Mercy Global Concern - 2006

Mercy Global Concern: Briefing paper 3, November 2006

You gotta have faith at the UN

Azza Karam and Matthew Weiner International
Herald Tribune
Published: October 23, 2006
NEW YORK Religion and the United Nations

The United Nations lacks a comprehensive strategy for understanding and engaging religion. While the world's largest multilateral organization is secular and should remain so, it is unrealistic that at a time of global upheaval, religious representatives are not included as a fundamental part of international civil society.

The issue is not whether religion should be important, but rather that because it is, it should be engaged. As long as the United Nations continues to work primarily with secular civil society, multireligious collaboration will remain a largely untapped resource.

The United Nations and its agencies deal with a comprehensive range of issues affecting global communities, including human rights, population, food, agriculture, health, trade and children. For each of these issues, religion often plays a powerful complementary moral, social, economic and political role for disenfranchised communities.

Every religious tradition has leaders and networks providing food distribution, heath care, education and conflict mediation. Religious social service networks, which preceded the UN and governmental entities, reach more people and are more deeply entrenched than any other organization.

Recent natural disasters, like the Asian tsunami, and man- made interventions, like the war in Iraq , demonstrate the capacity of religious communities to mobilize social and humanitarian services. Besides humanitarian aid, religious organizations play a role in fostering education, caring for children, building infrastructure and lending moral authority to touchy and taboo issues, such as AIDS and sexuality.

In the absence of a comprehensive UN strategy on religion, individual agencies engage with faith-based organizations on an ad-hoc basis. The UN Development Program, Unicef and Unesco have this experience. The UN Population Fund employs "culturally sensitive approaches," wisely targeting religious and tribal leaders as critical "agents of change."

Why is there hesitation about systematic multireligious engagement? The United Nations is historically a secular institution representing governments, and as such, there are some legitimate concerns. Some argue that religion is simply too divisive and too complex. Others recall alliances formed between certain religious bodies and governments during critical UN conferences on reproductive health care, and children's and women's rights, and shudder at the "anti-rights" language and discourse employed.

Nevertheless, the UN's positive history of engaging civil society help it create a safe space for religious traditions to engage one another in the interests of development. Support for such multireligious cooperation could simultaneously enable the UN to play an instrumental role in giving much needed visibility and legitimacy to moderate and internationally oriented religious voices.

Senior UN management should endorse an initiative to carry out a comprehensive assessment of the possible role of religious organizations. This could be followed up by moves to compile the lessons learned by UN agencies, to reach out to existing partners within religious communities, as well as to government-sponsored religious bodies.

In line with UN reform initiatives, it would also be good strategy to put together an interagency team that could work with experienced non-UN partners representing international faith-based organizations.

The terms of reference of this team would be to develop a program of action that builds on past achievements while targeting remaining gaps, and identifying milestones along the road toward a systematic and comprehensive engagement between the UN and faith-based agents of change.

This is not an easy task, but it is an important part of reforming the United Nations and enhancing multilateral cooperation, coexistence and sustainability. In a world where religions are as powerful as ever - for good and ill - it is a risk worth taking.

Azza Karam is a senior adviser to the UN Development Program and editor of "Transnational Political Islam: Religion, Ideology and Power." Matthew Weiner is the director of program development at the Interfaith Center of New York, and a doctoral candidate at Union Theological Seminary.