Power & Partnership

Editorial Introduction Exploring Models for Power and Partnership

Knut Edvard Larsen and Knud Jørgensen

An international conference on faith-based development was arranged in Oslo, November 6, 2013. The focus of the conference was ‘Power and Partnership’. Digni (the umbrella agency for liaising between Norwegian mission organizations and NORAD (The Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation), NORME (Norwegian Council for Mission and Evangelization), and the Egede Institute for Missiological Study and Research had joined hands in arranging the conference. The aim was to focus on faith-based development with a particular emphasis on the question of power and partnership. The conference intended to be a platform for interdisciplinary debate about the topic. There were critical perspectives on power and the use of power in diakonia and development, and there were challenges to be more conscience of the power we actually have and exercise. Out of this grew constructive reflections on how power is used and could be used, to secure an ethically responsible diakonia and thus contribute towards strengthening partnerships and civil society in the global South.

The conference brought together international and national resource persons within the field. One of the aims of the conference was to collect and edit their papers and the papers of the respondents and to compile them in a publication.

The result is this volume. The purpose of the book is:

•To focus on faith-based development with a particular emphasis on the question of power.

•To deal with both the dark sides and the positive sides of power and partnership and how the two interact.

•To present relevant case studies on the topic from some of the world’s religions.

•To publish new material and insights on the interdisciplinary debate on the topic, and thus fill a vacuum in the general discourse on faith-based development.

As we have been working to compile this book, our concept of power has been that power is influence potential – the resource that enables a leader to gain compliance or commitment from others. Understanding the impact of power is therefore crucial. Partnership may have to do with sharing in a common project, the sharing of gifts and material resources. In a more narrow and strict sense, true partnership implies mutual support for the identity and all aspects of the work and the well-being of each of the partners. It is comprehensive, with no limits as to what the relationship should embrace. It is built on respect, trust, accountability and genuine two-way communication.

The first and major part of the material encompasses the key papers from the conference. Azza Karam’s paper Powerful versus Forceful Partnerships: Religion, Politics and Development argues that we are now beginning an era of active engagement between religious actors and international development organizations – through faith-based organizations and religious leaders. The paper reviews the experience of United Nations development agencies through a case study of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA; formerly the United Nations Fund for Population Activities), and analyses arguments often presented for and against such partnerships, describing how some of these partnerships take shape. By juxtaposing ‘power’ with ‘force’ in international human development endeavours, the paper also reviews how such partnerships may be contributing to fundamental changes, not only in development paradigms, but also to power dynamics in international relations as a whole.

In his response, Tomas Sundnes Drønen deals first with the analytical aspect of power and force – the strength and challenges of being a global actor (which is very much the case for the UN). Secondly, he takes a down-to-earth focus on partnership and dwells on the role which small religious groups can play as agents for development.

In their paper on Transforming Development: A View from South Africa, Narend Baijnath and Genevieve James explore development as a critical and complex site for transformation. They further highlight significant factors that contribute to inequality in partnerships. The paper includes a brief and principal consideration of the concept of partnership. The main part describes the South African development landscape, which serves as the context for this exploration.

Karl Inge Tangen, in his response, concurs with Baijnath and James’ suggestions that three forms of power need to be challenged if we are to establish more authentic partnerships in the development sector. First, we need to challenge the cultural hegemony of the West. This includes challenging model power, all the way to the level of worldview. It also implies that we should develop models of trans-traditional dialogue. Secondly, we need to provide more resources to southern universities so that more research on the South can be done from the South. Finally, he supports the suggestion that Africa should find a way to create more innovations, though by adding more strategies than suggested by Baijnath and James.

Francis Stephanos’ paper An African Perspective: Challenging the Power Structure grows out of his identity as a theologian and church leader, and approaches the issue of power from the biblical point of view. The paper unfolds his own experiences from Ethiopia and from his church in the midst of power-sharing struggles. The paper also tells the story of reconciliation and reunification.

Johnny Bakke’s response takes us further into the history of evangelical Christianity in Ethiopia and highlights some key factors and events in the growth of the church. Against this background the author raises the following questions:

•What does co-operation and mutual partnership stand for?

