Religion and development – (how) do they go together?

Shiites against Sunnis in Syria, Christians against Muslims in the Central African Republic, Buddhists against Hindus in Sri Lanka. Religion seems to be the source of numerous conflicts around the globe. The proportion of armed conflicts in which religion plays a role has doubled in the space of 40 years – from one-third in 1975 to two-thirds in 2015. However, peace and conflict research has also shown that religion is almost never the sole or primary cause of conflicts.

"Conflicts are very complex and multidimensional," says Katharina Gfeller, head of the International Relations department of Mission 21, a Protestant mission organisation. "There are often political and economic power interests at play, and they can instrumentalise religious affiliation for their own ends."

It is clear that religious values and beliefs shape the thoughts and actions of billions of people: religion is important to four out of five people worldwide. This is particularly true of the international development cooperation partner countries, where religion and spirituality are a fundamental part of everyday life.

The positive potential of religion is also evident in these countries: faith-based actors there work in various ways to improve living conditions and sustainable development. Healthcare, education and other social services are largely provided by religious communities. In Uganda, for example, that figure is over 50%.

This gives religious actors a high standing. The partners that Mission 21 works with have particularly strong roots in civil society. "They are present in areas where state structures don't exist and can offer shelter even in the most adverse circumstances. They work at grassroots level, have a wide network and are highly trusted by the general public," says Gfeller. She tells us about a church-run women's refuge in Indonesia that partners with a Muslim organisation to protect and support women affected by violence. Or about a project that brings groups of Christians and Muslims together in a Nigerian region badly affected by violence.

According to Katharina Gfeller, faith-based actors are also interlinked at national and international levels, and sometimes take part in important political processes. This is shown by an example from South Sudan, where members of both the Protestant and Catholic churches, including women's groups, played a significant role in the peace process, leading to the peace agreement in September 2018.

In development policy, however, the central importance of religion and spirituality has long been overlooked. "We Western Europeans have mostly grown up in a secular environment where religion is at best a private matter," says Gfeller.

It is only in the last 15 years or so that this issue has increasingly started to appear on the international development cooperation agenda. For example, in 2016 the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) decided to engage more closely with religious communities as partners in order to achieve the global development goals laid down in the 2030 Agenda. It resolved to pay more attention to interfaith dialogue and to provide German experts with training before sending them abroad, thus ensuring they could respond more sensitively to religious and cultural traditions and attitudes.

Katharina Gfeller also considers this essential: "acknowledging the importance of religion and spirituality in the partner countries is also a large part of conflict-sensitivity." Gfeller believes that scrutinising the term 'development' should be part of the process. "What we mean by development isn't necessarily what a woman from the Andes means by it." She points out that for some sections of the population, material and spiritual development go hand in hand and that the connection with the cosmos is part of leading a full life.

Switzerland first decided to pay more attention to the subject of religion as far back as 2003 when the SDC launched a multi-year research project led by Anne-Marie Holenstein, the then director of Fastenopfer (an NGO now known as Fastenaktion). This resulted in a comprehensive working paper entitled 'Development and Religion' in which Holenstein also highlights the particular importance of personal openness when it comes to learning what religion and spirituality mean for the people you are cooperating with.

However, the SDC has not addressed the role of religion as an issue in its own right since the project was completed in 2010. When asked about this, the SDC points out that the religious dimension has nevertheless been integrated into many of its programmes and forms a key part of its context analyses.

Special attention is paid to this issue in Switzerland's peace policy. The FDFA has partnered with academic institutions and NGOs since 2004 to carry out a series of projects dedicated to transforming conflicts between actors with different world views. In addition, it runs a 'Religion and Mediation' course each year together with the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich.

According to Claudia Hoffmann, a lecturer in intercultural theology at the University of Basel, religion and spirituality are still essentially being neglected in development cooperation. "There's always a slight suspicion that religious organisations are doing something wrong," says Hoffmann.

And that scepticism is not always unfounded. Religious groups may claim that their belief system represents the absolute truth, which can lead to intolerance and discrimination or even violence. This is one way in which religion can impede a country's development. Consider, for example, the shunning of people infected with HIV or the rejection of women's and minority rights, not forgetting practices that violate human rights, such as female genital mutilation.

Hoffmann raises this in an article in which she examines what contribution religious organisations can make to gender equality. "Working with religious organisations unquestionably provides an opportunity to talk about difficult moral values of this kind," says Hoffmann. She notes, for example, that providing basic or advanced training that challenges fundamentalist positions and stereotypes to key faith-based actors also has an impact on the community.

One example that has recently attracted international attention comes from Mauritania, where an imam is fighting against female genital mutilation. The Muslim cleric recognised the dangers arising from this practice thanks to the awareness-raising work of World Vision, an NGO. Since then, he has been visiting families to discuss and reflect on the practice with them. Because, as he said in a report to World Vision, he is aware of his power: "As a religious leader, it is easier for me to call centuries-old traditions into question."