Local Humanitarian Leadership and Religious Literacy

"In many societies, it is the religious leaders and actors who are the most powerful and respected members of the society, with tremendous access to, and sway over, their community members. Yet many secular international humanitarian actors keep religion and local religious actors at arm's length, even as they embrace the LHL agenda and work to strengthen the capacity of local actors in the places where they work to lead humanitarian action."

Local humanitarian leadership (LHL) is built upon the premise that humanitarian action should be led by governments and civil societies in crisis-affected countries whenever possible, yet this research finds that secular humanitarian international non-governmental organisations (INGOs) do not engage systematically with local faith actors in their local leadership work. Oxfam undertook a project - in collaboration with the Harvard Divinity School and with the support of the Henry Luce Foundation - to explore the intersection of religion and locally led humanitarian action. The scoping research, combining a literature review and interviews of more than 45 stakeholders, set out to examine the varying approaches and effectiveness in local humanitarian leadership by secular and faith-inspired international humanitarian NGOs, their varying approaches to partnering and engaging with local faith actors, and their religious literacy. With regard to the latter, this research found that neither secular nor faith-inspired international humanitarian organisations have a sufficient level of religious literacy to enable them to understand the religious dimensions of the contexts in which they work and to effectively navigate their engagement with local faith actors (LFAs).

As the researchers explain, the approach of LFAs to humanitarian assistance varies widely, as does the engagement by international humanitarian actors with them. On the one hand, many believe that as local actors who 1) are first responders and have been providing humanitarian assistance and acting as social safety nets in their communities for decades, if not centuries; 2) have great logistical access; 3) are respected in their communities; and 4) have the ability to effect social change (e.g., on gender equality, violence against women, and early marriage) in their communities, LFAs should be among the local actors with which INGOs are considering partnering and supporting in their work toward LHL. For example, Islamic Relief (IR) has done research on various humanitarian issues (e.g., gender, child protection, climate change) and has worked with a range of Muslim leaders to develop perspectives on those issues from a theological and Quranic basis. They draw on these perspectives in the training of staff and the implementation of projects. IR also takes this one step further: When the organisation encounters a religious belief or practice (e.g., domestic violence) that is inconsistent with their humanitarian and human rights framework, they organise fora for religious leaders to gather and discuss the topic. Because religions are internally diverse, IR is often able to find religious leaders in the surrounding area that are more supportive of their humanitarian goals with respect to that practice. Then, rather than force IR's position on local religious leaders, they allow a space for dialogue that can lead to positive change.

On the other hand, there are concerns and risks related to LFAs, including that they 1) do not always adequately represent their entire communities, particularly the most vulnerable, and the people put forth as leaders often represent the traditional hierarchies; 2) do not consistently embody and promote gender and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) equality; 3) do not consistently meet technical standards; 4) are not always able to scale up in times of crisis; and 5) do not always subscribe or adhere to the humanitarian principles (for a detailed discussion of these principles, see page 16). With regard to the latter, the research found a pervasive stigma regarding non-adherence to the humanitarian principle of impartiality by LFAs as well as evidence of actual problems with partiality and proselytising that need to be addressed, both of which result in obstacles to the provision of aid to those most in need.

As examined in the paper, secular and faith-inspired humanitarian INGOs have reacted differently to this mixture of opportunities and risks involved with engaging with LFAs. Nonetheless, virtually all stakeholders recognised the importance of a greater level of religious literacy in their work on local humanitarian leadership and had in mind very clear components that would be useful, including examining the opportunities and risks of engagement with LFAs as well as: obtaining more information about relevant religious, cultural, and political factors in a given context; learning more about local faith actors operating in the areas where INGOs are working and how those LFAs work; allowing for religiously-based discussions of human rights and humanitarian principles; and recognising secular assumptions. Specifically, the researchers recommend that practitioners and scholars should collaborate to create a religious literacy curriculum, or toolbox, in order to improve their humanitarian work generally and their LHL work in particular. It should:

• Be comprehensive, focusing not only on the key principles, beliefs, doctrine, and history of religions, but - more useful for an industry where people work in many different contexts - it will provide aid workers with the tools to gather this information, as well as key information about the relationship between religion, politics, and culture in a given context.
• Consider issues around gender and be intersectional (recognising the multiple layers of identity - and discrimination - that occur across race, gender, social class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, age, etc.).
• Reflect the internal diversity of many religions.
• Include discussions of secular literacy.
• Be sufficiently flexible to meet the needs of various actors, including secular and faith-based INGOs.

Other communication-related recommendations include:

• Both secular and faith-inspired humanitarian INGOs should examine and seek to address their own religious biases in their work on local humanitarian leadership as well as their other humanitarian work.
• Practitioners and researchers should work together to prepare an analysis of the potential costs of not engaging with LFAs in local humanitarian leadership work.
• When engaging with LFAs, INGOs should (among other things) ensure that discussion of issues related to human rights and humanitarian principles avoids jargon and uses terms that are widely, and locally, understandable. They should not presume that these values are universally held or interpreted the same by all and yet also refrain from suggesting that international actors have the "copyright" on such values.
• In order to collaboratively explore the risks and opportunities of engaging with LFAs, secular and faith-inspired humanitarian INGOs should consider joining initiatives such as the UN Interagency Taskforce on Religion and Development, the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith & Local Communities (JLI), and the Partnership for Religion and Development (PaRD). They could also participate in conferences such as the October 2017 conference Localizing Response to Humanitarian Need: The Role of Religious and Faith-Based Organizations. (The video below is from a January 20 2017 symposium at the Harvard Divinity School in which panels of humanitarian actors and religious scholars wrestled with the question of how secular organisations like Oxfam should interact with local religious organisations whose practices merge with and diverge from their own in important ways.)
• More in-depth research should be conducted on, for example, whether there are other differences, beyond engagement with LFAs, in the practices and effectiveness of the local humanitarian leadership work conducted by secular and faith-inspired humanitarian organisations. This research should focus heavily on obtaining the perspectives of actors based in-country: field staff of INGOs and other actors and, particularly, local secular and faith actors.