•Does it concern only what is going on in the South or does it concern both the South and the North?

•Is the process towards decision-making in the global North a matter of concern for the global South?

•And is it proper for the global North to ask questions regarding the policies of implementation in the global South?

As an interlude, after the key papers, we have contracted two case studies on our topic. Since Islam (Azza Karam) and Christianity (Francis Stephanos) are already represented among the authors, we have asked Xue Yu to give a Buddhist perspective and Michael Amaladoss to provide a Hindu perspective on power and partnership. Xue is particularly preoccupied with the role and importance of ‘Engaged Buddhism’. Religious power or divine power is demonstrated by the religious community collectively based on a common belief and partnership. Such a community, led by charismatic leaders who reinterpret religious doctrines and reinvent its tradition, serves as sacred ground for its followers in their struggles where the earthly and the spiritual become one, as efforts for social justice and equality become religious endeavours. Amaladoss focuses major attention on the Indian caste system. In his opinion, the power equations in the caste system do not have their origins in Hinduism but in Indian society, legitimated by Hinduism. When the social system changes, legitimization can also change. What seems clear is that there is no theocratic power framework in Hinduism as there is in Islam or Christianity.

Two interviews then follow: Øyvind Eggen talks about Paternalism and Power in Official Development Assistance and challenges faith-based organisations to avoid being seen as part of a government-driven Western hegemonic project, but rather reconsider relations with official development agencies. Faith-based organisations should not expect the realization of religion as a dimension in development to come from within aid organisations. Somebody from outside needs to help and lobby.

In the second interview with Jørn Lemvik, about The Legitimate Use of Power and Partnership, Lemvik paints a picture of what he terms ‘fear leadership’ as a global phenomenon. Some national cultures support the fear system, while other cultures make it more difficult to misuse power in this way – but leadership by fear is found all over the world. His alternative is ‘a trust system’: if trust is the glue in relationships within organisations, and between organisations, then it is possible to turn organisations around and tap into new resources that have been unused in the fear system. So the challenge is to create trust in organisations, and between organisations.

In order to broaden the perspective on partnership we have added two articles. The first is Jørn Lemvik’s Partnership – Guidelines for a New Deal, in which the author describes the partnership story and its dilemmas, and what we may learn from the past. He then suggests that we define partnership more clearly and look at partnership within a broader scope of working relationships. This leads into an enumeration of some of the preconditions before he presents a fresh guide to negotiating relationships.

The second article is Hwa Yung’s How Can the Church in the South Contribute to the Church in the North? His answer is that Christians in the South can help Christians in the North recover the supernatural dimension of their worldview, so that they can minister to people who are under spiritual bondage and incorporate the gifts of the Spirit and the miraculous in their faith. In addition, he argues, they can help to overcome their Western guilt complex that threatens to paralyse the church. Furthermore, the church in the South can help the Church in the North towards a fresh recovery of confidence in the gospel, reminding it that the gospel is the power of God for the redemption of individuals and the transformation of societies. Finally, the church in the South may challenge liberal Christianity in the North to uphold the church’s traditional beliefs. The big question is whether the church in the North will treat the church in the South as adults worthy of respect and equals in the Kingdom.

In a concluding chapter about Power in a Vulnerable World. Sharing in Partnership, one of the editors of the book, Knud Jørgensen, shares what he has learned about Power and Partnership and what he sees as essential for an ongoing dialogue today and tomorrow. He lifts up key perspectives on power/powerlessness, partnership, and vulnerability from his vantage point of being a missiologist with a great heart for diakonia and faith-based development.

It is the nature of anthologies to be a bit undisciplined. This book is no different. The contributors do not subscribe to a joint paradigm on power and partnership, and they view power and partnership with quite different eyes, depending on their own context and background. This may at first sight be confusing to the reader. We do hope that second sight will help the reader to sense the nerve in each chapter and to gain insights from this global bouquet of writers.

Powerful versus Forceful Partnerships: Religion, Politics and Development

Azza Karam

Section 1: Why Faith and Development? Why Now?¹

The United Nations came into being at a time of intense global changes over sixty years ago.

