In June 2020, the Joint Learning Initiative on Faith & Local Communities (JLI) core team wrote a Commitment to Action for Racial Justice and Solidarity. The statement was created in response to ongoing global conversations about racial justice and colonial legacies, as well as shifting trends towards “localisation” in the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding sector. The sector, as well as global academia, were not immune from conversations around racial and colonial justice. Many institutions have since engaged in conversations and change processes to address their historic legacies of colonialism, the impact of their privilege, and the exploitative and discriminatory behaviours in which they may have engaged. JLI, whose core team at the time were all US-based, likewise engaged in a period of introspection, reflecting on the organisation’s positionality and complicity in upholding unjust global power dynamics.

The Commitment to Action for Racial Justice and Solidarity became the founding principles for JLI’s shift towards self-accountability, and challenged its own role in perpetuating unjust power dynamics in research and evidence. In 2021, JLI launched the Fair and Equitable Initiative (now the Fair and Equitable Approach) as an effort to meaningfully reconfigure the organisation’s practices towards more fair and equitable research and partnerships.

This report provides an overview of JLI’s work under the Fair and Equitable Approach since 2021, as well as reflecting on the strengths, challenges, and lessons learned from our experience. It draws on project documentation (e.g. reports from Listening Dialogues, webinars, or meetings), and verbal and written feedback provided by partners in JLI’s Fair and Equitable Approach (including a survey conducted with partners in November 2023). The purpose of the report is:

• firstly, to institutionalise the knowledge and experience gained from JLI’s activities for the benefit of future JLI team members;
• secondly, to create accountability of JLI for our partner members, by collectively reflecting on the extent to which JLI is successfully working towards its stated objectives; and
• finally, to make available the lessons learned through JLI’s experience, for the benefit of other organisations or individuals in the fields of research and community engagement, who are on their own journeys towards fair and equitable practices.

Este informe está disponible en español aquí / available in Spanish here

هذا التقرير متاح باللغة العربية من خلال الرابط التالي / available in Arabic here