights. The complex lines between “church and state” were an immediate concern for some and they were concerned that an explicit development community and World Bank focus on religion might muddy the waters of respective roles of church and state. It took some years of exploration to understand the concerns, to move to address the real challenges of respecting the hard won separation of church and state, and to define better what dialogue meant – not debate, not explanation, not just words, but a real effort to understand and find better ways to work in partnership. Perhaps the most significant challenge and avenue that has emerged is continuous and explicit efforts to link the broad global dialogue on issues such as approaches to health or HIV/AIDS to specific and current experience at the community level. The World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD) in the form of a very modest but important institution is now well launched and the process of dialogue and learning is advancing across a wide range of institutions and initiatives.
A second important marker along the path was September 11, 2001. This brought the links between religion and development into much sharper and much more complicated relief. No one could plausibly argue thereafter that a better understanding of religions was not vital. At the same time, the difficulties of dialogue appeared even greater still than before, and the list of questions much longer: Was religion changing? In what direction? Was it conducive to peace and stability or against it? Did religion favor a dialogue or a clash of civilizations? The World Faiths Development Dialogue continues to be confronted directly and immediately with these questions.
A major recent milestone was a meeting in Canterbury, England on October 6-8, 2002, again co-chaired by Jim Wolfensohn and the Archbishop of Canterbury. [6] A group of leaders from the world’s major religions, major development institutions, foundations and the private sector gathered to consider how their various partnerships could be strengthened to combat poverty and to work together toward the realization of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Their exchange was pitched squarely at moving beyond talk and dialogue to more effective action. The meeting was marked by a common commitment to make a difference in the world, even as important differences were aired in a candid, forthright and constructive manner. Participants agreed totally about the need to translate promises into reality through consistency, drive and humility. The meeting agenda, focused on the core of the global development agenda and the MDGs, with special focus on poverty, education, HIV/AIDS, community empowerment and development, and issues around conflict and development in countries under stress, afforded a solid basis for practical agreements on follow up in key areas, notably education, HIV/AIDS and gender. The admonition of Lord Carey, that “paths are made by walking” has been followed since with a focus on bringing faith and development actors closer together in all the critical areas involved, but especially on the implementation of community based programs combating HIV/AIDS in many African countries.