Resources

Association, Dissociation, Kindness, Justice and Compassion Responses to 50 faith-based arguments against peaceful co-existence and an introductory examination of Islamic textual evidence for peaceful interfaith relations See Da'wah Insititute Website

In the communities where WV works, many serious issues often limit improved child well-being (CWB). These might include violence against children, poor birth spacing, gender inequality, early marriage, wife inheritance, malnutrition, early marriage, gender-based violence, HIV infections, TB and malaria, trafficking, and more.

The case study reviews the religious landscape in Kenya and provides an overview of the various types of violence, pointing to the complex overlapping of ethnicity and religion. The difference between types of conflict and their causes are explored, with…

Afin de maximiser les opportunités considérables qu’offre le Pacte mondial sur les réfugiés (PMR), la communauté internationale doit reconnaître l’expérience et les capacités des acteurs confessionnels et lever les obstacles qui se posent aux partenariats avec ces acteurs afin d’être…

To a large extent, governance capacity and community resilience explains the nature and structure of the response. In this report, three case studies – from Angola, Mali, and Honduras – of actual responses to climate change and conflict are presented.…

Since the conflict began, more than 1,900 Palestinians – including women and children – have died and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes. Over 1.5 million people are without reliable access to basic services and the public health system…

PaRD’s SDG 16 workstream (peace, justice and strong institutions) commissioned the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities (JLI) to conduct this scoping study on partnerships with local faith actors (LFAs) for peaceful and inclusive societies. The International Partnership…

UNICEF and other child rights organizations* have a long history of partnering with religious communities of all faiths on a wide range of issues that affect children. Religious communities are uniquely positioned to promote equitable outcomes for the most vulnerable…

This publication is Catholic Relief Services (CRS) training guide on partnership and capacity strengthening. The organization has a rich history of working productively with local organizations, including both Church and non-Church partners. The CRS Partnership and Capacity Strengthening Unit seeks to support Country…

This study, conducted in South Sudan in 2017 and 2018, draws on informant interviews, focus groups, and consultations to better understand and map the religious sector in South Sudan. Its primary finding is that religious actors and institutions are the…

Based on the Fez Process As efforts to prevent atrocity crimes and their incitement are most likely to succeed when different actors are working in collaboration, the Plan of Action also includes recommendations for other actors, including States and state…

To maximize the significant opportunities presented by the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR), the international community must recognize the experience and capabilities of faith actors (FAs) and break down existing barriers to partnerships to enable a more comprehensive, effective, and…

This brief is aimed at policymakers, practitioners and donors working on PVE, conflict and peace and/or research capacity-sharing. It summarises key learnings from a PVE-focused collaborative research capacity-sharing project implemented by the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities…

Promotion of a culture of peace and interreligious and intercultural dialogue, understanding and cooperation for peace 26 September 2016 Report of the Secretary-General The present report provides an overview of the activities that have been carried out by the main…

Report developed by the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children on armed violence in the community. See section 5.6.1 for the role of community and religious leaders and actors.

The purpose of this study is to assess the barriers and enablers to community acceptance and implementation of safe burials in Sierra Leone. The Ebola virus continued to spread in Sierra Leone partly because communities were initially resistant to Burial…

Authors: David Boan, Benjamin Andrews, Elizabeth Loewer, Kalen Drake, Daniel Martison, Jamie D. Aten Wheaton College, Humanitarian Disaster Institute, Psychology Department Abstract: Distributive justice is an important theme in community and international psychology, overlapping with many related concepts of peace, equity,…

Assessing Rural Transformations was a three year ESRC/DFID funded action research project investigating credible ways to assess the impact of development activities, particularly when the intervention takes place in the context of complex processes of rural transformation. Qualitative monitoring was conducted…

Report from the Second Donor-United Nations-Faith Based Organizations' (DUF II) Policy Roundtable This technical report focuses on the role of religious actors, and religious considerations in the SDG agenda, particularly as they pertain to gender equality, peaceful coexistence and security…

Though there are over half a billion Buddhists around the world, there has so far been no systematic and focused study of the interface between Buddhism and International Humanitarian Law (IHL). The core of IHL – also known as “the…

Chapter exceprt from Jörg Haustein & Emma Tomalin, 'Religion and Development in Africa and Asia' in Routledge Handbook of Africa–Asia Relations ed. by Pedro Carvalho et al. London: Routledge, 2017, pp. 76-93 See also - Religions and Sustainable Development Network

