by Tanya Schwarz
A central goal of The CIHA Blog is to explore the role of faith-based organizations (FBOs) in humanitarian and development efforts in Africa. One of the primary questions that arises regarding this role is the impact that “Western”-based discourses have on development endeavors and discourses “on the ground.” Last November, over 600 religious leaders participated in the Religions for Peace 9th World Assembly, held in Vienna, Austria. This year’s Assembly theme was “Welcoming the Other” through multi-religious action for human dignity, for shared well-being, and for a more robust notion of citizenship. As an intern for Religions for Peace (RfP), I was able to observe the interactions between the delegates, and to compare and contrast their ideas, questions, and proposals related to particular global issues with those laid out in RfP official documents. While some similarities were evident, the differences served to highlight the disconnection between the organizational center—the Religions for Peace International Secretariat, based in New York—and those affiliates on the periphery.
The purpose of the RfP World Assemblies, which have been held every 5-7 years since 1970, is to bring together religious leaders from various faiths to discuss current global economic, political, and social issues, and to suggest courses of action. The delegates attending the Vienna Assembly represented more than 120 countries and a wide-range of religious traditions, including Baha’i, Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Indigenous, Jain, Muslim, Sikh, Zoroastrian, and others.
This year, the World Assembly included four commissions, each including 100-200 Assembly delegates, and each focusing on particular themes—one of which was “Welcoming the Other through Human Development that Respects the Earth.” Each commission met three times—once to discuss specific problems associated with the commission theme, next to talk about how religious communities, themselves, could tackles these issues, and finally to propose concrete ways of moving forward. Each commission session culminated in a commission report outlining the results of the sessions. Prior to the Assembly, the Religions for Peace International Secretariat prepared official papers on each commission theme. While the papers were often prepared by outside consultants, the Secretariat office, directed by Dr. William Vendley, the Secretary General, was very influential in shaping the discourse presented, and in approving the finalized versions.
As briefly mentioned above, what I found striking during my time at the World Assembly was the way in which many of the commission delegates deviated from the dominant discourses laid out in the human development commission paper (I cannot speak for the discussions held in other commission meetings). In other words, Assembly delegates often asked different questions, highlighted different problems, and proposed different solutions than those laid out in the official commission paper.
For instance, the commission paper, “Welcoming the Other through Human Development that Respects the Earth,” is heavily reliant on data, language, and solutions provided by various United Nations agencies. The paper is divided into two parts—Advancing Human Development and Protecting the Earth—and each part is broken up into three sections. The first section focuses on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—providing an outline of the successes and challenges of the MDG program, outlining the ways in which RfP has worked together with the UN to further these goals, and outlining the post-2015 development agenda. This section makes it clear that the MDG program is a top priority for Religions for Peace.
Yet, in the commission meetings, very little attention was paid to the Millennium Development Goals. In fact, while one speaker (Liza Barrie, a UNICEF representative) briefly mentioned the MDGs, only one commission speaker—Paddy Meskin, President of the World Conference on Religions for Peace-South Africa—focused on the MDG program. Furthermore, though she seemed to support the MDG framework and its continuance post-2015, she acknowledged that UN reports on the results of the MDG program bear no resemblance to what is happening on the ground. Other speakers and participants in the commission made no mention of the MDGs, instead choosing to focus on local grassroots programs. While it is possible that the MDGs were simply taken for granted, there were also various comments made about the failings of UN development projects—indicating that some (though not all) participants were not necessarily focusing on local works as mere additions to UN programs. Rather, they were exploring other humanitarian and development options outside of the UN model.
The second and third sections of the commission paper present the problematics of advancing human development including (1) legal empowerment of the poor and (2) health (including child survival and protection, maternal health and women’s empowerment, and HIV and AIDS), as well as a call for faith communities to address these global challenges. The paper references the UN program, Every Woman Every Child, and its call-to-action bullet points as examples of what religious leaders should be doing to promote health in their own communities.
