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Culture Matters to Development: It Is the "How"and Not the "Why"and the "What"

Statement by Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, Executive Director, UNFPA

Ambassador Fust,

Ladies, Gentlemen and Friends,

The first time I was here in Bern was in October 2001, just a few weeks after the September 11 violence. Like all of you, I was shaken by the violence and terror. Condemning it was not sufficient; we have to ask why? It is in the name of religion, but what does that mean in real terms? What does it mean for every single person on the globe? What does it mean to all of us collectively?

Introduction

A lot has changed during the past four years and yet the great gaps that divide us continue to demand a collective response.

Today’s world is characterized by the forces of globalization, ever-faster communication across lands and time, the fragile process of “democratization” underway in many nations, the economic interdependence that binds our world together, rising levels of migration and urbanization, and changes in the size, form and function of families. Yes, economic globalization is spreading itself over many parts of the world, but what is it activating in people and communities? I keep on asking myself: what is the critical ingredient for the success of economic globalization? The repeated thought: cultural globalization. Is this what is making people in developing countries respond violently to the rapid movements of change and to economic and cultural hegemony of one type?

Then I see a mental image of a young girl and boy, seeing a world of possibility on the television screen, while no such opportunity exists for either one of them. Despite advances on many fronts, widespread poverty, disease, gender discrimination and conflict continue to take a titanic toll on them. There remains an untenable gulf between the powerful and the powerless, the rich and the poor. And the poor are abstracted into concepts and their reality is absorbed into strategies, plans, policies, systems, conventions, statements, speeches, and the like. Progressively, they become more and more invisible for immediate action. Governments, donors and multilateral organizations, such as UNFPA, seem more and more remote from the realities of people as we focus more and more on national policy dialogue and lose contact with the communities, who are the real change agents and their institutions, which are the vessels for sustainable change. Eventually, we have to find the balance between these two types of intervention. And culture matters give us this entry point so that our policies make the poor visible and so that we act as we should – not as the agents for change, but as the facilitators and supporters of change. And this is what empowerment and ownership is about. We can thus link the local with the national and eventually with the global.

Now that I have laid my deeply felt concerns on your shoulders, I an honoured to be invited back to Bern to deliver the Traverse Lecture. I wish to thank the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) for providing all of us with a further opportunity to discuss a topic that becomes increasingly critical. Special words of appreciation go to Walter Fust, who was the first official to believe in my Culture Matters ideas and to provide UNFPA with the necessary support to take the first action for this initiative. It has grown into a well-recognized programme, thanks to the professionalism and passionate commitment of my colleague and friend, Maysoon Melek. Your leadership in this matter, Ambassador Fust, has led to further support from Germany and Sweden, of which we are also appreciative.

I know this theme is of increasing concern to all of us working in development. The Nobel Prize-winning economist, Amartya Sen, who, defined development as freedom, said in an essay:

"The issue is not whether culture matters…That it must be, given the pervasive influence of culture on human life. The real issue, rather, is how—not whether—culture matters. What are the different ways in which culture may influence development? How can the influences be better understood, and how might they modify or alter the development policies that seem appropriate? The interest lies in the nature and forms of the connections and on their implications for action and policy, not merely in the general—and hardly deniable—belief that culture does matter.

Mr. Sen rightly points out the need to understand better the connections between culture and development. The World Commission on Culture and Development, established by the United Nations confirmed the same in its report in 1995 that the relationship between culture and development should be clarified and deepened in practical and constructive ways.

The first part of my lecture will explore that relationship as well as the added value of cultural sensitivity in promoting human rights. I will explore how culture and religion matter to UNFPA and explain the dynamics of and steps to institutionalize a culturally sensitive approach to promoting human rights.

The second part of the lecture will discuss how culture and religion matter to the implementation of the agreements that guide our work—the Programme of Action of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development—with its focus on gender equality and the right to sexual and reproductive health, and also the outcome document of the recent World Summit and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). And I will conclude by talking about how culture and religion matter in our collective efforts to improve aid effectiveness, as agreed in March 2005 by developed and developing nations in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.

How Culture and Religion Matter to International Development and Cooperation

Let me start by reading a few quotations that provide you with some insight into the United Nations environment with regard to culture and religion.

Speaking in 1998 at the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said: “You may be wondering what a Secretary-General of the United Nations is doing in a synagogue, speaking about religion.” In answering his question, he went on to say: “The United Nations is a tapestry, not only of suits and saris, but of clerics’ collars, nuns’ habits and lamas’ robes – of mitres, skullcaps and yarmulkes”. Then he cited Pope John Paul II’s speech at the 59th anniversary of the United Nations and said, “The politics of nations… can never ignore the transcendent, spiritual dimension of the human experience.”