Cover page and table of contents may be viewed at Emory University's page on Religion and Public Health Collaboration here. Book may be purchased at Oxford University Press' website here Description from Oxford University Press: Frequently in partnership, but sometimes…

THIS IS A SUMMARY of the Religion in Conflict and Peacebuilding Analysis Guide, which is written for people working to address violent conflicts where religion plays a role in the conflict or can play a role in peacebuilding. It provides…

This online conference takes stock of developments relating to the engagement between humanitarians and religious actors aimed at generating greater compliance with humanitarian norms in times of armed conflict. It seeks to serve as a platform for exchange and reflection…

This report summarizes and reflects on work that explored religious issues relevant for contemporary development challenges in several very different countries (Bangladesh, Kenya, Senegal, and Guatemala). All four countries face significant challenges of fragility, and development actors of many kinds,…

This article explores the role of Religious Leader Engagement (RLE), a capability under development in the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and operational focus of the CAF Chaplain Branch. It stands as a recent contribution to the Comprehensive Approach. Full length…

Brief from the Center for Security Studies in Zurich Religion is a factor in conflict and further understanding of the relationship is needed to resolve these conflicts. Challenges and opportunities in mitigating religious conflicts and effective approaches.  

This discussion guide and toolkit provides ideas and approaches to enable you to think through your research partnerships; to encourage you to critically engage with issues such as the roles different actors play in partnership; and what types of evidence…

Review of Samaritan Purse’s Church and Community Mobilisation Programme Presentation Samaritan’s Purse started church mobilisation programming in 2005 Presentation for Dec 2016 Mobilization of Local Faith Communities Hub meeting See below for presentation by Jodi Blackham

Role of Religion and Religious Leaders in Farmer-Pastoralist Conflict in Plateau State: An Inter-Religious Peacebuilding in Northern Nigeria (IPNN) Qualitative Research Report In the context of persistent, low-intensity conflict, which has characterized Nigeria’s Middle Belt for the past decade, Mercy…

Religion is a positive force for peacebuilding and preventing violent extremisms (PVE). Indeed, religious institutions and actors play an important role in building peace yet underutilized instruments in the prevention and resolution of violent extremisms. The objective of this research…

Article by Saferworld Bangladesh, January 2016 By involving religious leaders and using their influence in the local community, a Saferworld project in Bangladesh has been able to more effectively address safety and security issues and promote peace, write G.M. Shoeb…

The Salvation Army Presentation 081216 Mobilizing Local Faith Communities Lt Colonel (Dr) Dean Pallant, Director: The Salvation Army, International Social Justice Commission

This article underlines the need to move beyond the exhausted notion of all religions preaching peace to studying the specific manner in which violence is legitimised in each religion. This is the first step liberal secularists need to take if…

Christian Aid supports Gana Unnayan Kendra (GUK)  towards CHS Alliance membership Gana Unnayan Kendra (GUK), a community-led development organisation combating poverty in Bangladesh, has recently joined CHS Alliance. This is largely due to the hard work of Nahed Chowdhury, widely…

Sources of Revenue and International Expenditures of US Faith-Based NGOs, based on IRS 990 Forms for Fiscal Years 2011-2016 Faith-based Financing The CF&CG in collaboration with the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith and Local Communities worked to develop an evidence…

Stakeholder Health: Insights from New Systems of Health, was developed in 2016 with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is a review of best practices in the areas of community health improvement, as well as clinical and community partnerships,…

Statement from FBOs regarding unmentioned faith in the Sendai Framework for DRR 2015-2030 during WCDRR 2015 in Sendai Japan. To see the document, and other publications by the Humanitarian Forum Indonesia, click here: http://www.humanitarianforumindonesia.org/Download/SeminarMaterial.aspx

The sharpening focus on global health and the growing recognition of the capacities and scope of faith-based groups for improving community health outcomes suggest an intentional and systematic approach to forging strong, sustained partnerships between public sector agencies and faith-based…

Summary of the Mobilisation of Local Faith Communities Hub, Trinity College Dublin, 8-9 December 2016 Hub co-chairs: Christo Greyling, World Vision International Catriona Dejean, Tearfund

This essay examines local and international Christian efforts on Mount Kilimanjaro to educate children. A prevailing idea among people who live on the mountain is that children engender trust and trade. This idea is illuminated through the adage 'Take the…