Since then it has grown in size, importance, impact, meaning and relevance. As an intergovernmental organization with national, regional and international institutional outreach, the UN is unique. As a multilateral organization which has massive human power –engaged within it as its own staff, affiliated to it in myriad capacities, undertaking peacekeeping operations in its name among many other forms – with mandates extending to each and every aspect of human and other lives and the development, rights, peace, and security thereof, the UN is a unique organizational entity.

As an international body which has succeeded in extending its influence and infrastructure to encompass a huge range of mechanisms which serve almost 200 countries’ governments; which convenes, develops, deploys, plans and co-ordinates critical international conventions and interventions responding to human needs, the UN is unparalleled.

But the realities around the UN have changed: from a world in which nation-states made decisions to govern every aspect within their own boundaries and organized their own armies, to a world where non-state actors, various peoples, and a plethora of other multi-state bodies, proliferate.

The geo-political alliances, governance regimes, and direction of international development aid are all shifting. The very air we breathe and the environment around us, including plants and animals, are facing drastic changes in basic survival patterns – changes which are causing scientists to issue dire warnings.

One of the many changes becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, especially for longstanding secular organizations, is the extent to which religion is surfacing as a critical broker of human and governmental existence. This appears, at first sight, to be in some ways contradictory to the secular ethos of the United Nations system and its human rights mandate. But that would be a short-sighted perspective. It must not be forgotten that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is itself predicated upon the very values common to every faith tradition, and as such, it is not an instrument without faith, but rather, a product of the world’s common faiths.

But which UN and which ‘Religion’?

As of February 2012, the total number of staff of the UN was over 37,000, and the number of UN agencies, bodies, offices and departments easily comes to sixty – each with their own staff, and many with headquarters and field offices.² In short, the United Nations is a huge entity with multiple facets, and a plethora of forms, on every conceivable aspect of human development. Many outside the UN often either refer to this organism as if it were one homogenous entity, or complain about the confusion engendered by so many bodies all being part of ‘the UN’. This is a very real concern because, unless there is a deep knowledge of the system, which many in the UN themselves struggle to acquire, it can take a lifetime to understand with whom exactly, and how best, to reach out to, let alone partner with.

Yet even with all this complexity, the UN remains relatively quantifiable, and has one Charter. But the same cannot be said of the world of faith – which makes the UN behemoth pale into insignificance. So it is no surprise that when the UN needs to consider its potential outreach to the world of religions, it can be, frankly, confused. The number of religions in the world, let alone the range of official and unofficial spokespersons, statements, affiliated charitable groups – official and unofficial global, regional, national and community-based organizations, not to mention holy books and bodies of interpretation, historical and contemporary – all this can be beyond the understanding of some of the world’s best scholars on the subject.

So Why Should the UN [Continue to] Reach Out to ‘Faith Communities’?³

Participatory development today stands accused of three interrelated failings: of emphasising personal reform over political struggle, of obscuring local power differences by uncritically celebrating ‘the community’, and of using a language of emancipation to incorporate marginalised populations of the Global South within an unreconstructed project of capitalist modernisation … But this ‘depoliticisation’ critique has its own blind spots … it is in danger of overstating the control over development projects and programmes participation affords vis-à-vis other forms of management. Participation may indeed be a form of ‘subjection’, but it can also provide its subjects with new opportunities for voice, and its consequences are far from predetermined.⁴

It could argued that over the last few decades, development praxis has gone from the colonial notion of the ‘white man’s burden’, through slightly less empire-oriented but nevertheless resource and interest-based interventions, to – several decades later – a ‘trade-not-aid’ attempt to level the still imbalanced playing field, where it is at least acknowledged that ‘sustainability’ and ‘power’ related specifically to financial capital were required to somehow face each other. I think it possibly safe to say that we are now on the particular pier on which terms like ‘participation’, ‘mutual interest’, ‘collaboration’, ‘partnership’, and even business-laden terms such as ‘value-added’ and ‘comparative advantage’, are all themed wooden slats on this particular walkway to the ocean – in other words, accepted concepts in our vocabulary.

