Credit: United Nations

By Dr. Azza Karam and Dr. Mustafa Y. Ali
NEW YORK, May 8 2020 (IPS)

COVID-19 has spread to many nations around the world, and has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. In the global south, the COVID-19 pandemic has stretched the available medical and health resources, triggered economic shocks, and caused social upheavals and insecurity in many countries and localities.

While the pandemic has caused huge numbers of infections and deaths in the global north, the consequences in the poorer nations in the global south is acute.

Serious challenges arising from responses from authorities to contain the pandemic ranging from hard to soft lockdowns, curfews, limitations in movements, and social distancing, are causing strains in communities.

From fragile economies to ill- equipped health facilities and underfunded health programs, to the almost non-existent social security measures that would ordinarily cushion large segments of pupations from falling further into poverty, the impact on many communities in the global south will be grave.

While COVID-19 has not had a devastating impact on Africa as it has elsewhere, according to official statistics, we fear that this may change.

On the health side, health experts are already warning that the pandemic could yet exact a much heavier death toll in the region if it overwhelms local health services – as has happened in the United States and United Kingdom.

There are also concerns that the relatively weak health systems and patchy testing may be enabling COVID-19 to spread through Sub-Saharan Africa, without a means of registering any of this data.

The official figures to date locate much of the pandemic’s regional burden in places like South Africa, which has reported nearly 5,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and recently deployed hundreds of Cuban doctors to help fight its impact, and more than 1,800 confirmed cases in Cameroon, which has launched nationwide testing in April.

Two countries in the region, Lesotho and Comoros, have yet to officially report any cases, let alone Covid related deaths. According to a director of the African Center for Disease Control, the collapse of global cooperation has marginalised Africa in the diagnostics market, and its lack of hospitals combined with a high prevalence of HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition could lead to relatively high COVID-19 mortality rates.

Food security is another major issue. Speaking of concerns in Nigeria, Sister Agatha Chikelue, Executive Director of the Cardinal Onaiyekan Foundation and Coordinator of Religious for Peace’s interfaith Women’s Network, noted that people are afraid of dying of “Hovid” – the hunger caused as a result of loss of livelihoods from the lockdown.

Religious leaders join COVID-19 fight in Africa. Credit: United Nations

Small wonder, therefore, that Nigeria is one of the countries already struggling to consider reopening some of their businesses, in spite of dire warnings.

According to a UN report, Africa is home to more than half of the 135 million who suffer acutely from food insecurity, which means there are serious concerns about famines and the potential for a significant death toll.

In other words, we are speaking of very real fears that the Covid crises may cause famine in combination with the drought, which will have dire consequences on the conflict-affected countries in the continent.

John Letzing, Digital Editor of Strategic Intelligence at the World Economic Forum, lists some of the dynamics facing the continent as reported on by a number of different sources. Notably,

Despite the heralding of the coronavirus, there are those who argue that Africa’s governments did little to prepare themselves, their systems, or their people. Other commentators note that many countries have made plans to ease coronavirus-related measures.

There is some speculation that lessons learned from incidents like the 2014 Ebola outbreak will contribute to some countries’ capacities to weather the storm.

The fact is, that one of the key containment measures—social distancing—will be impossible in the crowded markets, high-density informal settlements and dwellings shared by more than one family. Another oft repeated advise is that of frequent handwashing in clean water. But what happens when clean water to drink, is in very short supply for many households across the sub-Saharan African continent?

Moreover, it is inconceivable that governments will, on their own, be able to meet the needs of all their citizens in this COVID pandemic. Many were already struggling to do so even before the pandemic struck.

Besides offering spiritual guidance and support, which is increasingly needed in times of fear and uncertainty, faith communities and organizations in Africa as elsewhere, have, over the years, supplemented governments’ efforts to provide education, health, nutritional and other developmental needs to their communities.

They also have been in the forefront of peacebuilding initiatives, and in advocating for rights-based approaches to development, protection of, and ending violence against children and minorities.