Commission participants did touch on some of these issues in their discussions (though the legal empowerment of the poor was not discussed). The issue of child protection, in particular, was a central concern coming out of the discussions. However, the role of UN programs in addressing this issue was barely discussed. Instead, the participants called on religious communities to address this problem in other ways. Some suggestions included: calling for multi-national corporations to be held accountable for their contributions to child obesity and illness, calling on individual governments to protect children from violence, educating children locally on environmental issues, and changing our society from “adult-centered” to “child-centered.” Though some of these suggestions may fit into the UN recommendations (to educate communities, for example), the participants were very much focused on addressing these problems locally, with their own programs. International programs supported by the UN or other agencies were not a focus of discussion.
As mentioned, the second part of the commission paper focuses on Protecting the Earth and is divided into three sections: a call to action, examples of actions taken by faith-based communities and organizations, and strategy recommendations. It is in this latter part of the paper, that the official Religions for Peace support of the UN and its programs is most apparent. While the steps faith communities have made on the local level to combat climate change—by taking measures to reduce their carbon footprint—is recognized, much of the discussion focuses on the role of the UN, and the ways in which faith communities have contributed to UN efforts. The issue of climate change, in particular, is portrayed as one that can only be solved through a binding agreement on greenhouse gas emission reductions forged through the United Nations. While the paper acknowledges the failures of the UN to come up with such an agreement, or to successfully combat climate change through other programs, it continues to call for faith-based communities to engage with the UN, with the hope that this will lead promising changes to the multilateral environmental agreements and norms.
Yet, once again, the commission discussions did not fully reflect the suggestions of the RfP International Secretariat. While there were calls for religious communities to engage with secular organizations as well as various levels of local, national, and international governance structures, the focus of the participants was primarily on local levels of action as well as the underlying cause of environmental destruction—global inequity. Participants raised questions that were either not asked, or that were peripheral in the commission papers. For instance, how is it that both poverty and overconsumption are both so widespread? Why is it that the African continent holds much of the world’s wealth, but the majority of Africans are poor? Why are developed countries like South Africa, more socially unequal than less developed countries like Senegal?
In short, many of the participants were concerned with the structural economic, political, and social conditions that lead to specific global problems like climate change. Some specifically placed blame on the developed countries for many of the environmental (and other) problems the world is facing. However, the commission participants also called for action at home, proposing a wide-range of solutions which included a lessoning of consumption, education, and working together—across religious and cultural boundaries—to tackle the problems of particular communities and regions. What was largely left out of the discussion (except by those who were representing a UN agency), was the role of the United Nations in addressing these problems.
It could be that the UN was not the focus of these talks on development because many of the commission participants are religious leaders, concerned with their own local communities—not experts in UN governance on development. Or, it could be that they see UN programs as unsuccessful or limited. Indeed, there was one Ugandan participant who suggested that local religious communities should work towards compiling their own development data, rather than relying on the UN or local government organizations. Either way, it is clear that RfP affiliates, in Africa and elsewhere, when given the chance to discuss the issue of development, in many cases did not ask the same questions or propose the same solutions as those introduced in the official commission paper.
It is important to note that several times during the World Assembly Dr. Vendley indicated that these commission papers were meant to be tools to stimulate discussion, rather than textbooks to be followed. The Assembly organizers undoubtedly knew that the commission meetings would not follow the official papers to the letter. Still, the Religions for Peace International Secretariat has much influence in the organization of the World Assemblies, as well as the development and humanitarian programs that are introduced between the Assemblies. It is important that Religions for Peace and other NGOs (faith-based or not) incorporate local insights into their official discourses in meaningful ways. The question for CIHA Blog readers is how to do this.
Tanya Schwarz is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Irvine. Her current research focuses on the meaning and function of prayer for transnational faith-based organizations. She is also Editorial Assistant for The CIHA Blog.