The Micah Challenge Launch

Presentation at the Micah Challenge Launch at the United Nations, New York

October 15, 2004

Katherine Marshall, The World Bank

Introduction

This remarkable event today symbolizes the vital global mobilization that we are working for to face of what we, together, see as humanity’s most critical challenge - to end acute poverty and fight for social justice.  Poverty in the world today is an outrage, not only because of the misery it causes but because we so clearly have the means to defeat it.  We must, we can, and we will.

From ancient times wise religious leaders have taught compassion and love, have seen the faces of poor people, heard their voices (even when they were silent).  We are reminded here that this core is at the very heart of the Christian Gospel.  Churches have a wealth of experience, an array of instruments, infinite compassion and love, and a community of believers. 

That is why we (in the international development institutions) are deeply convinced that without the full engagement of faith communities, the Millennium Development Goals to fight poverty cannot be achieved. 

That in turn calls for the kind of mobilization that is your goal.  This mobilization requires many elements, among them critically new kinds of partnerships.

New Partnerships: Mind, Heart, Soul and Hands

            At the United Nations, we cannot forget the dreams of the founders sixty years ago.  Nor can we forget the history of our times since then, for we have many lessons to draw from it.  The dream, then, seemed both clear and simple, even as the World Bank’s mission statement today has a compelling ring: “Our dream is a world free of poverty.”  Yet if we have two major lessons to draw from our history it is that the problems we face are complex, and  the motivations of human beings and institutions much more intricate that we often imagine. 

What this means, for the challenge today of engaging the potential of faith communities, is that we, all of us, need to see this as our common fight, with us working as allies.  We need also to address both our different views and our perspectives.  This is what we need to build the kind of alliances and partnerships that alone can allow us to succeed.

You might all agree that we need to work with all our resources.  I reflect here briefly on four dimensions, often cited, and often the caricature image of our various institutions: in the battle ahead we need to combine mind, heart, soul and mind. 

We need to bring experience, evidence, and creativity to the task.  Experience is not easy to transmit, and evidence, facts and statistics are not as straightforward as many believe: it will not surprise me if here today people argue with equal confidence that poverty is growing worse, or that the share of poor people is declining.  But we must look facts in the face and we can use them to learn and to clarify.  This is the intellectual, mind dimension, and it has its own dangers, including intellectual arrogance, bogs of complexity, cylindrical divisions among professions like economics and business.  We need the rigors and science of the mind, but it is not enough.

We know well that we cannot succeed in any human endeavor without caring and compassion.  There is a twist here; we need charity, in the sense of direct care for those who face destitution.  But a focus on the arguments and instruments of charity alone can lead us astray.  And looking at misery also can lead to despair, fatalism, romantization of the past, perhaps the worst enemies of the heart.  We need to keep the gift of a human face to every technical problem, the sense of caring.  We need, even in moments of crisis, to keep our minds on the causes of crisis and how to address them, together, at the same time that we provide help to our brothers and sisters.  We need to focus on relationships built on caring and respect, as well as on trust.  We need wise hearts.

The meaning of soul goes far behind what I can discuss, and it is what brings many of you here.  Suffice it to say that we cannot fight poverty without tending to the dimension of spirituality in human beings and the many institutional manifestions, in religious institutions, leaders, and movements.  A focus on the soul can give us the wisdom to reflect more deeply on what we are trying to achieve.  Calling for a focus on soul means listening to the wisdom that comes from religious leaders and recognizing the quest for meaning, the real sense of larger purpose.  We need to beware the pitfalls of false certainty, of exclusiveness, of over abstraction in the face of real problems like the suffering of women and children.  But without this dimension our work can be arid.  The call to consider soul  is a call to the kinds of qualities we need – courage, integrity, a sense of stewardship.

We live in times of rich rhetoric, transmitted so widely by communications magic.  Yet we suffer, and nowhere more than in this challenge of fighting poverty, the gap between rhetoric and reality.  This is perhaps the most significant challenge we face – to maintain momentum, to translate our words and commitments into action, over long periods of time and in the fact of difficulties and competition for attention.  We need to bring our hands to this effort (our effort and our financial resources), to make sure that words mean and lead to action.  There are traps here too – too much focus on action, the risk of duplication of efforts, overlapping and competing mandates, lack of follow through, lack of engagement with and respect for the people affected.  But at the core this battle is about translating our ideas and ideals into reality with the many means at our disposal.