Glyn Williams’ quote above serves to remind us of some of the most noteworthy pitfalls encountered on this development journey, and to alert us to the fact that participation itself is a double-edged sword. But Williams also discussed another point of direct relevance here which is the ‘uncritical celebration of the community’. Too often in UN and bilateral development discourse, we hear ‘community’ essentialized – i.e. almost always as an inviolable, overly homogenous and somehow clearly distinct set of constituency from ‘the rest of’ development actors. ‘Community-based approaches’, ‘community-based organizations’, ‘community leaders’ are terms which are oft-used and yet remain ill-defined, to the point of being, frankly, problematic.

By bringing in the faith elements, I believe we are providing a needed ‘reality-check’ for all things ‘community’. This is not because faith-based organizations (FBOs) for instance, will speak for communities; rather it is because in shining the spotlight on the faith elements, we may be better able to reflect the myriad nuances and interwoven elements of what some of these communities may entail. Religious institutions, religious leaders (male and female), faith-affiliated and faith-inspired service delivery mechanisms, government-sponsored faith-based service partners, even government-affiliated faith-based advocates, international FBOs with local offices, are all part of the faith-based infrastructures, which are tightly interlinked within the so-called ‘communities’. At least by appreciating this kaleidoscope, we can better seek to focus the lenses we need on communities.

A study published by the World Health Organization in the early part of the Millennium, alerted development practitioners to one of many subsequent reality checks for many of those working in the health and development fields in particular. According to these studies, faith-based organizations⁵ provide an average of 30-40 per cent of basic health care in the world. This figure is expected to be much higher in contexts where conflicts and/or humanitarian emergencies are active (e.g. Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Syria), where organizations such as IMA World Health indeed inform us that almost 75 per cent of the basic health care can end up being provided by FBOs.

We also know that religious communities are capable of unparalleled social mobilization, not to mention some form of moral standing. I refer not only to the capacities inherent in raising and using legions of volunteers (which no other institution can boast worldwide), but they are also owners of the longest-standing and most enduring mechanisms of raising financial resources. In times where traditional ‘secular’ development is confronting its strongest set of resource challenges, these capabilities should not be underestimated.

Given the realities of service provision, resource mobilization and political presence, it becomes clear that being knowledgeable about the work of FBOs is necessary, if we are to take seriously the fundamental dimension of social development and social capital, particularly as we consider the imperatives of future development agendas.

Thus, an informed and systematic outreach to key partners in the world of religion – which, it must be unequivocally stated, is bigger, wider and much more complicated than the world of secular international development put together – and where community service provision has already been a reality for centuries, is essential.

Section 2: Details of Partnership

This section will present a ‘case study’ of how one United Nations body (with which I am very familiar for obvious reasons) has undertaken to investigate and engage with the world of religion. The use of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) as a case study is intentional also because it has been the one developmental entity in the UN system which has deliberately sought to appreciate and systematize its outreach, thereby actively setting aside a range of resources which enabled it to undertake several key actions. Moreover, UNFPA today acts as the major source of advice and guidance to many others in the UN system, about the ‘why’, ‘how’ and other implications of such outreach.

The Journey of a UN-FBO engagement – the United Nations Population Fund

In 1975 UNFPA broke new ground in the UN system by co-founding a Research Center with Al-Azhar University in Cairo. The Islamic Center for Population Studies⁶ was awarded the United Nations Population Award in 2013.

In 2000, a Saudi national, Dr Thoraya Obaid, was appointed Under-Secretary General and Executive Director of UNFPA. Upon being asked then what she wanted the Fund to engage with, her response was ‘culture’, maintaining her conviction – which is only today becoming somewhat more acceptable in UN and international development circles – that culture matters are integral to the success of any development effort. After undertaking several years of research into UNFPA’s methodology and implementation at the country level, it became clear to programmers in UNFPA that religion was an integral part of the cultural landscape in all countries, whether implicitly or explicitly. It was also evident that even where UNFPA might have preferred to ‘ignore’ the role of religion and its protagonists among civil society, these protagonists often ‘found’ and indeed might have deliberately sought/singled out UNFPA due to the sensitive areas of its mandate.⁷

Given UNFPA’s mandate, grounded in the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) Programme of Action (1994), and the dimension therein