Tearfund's Bridging the Gap: The Role of Local Churches in Fostering Local-Level Social Accountability and Governance forms part of a suite of resources that Tearfund produced to help demonstrate the impact of their Church and Community Mobilisation (CCM) advocacy work. Additional information on this…

The disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have challenged social cohesion across the world but with particular force across the South Asia Region. Heightened intergroup tensions are linked in historical factors and to inequalities but in the current crisis a…

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations, announces 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Such goals promote an action plan based on three main principles of the Agenda: respect for human dignity, sustainability and…

Evaluation Report for 2013-2015 The Eagle process envisions and equips the local church “to have a vision and passion for being salt and light in their community, enabling the church and community to work together to address common needs by…

Center for Interfaith Action on Global Poverty The center, with funding from the GHR Foundation, published an evaluation and analysis of NIFAA's early work in 2011, two years after NIFAA's founding. The report demonstrated NIFAA "offers a sustainable and replicable…

Unskilled migrant workers and their families represent a crucial human resource in Sabah (Malaysia) as cheap labour, but also as religious believers. Christian organizations belonging to various denominations have started to cater to this community in recent years by providing…

Can a Protestant Christianity education program teaching about health, livelihoods, religious values impact poverty? New working paper published from groundbreaking randomized control trial (RCT) to measure impact of faith and religion in the Philippines. This trial was an initiative between Innovations for Poverty…

OAIC Livelihoods Programme:towards evidence based action to end hunger. Presentation by Nicta Lubaale to the JLI capacity building hub, 8th Dec 2016

This contribution from an insider Muslim author provides peace workers with a few resources from Islamic tradition that could be used when addressing a conflict rooted in an Islamic context. It presents briefly a number of basic Islamic concepts that…

Gauteng City-Region Observatory This is a case study of the violence of May 2008 was by far the most devastating event of its kind since apartheid ended in 1994 in South Africa. Although not exclusively, a considerable number of foreign…

The  Review of Faith and International Affairs has just published a special series on Reconsidering Religious Radicalism See Full Journal Here   Includes the following articles: Reconsidering Religious Radicalism: An Introduction to the Summer 2017 Issue Judd Birdsall & Drew Collins Radicalism,…

South Sudan has been embroiled in a cycle of violent conflict since it attained independence from the Sudan through a popular plebiscite where about 99% of its citizens voted for secession – ushering in the world’s newest country in the…

Frequently, community based strategies include engagement with local faith leaders. However, there have been few systematic attempts to document how faith leaders themselves define their roles in these initiatives. This study examined local faith leaders and their spouses, in flood…

SECULARIZATION VS THE ROLE OF RELIGION IN HUMANITARIAN AID Until the late seventies secularization was understood, almost universally, to be irreversible, equated with modernization and progress. Religious institutions seemed to have lost much of their influence. Religion had little or…

The eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo has been plunged into a deep and multifaceted crisis for several decades. This is characterized in particular by violent conflicts between the local communities (generally ethnic) which accuse each other and…

A Thematic Paper for the Progress Study on Youth, Peace and Security Prepared by the Soka Gakkai International September 2017 As a global movement of Buddhists dedicated to peace, the Soka Gakkai International (SGI) has worked on the activities for…

Religious NGOs are important sources of humanitarian aid in Africa, entering where the welfare programs of weakened states fail to provide basic services. As collaborators and critics of African states, religious NGOs occupy an important structural and ideological position. They…

As a joint learning network focused on evidence in religions and development, we (i.e., JLI) are often asked to summarize the “evidence” on religions and development. While that may seem like a simple request, it is, in fact, a complicated…

Youth inclusion, freedom of religion or belief (FoRB), and conflict transformation are interconnected; there will be no lasting peace without addressing all three. Conflict and fragile settings are rife with FoRB violations, which act as both drivers and consequences of…

Baseline Study Case Study: Lebanon In mediation processes, usually an outsider and impartial third party mediator is sought. In certain contexts, especially in traditional and high-context societies, an insider mediator who is intrinsic (geographically, culturally and normatively) to the conflict…

Trócaire and Groupe URD research project This is a research project looking into localization and specifically reinforce the capacity of its local partners and share the essential aspects of humanitarian action with them. Trócaire aims to reinforce humanitarian aid in the least…