Here is another quote that provides a thread in the tapestry I am weaving. “No one coming to the UN is neutral. Every one comes here with moral values, ideas they believe in. The lesbians and the communists come with moral values, as do those organizations that come with a belief in the [traditional] family. Every one has a right to be here. That was the principled founding of the United Nations in the first place.” That was a quote from a leader of a conservative “family values” non-governmental organization (NGO).

In the 1990s global conferences on the environment, population and development, women, human rights and social development, religion moved to the forefront of United Nations advocacy. Public awareness of religion at the United Nations also increased dramatically as a result of media coverage surrounding the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo and subsequent United Nations meetings. The charged religious atmosphere that emerged there gave many observers pause to think about religion’s role in international dialogue. A study by The Park Ridge Center for the Study of Health, Faith and Ethics described what happened in the ICPD as follows: “People of [religious] conviction shocked each other and a watching world as they clashed over some of the most volatile topics of the day: family planning and the nature of the family, the rights of women, gender and sexuality, and abortion and birth control.”

In response, Religion Counts was established as an international representation of scholars, experts and leaders and they participated in and monitored religious activities at the United Nations, especially the five-year reviews of ICPD+5 and Beijing +5. They concluded that religion was indeed present at the United Nations; that its role at the United Nations was unclear to many people; and that religious individuals and groups at the United Nations did not have a unified perspective on either the issues before the United Nations or the appropriate role of religion in the United Nations. (Religion and Public Opinion at the UN: A Religion Counts Report, dated April 2002.)

In the pre-appointment interview to the post of UNFPA Executive Director, the Secretary-General asked me what I brought to UNFPA. I told him that I did not bring a new agenda because the ICPD Programme of Action was a holistic agenda focusing on the interactions among people, development, human rights and gender. My duty was to ensure quality implementation. But I told him that I brought a new way of thinking about how to deal with the controversial issues, and that was through culturally sensitive approaches to human rights. I explained that the international debate on reproductive health and rights and gender equality was rarely technical; it was about values and beliefs. Therefore, we must understand both culture and religion as they affect human experiences and lives, and work from within to bring about positive change. Little did I know at the time that the culture initiative would draw scrutiny and doubt both within UNFPA and outside it.

When I spoke about culture and religion for the first time at the Executive Board, there were unspoken doubts, camouflaged in diplomatic questions. My background, as a Muslim woman from Saudi Arabia, made people think that I would roll back the gains of ICPD. There were fears from feminists and women’s NGOs and anxiety about change among my colleagues.

I held, and still hold, the position that all “isms” are value-laden. Democracy is about the interaction of all these “isms” and the product is either conflict or consensus. And the Cairo agreement itself was a product of consensus-building that emerged from the world’s diversity of values, cultures and religions; it was the natural product of the tensions between human rights principles and cultural values and religious beliefs. The implementation of the Programme of Action could be facilitated by negotiation and mediation, by being attuned to religious and cultural dynamics, including power dynamics, and working with local power structures and local allies to foster understanding and, thus, respect for human rights.

The role of culture in our thinking about development has undergone a remarkable change in the last four decades. In spite of occasional declarations to the contrary, early thinkers found traditional cultural attitudes and practices only as obstacles to development. The implication was that, unless people in developing countries adopted the norms and standards and thus the behaviours of the developed countries (all Western in culture), there was no hope of their developing.

The pendulum has since swung in the opposite direction. The move from condemning to celebrating cultural diversity, both among and within cultures, has been an illuminating change. It reminds us that development can take many forms and that approaches to development can differ. We are just beginning to realize that we are not all destined to be consumers of Starbucks or McDonalds as life necessities or to find joy only in MTV music and images; even though a good part of the youth culture in developing countries believes that. We are beginning to recognize that cultural globalization is not a win-win contribution for sustainable development and that cultural diversity and identity are critical contributions to development.

James Wolfensohn said in an address at a conference on Culture and Sustainable Development: Investing in the Promise of Societies, in Washington, D.C., in September, 1998:

 

"… The issue of culture and development is not one that we regard as controversial. We start from the proposition that you cannot have development without a recognition of culture and history. In a world that is becoming increasingly globalized, in a world where there are pressures for cultural homogeneity across all countries, what is abundantly clear is that it is essential for us to nurture, to prize, to revere, and to support the culture and the history of the countries in which we operate. Very simply, we do not believe that you can move forward unless you recognize the base and the past from which we have come."

“This is not some wild, exotic idea. This is not a view of an elitist. This is a view that you find in villages and in slums and in part of countries where people, however bereft of physical resources, are turning back to their culture and their history.”(quoted in Voice for the World Poor: Selected Speeches and Writings of the World Bank President, James D. Wolfensohn, The World Bank, Washington, D.C., 2005, p. 174).