With the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging communities and creating fear and despondency, faith-based and faith-inspired organizations are already providing and augmenting critical services in health care provision – including but not limited to palliative care – and as part of the supply chains (for food, medicines, spiritual relief) reaching the heart of communities.

Religious organisations are also key to disseminating accurate news about the impacts and effects of the pandemic, rendering more critical their services as communicators and advisers on behavioral changes needed to keep communities safe.

Those of us engaged in working with religious actors speak of 84% of the world’s people claiming an affiliation to a faith tradition. This applies to all the world, and the sub-Saharan African subcontinent is no stranger to religiosity and belief as normal in everyday lives.

In times of fear, most believers will turn to faith, and this means that religious institutions, religious leaders and religious NGOs are playing a key role including psycho-social healing of COVID-19 traumas.

The fact is, however, that not all faith actors play the same role. And even when most play a positive role in helping communities and governments to cope, this does not mean all do. We know that some faith leaders are adamant that congregating for religious worship is a means of healing, because “God will spare us”.

These messages are hardly helpful when science and life and death experience indicate that social distancing is not only advisable, but downright necessary.

While the UN Secretary General’s call for a global ceasefire to all conflicts has been echoed by many religious leaders around the world, the question remains whether actors involved in extremist groups using religion as their raison d’etre will contemplate heeding such calls.

In fact, COVID-19 lockdowns may even be opportunities to ramp up violence, as government security services are otherwise engaged. This begs two important questions we have yet to find answers for:

To what extent will those religious institutions involved in providing for the daily spiritual, psycho-social, humanitarian care for their communities, and already overwhelmed in reconfiguring the very nature of religious worship, find the wherewithal to engage with the ‘radical fringes’ in African contexts already deeply divided by conflicts?

And what impact will COVID-19 have on the very same armed groups still insistent on playing out their conflicts? Already, some of those who still carry weapons, are working to serve some of their community needs – providing food, water and even money to households having to do without.

And as they serve their communities’ needs, the extremist groups have also ramped up attacks. In March and April, armed attacks in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 37 %, adding significant strain on the already overstrained resources, currently re-directed to COVID-related emergencies.

Sheikh Ibrahim Lethome, Secretary General of the Center for Sustainable Conflict Resolution, and Convener for the GNRC (Global Network of Religions for Children) Horn of Africa Working Group on religious-based extremism, is not surprised that the extremist groups have fully seized the confusion and despondency that COVID-19 has thrust into already fragile communities.

These stretch from the Sahel in West Africa, the Horn of Africa to Southern Africa’s Cabo Delgado in Mozambique

Will COVID-19 offer an opportunity for a different trajectory for some of those groups? As these groups continue to plant bombs, kill and maim, what will become of armed insurgency in the name of religion, when COVID-19 hits hard in Africa?

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By Dr. Azza Karam and Rev. Kyoichi Sugino
NEW YORK, Mar 9 2020 (IPS)

As a growing public health crisis becomes increasingly urgent, prominent global actors and institutions, including the United Nations, are confronted by the realisation that all hands on deck are required to address the cross-cutting challenges faced by our world today.

Another public health epidemic is but one of the major global challenges demanding coordinated and effective responses from diverse institutions, and civil society networks.

Income inequality continues to grow, with the world’s richest 1% in 2020 having twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people.

The political and economic will critical to combatting climate change is more needed than ever, with virtually all States behind in their commitments to the Paris Agreement.

With communities ravaged by ongoing conflict, a record 70 million people have fled their homes. As calls for change echo across the globe, the percentage of people living in countries where civic space is considered “repressed” more than doubled in 2019.

Fundamental elements essential to securing human dignity – the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to society, the power to demand change, freedom from any and all forms of discrimination, and the ability to live within and nurture a sustainable environment – are rapidly eroding.

These challenges are striking at a time when multilateralism is threatened, space for civil society is shrinking, and the call for walls of separation are on the rise.