Traditional images parceled the world and its challenges among institutions with head, heart, soul and hands.  This is a dangerous fallacy.  Even as we work to creative new partnerships and alliances, we need to see the role of each element for us all.  The churches are not only about heart and soul, the international institutions are not about mind and brawn (money). 

What we must do

We have, together, a remarkable agenda.  Some of the potential I see in this effort

(a)    We can tap the wells of compassion that we see, at their finest moments, in congregations all over the world and use this to bridge divides of regional difference, cultural differences, rich and poor.   The message of the MDGs is compelling and critical and we can and must use it.  We need, though, to recognize that it is not always easy to translate into terms that a congregation or community leader will grasp as a priority and actionable subject that applies directly to them.  Finding ways to convey the message that this framework has broad application and needs to engage each and every community is a central and continuing challenge.  The message that success in the fight against poverty is not only essential but also achievable needs to be conveyed forcefully and effectively.  Fatalism – a sense that poverty shall always be with us, that little has been achieved – needs to be addressed and combated with evidence and fervor

(b)    Build alliances and partnerships, often in unlikely geometry.  We cannot afford to allow simplistic characterizations to blind us to the potential and complex motivations of our fellows.  Creative alliances can work modern miracles.  We can combine our resources of mind, heart, soul and hands in new ways.  There are countless examples of what works when hands are joined, whether the leadership that changed the course of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Uganda, the work of Fe y Alegria for education across Latin America, and countless community development efforts that transform lives across the world.

(c)    Dialogue on the tough issues: we have a long agenda of difficult issues that we need to address through respectful and probing dialogue.  The Micah Challenge is a movement of Christians, but this is a cause that can unite all faiths.  Interfaith efforts can achieve miracles. 

There are a host of fractious issues among faith and development institutions which we need to address.  To name four: 

(i)                          Corruption is a nagging issue invoked constantly to suggest that aid is wasted, to encourage a plethora of direct giving to individuals that can, in some circumstances, undermine the effort to address the larger systems.  Corruption needs a frontal, thoughtful, energetic approach from us all.

(ii)                         the roles of public and private actors in fighting poverty – at issue are how we assure social welfare, education, fight HIV/AIDS, health, and assure women’s rights. 

(iii)                       One of the most contentious and divisive issues among and within faith communities and between the worlds of faith and development is the role of women in society and particularly women’s reproductive health issues and rights.  These issues have both practical and symbolic importance, lying at the core of issues of identity, cultural heritage, individual versus community rights, and pitting tradition versus modernity.  No other set of issues seems so to have colored the relations between faith and development institutions over the past decades, generally in a negative light (on both sides).  Yet few issues have such vital importance for social welfare and stability – whether in education policy, child health and nutrition, small business development, and achievement of human rights.  We need to find ways to engage in dialogue on these sensitive issues in ways that promise to advance understanding, build on such common ground as concern for maternal health, violence against women, and HIV/AIDS, and address the areas where there is real disagreement.  Leaving this issue as a “sleeping dog” is both unproductive and damaging to the broader objectives that we share.

(iv)                       Equity issues and beyond: One of the most contentious and divisive issues among and within faith communities and between the worlds of faith and development is the role of women in society and particularly women’s reproductive health issues and rights.  These issues have both practical and symbolic importance, lying at the core of issues of identity, cultural heritage, individual versus community rights, and pitting tradition versus modernity.  No other set of issues seems so to have colored the relations between faith and development institutions over the past decades, generally in a negative light (on both sides).  Yet few issues have such vital importance for social welfare and stability – whether in education policy, child health and nutrition, small business development, and achievement of human rights.  We need to find ways to engage in dialogue on these sensitive issues in ways that promise to advance understanding, build on such common ground as concern for maternal health, violence against women, and HIV/AIDS, and address the areas where there is real disagreement.  Leaving this issue as a “sleeping dog” is both unproductive and damaging to the broader objectives that we share.

(d)    We need to work together to build useful and meaningful ways to hold ourselves to account and to learn from experience.  These are complex problems, that call on all the resources of all who are represented here.  We need to learn from each other.  We can use the framework of accountability that the MDG effort has generated to good ends.  We can go beyond with a pact of mutual accountability where we share each other’s experience as we move ahead.

Thank you.