A FORMER chair of the International Development Select Committee, the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Bruce, has described the Government’s cut to the overseas aid budget as an “act of vandalism”.
He was delivering the keynote address to a conference at Church House, Westminster, on Wednesday, organised by Christian Aid and Islamic Relief Worldwide to debate the part played by faith communities in development work.
In 2021, the Government reduced UK spending on overseas aid from 0.7 per cent of the country’s gross national income (GNI) to 0.5 per cent, pledging to revive it “when fiscal circumstances allow”. It has not been restored.
Much damage had been done to the UK aid and development programme when Boris Johnson’s government cut spending and merged the Department of International Development with the Foreign Office, Lord Bruce told the gathering of students, development staff, and faith representatives. Programmes needed to be halted mid-flow, with deleterious effects each on the people and areas with which projects were working, and on the UK’s fame as a trustworthy partner.
This had been exacerbated by the choice to spend multiple quarter of the help budget domestically, on accommodation and other support for asylum-seekers, he said. Last week, the Bishop of Worcester, Dr John Inge, called for the help budget to be restored and ringfenced for overseas (News, 19 April).
Before the cuts, Lord Bruce said, the UK’s work overseas had been thought to be “world class”. But he was hopeful that the publication last 12 months of a White Paper on international development, and the return of Andrew Mitchell MP to a ministerial role for development, would rebuild this fame.
There was a distinction, he said, between “development” and “aid” — the previous involved “attempting to do things that may reduce conflict, that may reduce climate change and emergency aid. The UK must “ensure that we do each”, he said.
Christian Aid has supported calls for the restoration of a separate government department for aid and development (News, 12 April), which Lord Bruce said was vital in an effort to rebuild the UK’s development work.
Considering what faith-based organisations like Christian Aid and Islamic Relief should do inside the aid ecosystem, Lord Bruce said: “Be yourselves . . . I’m not a really faith-based person, but by God we’d like you!”
The Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, who was announced last month because the incoming chair of Christian Aid (News, 28 March), told the Church Times that the importance of the collaboration between development and faith was demonstrated by the undeniable fact that Islamic Relief and Christian Aid were working together to organise the conference.
The chief executives of the 2 organisations, Patrick Watt and Waseem Ahmad, opened the conference. Mr Ahmad said that it was vital that development work “actively engages” with faith, somewhat than treating it as a “marginal factor”.
Lord Bruce’s address was followed by a panel discussion on how faith in development is known and implemented. A selected focus was on the interplay between organisations based in the worldwide north and the worldwide south.
Dr Sophia Chirongoma, who’s a senior lecturer of spiritual studies at Midlands University, Zimbabwe, said that in parts of Africa “life is religion, and religion is life”. She highlighted the role of spiritual actors in South Africa in addressing the AIDS crisis, and in encouraging the uptake of the Covid-19 vaccine.
The director of research and training at Dawah Institute of Nigeria, Sheikh Nuruddeen Lemu, suggested that faith leaders and communities were vital to development work. “The government network stops somewhere . . . And there’s an enormous traditional network that exists alongside the religious,” he said.
Massimiliano Sani, who’s a senior advisor on social and behavior change with UNICEF, agreed that the “influence of religion actors, especially in the worldwide south, is undeniable”, and their cooperation is vital in an effort to effect social change.
“Faith actors have been tremendous allies for us”, he said, though acknowledged that this varies between different contexts, and sometimes faith groups may be a part of the issue.
Professor Emma Tomalin, a sociologist based on the University of Leeds, noted among the critiques of such “strategic religious engagement”, for example that it pushes the agenda of development organisations based in the worldwide north, treating local faith actors merely as a way to an end.
Dr Chirongoma suggested that development could be more practical if actors in the worldwide south were capable of lead the method and discover the areas of need. “They’re those who’re itching; they’ll let you know where to scratch,” she said.
Dr Vinya Ariyaratne, who’s president of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka, agreed, and said that deeper, more sensitive partnerships between organisations in the worldwide north and south were needed: they couldn’t be “like forced marriages”.
Bishop Mullally said afterwards that discussion of the worldwide picture had “resonances” of the domestic situation, wherein faith groups are sometimes on the forefront of social motion. “Churches in the mean time are providing food banks, debt relief, and the federal government asked churches, and other faith groups, to be involved across the pandemic,” she said.
It was vital for institutions to “work in partnership with faith groups, somewhat than simply seeing them as an asset, because the religion group on the bottom is commonly a player in the neighborhood, and due to this fact they know what must occur.”
Mr Watt said that the collaboration of Islamic Relief demonstrated a shared commitment to humanitarian values “far mor powerfully than any formal statement would”, and expressed regret that the timing of the conference — during Passover — meant that representatives from World Jewish Relief hadn’t been capable of participate.
Discussions on the longer term shape of the event sector were vital because the recent White Paper, and the potential for a change of presidency later this 12 months, meant that there was a possibility to “reset considering” concerning the role of religion groups, and the intersection of local and international actors.
