“When you are hungry, this is not the time to talk about freedom of conscience, thought or belief, you just need to be fed”, an academic said in a recent conference referring to contexts of extreme precarity and Article 18 of The Human Rights Convention. When a sudden crisis hits there is a shortage of time, but it’s also true that humanitarian processes can and should be planned around marginality and religion or belief. As we come up to polling day this is something the next UK government should prioritise in future aid programmes.
The academic’s words resonated very powerfully with a similar argument that I had heard 20 years earlier in another conference, where the idea of paying attention to differential impact of humanitarian crises on women and men was heavily critiqued. It is true that in moments of unexpected crisis there is often no time to plan or pontificate. However, in many other cases, policy makers and partners on the ground do have time to plan for humanitarian interventions and such processes need to be deliberate in ensuring that those on the margins who are likely to be excluded on the basis of gender, religion, ethnicity or any other identifier are included.
Addressing religious and intersecting inequalities
Take the tragic floods that struck Pakistan in November 2020. The initial response was to secure aid got to the victims as urgently as possible giving the scale of devastation. However, it is also a context, in which there were variations in the extent of loss and in resources, both material and immaterial, for coping. The worst hit areas were Sindh province and Balochistan.
Sindh province and Balochistan were two areas with proportionately higher representation of populations marginalised on the basis of the intersection of religion, caste or class. In the case of a Shia Muslim, they were marginalised on account of difference to the mainstream religious majority, where there is an intersection of denominational difference with geography (proximity to Iran, a Shia majority country) and for Hindu’s belonging to the Dalit caste marginalise on the basis of both religion and caste.
During this time I attended an online event featuring Pakistani government representatives and international donors who were keen to explicitly identify those groups that are worst affected by the tragedy, such as women, but completely overlooked those groups affected on the basis of religious inequality. For the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development (CREID), a research programme committed to addressing religious and intersecting inequalities in development and humanitarian aid as a blind spot, we noted through partners in Pakistan that religious minorities were among the ranks of those on the margins.
It is interesting that UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, also took note of how aid and survival mechanisms adopted in the aftermath of the floods amplified religious minorities exclusion This is corroborated by other researchers too, who explored prejudiced dimensions of development planning in the aftermath of the floods.
Sceptics may argue that much harm can be caused from the preferential treatment of minorities. It is true, but the pendulum need not swing from overlooking to privileging them. Rather, what we need is a UK aid policy that is truly inclusive and that walks the talk when it supports the aim to ‘leave no-one behind’ as part of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The FoRB-development interface
CREID research has sought to present the evidence on why the religiously marginalised will be left behind if they are not recognised in the SDG agenda as well as how development methodologies can enhance our understanding of FoRB and what the FoRB-development interface means on the ground.
We were pleased that the Conservative government’s International Development White Paper, published in November 2023, which has bipartisan support, commits the British government, “to ensure that UK development policies are inclusive of people who are marginalised for their religion or belief. We will prioritise FoRB in our bilateral and multilateral work, including through FoRB programmes.” (p85). The Paper also recognises that advancing a gender agenda necessitates also being mindful of any vulnerabilities experienced by women who belong to religious minorities.
At a time in which rights are pitted one against the other, the White Paper’s assumption of an intersectional lens is a welcome approach to engaging with freedom of religion or belief in relation to other drivers of inequality including gender, socio-economic exclusion, geography, ability, race among many.
Building on the recognition of FoRB as being a driver of inequality, indeed culminating in mass atrocities and genocides in more extreme cases, the new aid agenda from a new UK government should press for the redress of religion and intersecting inequalities. Operationally, redress means updating our thinking, planning and design, allowing for the oversight of how religious otherisation intensifies experiences of poverty, and in turn understanding how poverty intensifies experiences of religious discrimination.
The challenging news is that it needs political will, resources and integration across government (FCDO, Home Office, Defence, Department of Media, Sports and Culture). It also needs political will across the government’s broader global agenda, for example, in its position on what a post-SDG agenda should look like. The good news is that we, and the FCDO, under a new government, have the lessons from successfully integrating a gender sensitive approach to development to learn from.