The opportunity to forge ahead as humanity through this turmoil may well exist within the deepest and widest infrastructures ever created and sustained by humankind: the world’s religious communities, to which over 80% of humanity claims some affiliation.

In recent years, international attention has undeniably been focused on the rise in religiously-motivated violence, furthering the focus on religion as (part of) the problem.

However, a relatively lesser known reality in parallel with these trends, may offer insights to solutions: a growing global network of believers working to address these challenges through a unique process of multi-religious peacebuilding.

These religious leaders and constituents hail from an array of religious and spiritual communities as diverse and complex as the world we live in. They are collaborating on, and implementing, development, humanitarian, and peace processes – guiding their societies towards cohesion, respect for differences and cultures of peace.

By convening in interreligious councils, representative of their religious institutions, leadership and communities, at national and regional levels, Religions for Peace – a multi-religious peacebuilding coalition with experienced interreligious platforms in 90 countries across six regions – has a unique and powerful mechanism for multi-religious collaboration and peacebuilding.

The 2020-2025 global Strategic Plan is the culmination of sustained multistakeholder debates and consensus-building, within the vast movement of Religions for Peace.

At the Religions for Peace 10th World Assembly in August 2019, over 1,000 representatives from 125 countries discerned a framework by which to organise their future collaborative action on these global challenges.

Another global consultation in December 2019 convened over 250 religious leaders to do a deep dive, with focused and honest deliberations, ultimately emerging with the consensus to prioritise six strategic goals: peaceful, just and inclusive societies; gender equality; environment; freedom of thought, conscience and religion; interreligious education; and global partnerships.

Uniting religious and indigenous leaders for the protection of tropical forests is a hallmark of the joint prioritisation of nurturing a sustainable environment, believed to be a matter of moral urgency and action.

The religious leaders also agreed to champion safeguarding the universal right to thought, conscience and religion within and beyond their own constituencies, including in this spectrum of commitments coordinating their responses to the rise in attacks on holy sites and places of worship.

They embraced a deeper focus on interreligious education – not to reinvent the wheel, but to collate the existing work and curricula in all corners of the world in an effort to facilitate knowledge and access to dispel ignorance and counter misconceptions at the root of intolerance, hatred and violence.

The Religions for Peace movement leaders also committed to scaling up multi-stakeholder partnerships with businesses, governments and civil society, to develop innovative approaches and seek resolutions together.

These goals and actions correspond to the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda, and the multi-religious efforts will be measured and assessed using the SDG indicators agreed to by all member states of the United Nations.

The strategic priorities identified are built on legacies of powerful and effective interventions. Throughout Religions for Peace’s 50 years, these interreligious platforms have amassed a solid record of multi-religious engagement including mediating conflict and negotiating the release of child hostages in Sierra Leone, providing care and support for orphans and vulnerable children affected by HIV/AIDS, mobilising 21 million multi-religious youth for global disarmament, and forging partnerships between religious and indigenous communities for rainforest protection – to name but a few.

But these priorities also herald a new era of resolve, and courage, among the world’s senior-most religious leaders and institutions, through their interreligious platforms.

To have gender equality as a strategic priority of such a movement, built on and by traditional religious institutions, is historic. After electing the coalition’s first woman Secretary General in 2019, Religions for Peace leadership are sending a clear message of commitment to action which includes increasing women’s leadership and impact within the movement, and beyond.

It is this blend of renewed and courageous resolve, together with skills steeped in decades of experience with multi-religious and multi-cultural engagement in development and human rights, which offers much needed alternative cultures of healing and peace. These interreligious councils not only drive the solution — they are a necessary part of the solution.

On this 75th year of the United Nations system, Religions for Peace – through its global, regional, national and grassroots interreligious council platforms – has been heeding the call for holistic responses to cross-cutting global challenges for 50 of these years.

With its 5-year strategy and actions now co-designed and approved by representatives of all the world’s religious institutions, the movement of Religions for Peace hereby calls on governments, civil societies and multi-lateral institutions to partner with it to create more peaceful, just and inclusive societies – leaving no one behind.

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