Faith leaders praised for unique role in Ebola fight

Learning Hubs

AHT-MS Hub

EVAC Hub

GBV Hub

RFM Hub

MEAL Hub

JLI logo

Conflict Hub

East Africa Hub

Middle East Hub

Syria Hub

About JLI

An international collaboration on evidence for faith actors’ activities, contributions, and challenges to achieving humanitarian and development goals. Founded in 2012, JLI came together with a single shared conviction: there is an urgent need to build our collective understanding, through evidence, of faith actors in humanitarianism and development.

04 August 2015 14:22 by Liz Dodd

Christian and Muslim leaders were instrumental in helping to tackle the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone and Liberia despite initially being sidelined, a joint report by faith charities including Cafod has found. 

Keeping the Faith found that religious leaders in Sierra Leone and Liberia helped to quash rumours about the disease during the 2013-14 outbreak, particularly in far-flung areas that international NGOs could not reach.

But the report – by Cafod, Christian Aid, Tearfund and Islamic Relief – said that more lives could have been saved had religious leaders been engaged earlier.

The director of Cafod, Chris Bain, said that religious leaders were often closer to the people than government and health workers.

“It is vital that we learn lessons from the delay in involving them. In many parts of the world, local churches and mosques are the first places people turn to when disaster strikes – and the international humanitarian system is simply not good enough at working with them,” he said.

One example listed in the report was an attempt by the Sierra Leonean Government tried to demand that cremation replace traditional burial ceremonies during which mourners touched or washed the infectious body of the dead person. Outraged communities continued to hold burials in secret until faith leaders engaged with them and identified passages in scripture that supported the new funeral services.

Faith leaders also helped to counter the stigmatisation of survivors , which threatened to destroy community coherence, the report said.

The report, which was based on interviews with and surveys of faith leaders, NGOs, government representatives and donor agencies, recommended that faith leaders be included in planning for recovery and health emergencies and that aid workers, particularly at field level, be better educated about religion. But it also urged against their being treated as a “means to an end”.

“There is a risk that the success of faith leaders may lead to them being used as passive actors to address social ills,” it warned.

Above: Liberia response team. Photo: Miguel Samper-Caritas Internationalis

Read the original article here at The Tablet