This important reference work, now available to the many millions of Kiswahili speakers around the world, is divided into four chapters focusing on ways to protect civilians, the wounded, the dead, non-combatants and their property during armed conflict, as well…

This report provides an overview of the engagement with faith-based actors and faith-related activities by the members of the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Force on Engaging Faith-Based Actors for Sustainable Development

This report, published with the Cambridge Institute on Religion and International Studies (CIRIS), offers background on the January 2016 Marrakesh Declaration on the Rights of Minorities in Predominantly Muslim Majority Communities. Muslim scholars and politicians issued the Marrakesh Declaration as…

The aim of this Toolkit is to help lower the discomfort of USAID staff in making the analytical and programmatic connections between conflict, religion and peacebuilding. The Key Issues section provides additional arguments for why development practitioners should—and can—address religion…

The publication explores such important topics such as how to deal with victims of armed conflict in accordance with Islamic Shariah, looks at lessons learnt from the early Islamic battles like Badr, and lays out what Islamic law says about…

This paper is one of a series of research elements produced by the European Union funded AHA! Awareness with Human Action project that seeks to contribute to the response efforts of the COVID-19 pandemic by preventing conflict and building social…

L'inclusion des jeunes, la liberté de religion ou de conviction et la transformation des conflits sont liées ; il n'y aura pas de paix durable sans aborder les trois. Les conflits violents et les contextes fragiles donnent lieu à de…

Engaging with Faith Groups to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls in Conflict-affected Communities Globally, one in three women have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is particularly prevalent and hard to…

The members of Christian Connections for International Health span the globe. They have long-term working relationships with numerous faith groups, health systems and governments. They are uniquely placed to hear and voice the concerns of both health professionals and ordinary…

Based on collaborative research with faith groups and organisations in Nigeria, the Solomon Islands and Zanzibar (Tanzania), this paper examines faith-based forms of violent conflict prevention. It argues that faith-based approaches exist on a spectrum, from instinctive and ad hoc…

Policy brief from Tearfund- Queen Margaret University Research Social connections and levels of trust among displaced and settled communities in Kurdistan Region of Iraq Full article on the study

Partners: Tearfund and Queen Margaret University, supported by the Universities of Duhok and the American University of Kurdistan, in the Duhok Governorate Location: Kurdistan Region of Iraq Religions involved: Yezidi and Muslim research participants. Tearfund is a Christian faith-based organization. The research…

Islam, like all religions, strongly influences social, economic and political spheres of life. Tenets that are perceived to be Islamic shape the status of and relationship between women and men. These tenets result in women – because they are women…

Reflections and recommendations on "Working on Religion, Peace and Conflict in Theravada Buddhist Countries" arising from an exchange between peacebuilding practitioners held 19-21 March 2015 in Bangkok, Thailand. The reflection contains four pages. They include highlights and summarized recommendations.

From analysis to action: World Vision’s journey of rapid context analysis in humanitarian emergencies This briefing explains one of the tools that World Vision has developed in order to assess contexts rapidly: ‘Good Enough Context Analysis for Rapid Response’ (GECARR).…

World Vision’s HIV and AIDS response strategy focuses on building the capacity of communities to prevent the spread of HIV and on providing care and advocacy for people living with HIV and for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). The Channels of Hope (CoH) methodology, one of World Vision’s three core HIV and AIDS response models, is used to mobilise the infrastructure, organisational capacity, pool of current and potential volunteers, and unmatched moral authority of local churches and faith communities towards positive action on HIV and AIDS. Once they have been mobilised, World Vision works with churches and faith-based organisations to co-ordinate and equip sustainable, community-based HIV and AIDS programmes with an emphasis on reaching OVCs in need of care and support.

Partnering through Faith South Sudan Context and overview

World Vision’s Mobilizing for Maternal and Neonatal Health through Birth Spacing and Advocacy (MOMENT) project focuses on improving maternal, neonatal, and child health (MNCH) by increasing community-led advocacy, political advocacy and US/Canadian funding for global health. The community-led advocacy, through…

من اجل تحقيق الحد الاقصى من الفرص المهمة التي تقدمها الاتفاقية الدولية بشأن اللاجئين يجب على المجتمع الدولي ، ان يعترف بتجربة وقدرات الجهات الفاعلة العقائدية وكسر الحواجز القائمة امام الشراكات لتمكين استجابه دائمة وفعالة وأكثر شمولية . وبينما تقر…