Having asserted the right of people to enjoy their identity and culture, I have to make it clear that there are cultural practices that are harmful to women and young people and deny their human rights. Therefore, it is important to distinguish between making value judgement of cultures and of cultural practices. It is also true that culture and the differences among groups can be hijacked for political gain and manipulation. In the UNFPA Latin America and Caribbean Region staff retreat on culture, held just last week, a leading feminist acting as a resource person said that the ethical domain was being “stolen” by conservative groups and it was time that we—the champions of social justice, human rights and public goods—regained our leadership in the ethical dialogue. Naturally, I was overjoyed and added: UNFPA and all of its partners, as they implement ICPD, constitute a pro-life movement because we save women’s and youth’s lives and we are pro-family because we promote equality in roles and responsibilities that bring about balanced relationships. These are ethical values that we champion, and we should not allow any one to take this position from us.

There is growing consensus that cultural diversity must be accompanied by equal opportunity, equitable treatment and respect for all, with full adherence to the rule of law, not only among individuals and communities, but also among and within nations. The Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity, adopted by UNESCO in 2001, recognizes, for the first time, cultural diversity as a "common heritage of humanity" and considers its protection as an ethical imperative, inseparable from respect for human dignity. The Declaration states that no one may invoke cultural diversity to infringe upon human rights guaranteed by international law or to limit their scope.

In 2004, United Nations Development Fund (UNDP) devoted its Human Development Report to the importance of culture in human development. It concluded that poverty, a central economic idea, cannot be understood, or combated, without addressing cultural considerations. There is growing awareness that social and cultural analysis—which has often been ignored by development policy—must be on the same footing as political and economic analysis. And the report is right; for we have seen the failures when solutions are imposed from outside without listening to voices from within.

In 2002, the World Bank held a conference on culture and public action, in which participants pointed out the need to use poor peoples’ realities, including cultural ones, as the starting point for every policy formulation. Whether they are about trade, decentralization, education or health, the policies need to be based on the realities people face. This stands in contrast to the trained-in patterns of “abstracting out” the social, cultural and institutional dimensions from economic rationales, and from the economic design and rationale of policies and projects.

James Wolfensohn says in a new book of some of his writings and speeches, Voice of the World’s Poor:

“over the five years of my odyssey at the Bank, I have come to learn that culture indigenous to the countries in which we operate is a fundamental base on which development can occur. It is not all related to this palazzo [referring to a school building that the World Bank built architecturally out of context]; it is related to the country’s own indigenous history. These are histories that themselves are rich, that are important, that form the basis for the people of these many different countries and, for us, of a global future. And so I became deeply committed to this issue of culture – not as a matter of elitism, not as a passport to dinner tables where one can meet brilliant and accomplished people, but as a basic element in development.” (p. 170.)

The World Bank publication, Voices of the Poor, states that across all cultures, poor people felt they were “invisible” — excluded from institutions, assets, decision-making and opportunities to improve their lives. Making the invisible visible and fostering participation and inclusion are key to development and, I add, that culturally sensitive approaches to the promotion of human rights are the HOW, the way, to bring about the much-needed visibility.

Overall, it has become clear that culture is not a sort of “primordial constraint” from the past that hinders economic and social progress. Culture is constantly being changed by the people who construct it in the first place. This position was articulated by Abdullahi An-Naim, professor of human rights and religion at Emory University in the United States. A human rights lawyer by training, he facilitated UNFPA regional retreats on culture for Africa and in Arab States. He said that the principle of human rights is universal by virtue of our humanity. But the content of human rights as proclaimed, is not universal since it was articulated by a limited number of countries in 1948, with the extremely limited participation of developing countries, many of which were colonies at that time.

Proclaimed human rights seem globalized from above (international level) and, thus, are often seen as Western constructs; therefore, they must be globalized from below (the community level), or subjected to “globalization” as was indicated in the Latin America and Caribbean culture retreat. The only way for the human rights content to be universalized is to allow it to be articulated by the people themselves and through their own context, suffering and understanding. Only when people take action to respond to their immediate needs or to a violation of some aspects of their lives can they move to a higher level of conceptualizing the principles of human rights. For example, the right to have a health clinic becomes a concrete realization of the right to health and, eventually, to human rights in general. Ownership of the right to health allows its internalization into the experiences of the communities and moves them into the deeper understanding of the universality of human rights.

This is where movements of communities can universalize human rights. Diversity means there is no one culture in the world, but a scope of certain values within a small group. Human rights is about fitting the smaller scope in a larger scale—what changes is the scope where human rights are applied.

Mr. An-Naim also states that there is a continuous tension between human rights and cultural values and religious beliefs. Therefore, “every culture is characterized by diversity, contestability, contingency and negotiation. Since cultures and religions do not hold uniform and monolithic views on social and moral issues, it is possible to challenge dominant views or practices regarding any issue from within the same frame of reference.” This is where people can become the active agents of change from within their communities. It is where organizations, such as UNFPA, can become active facilitators of dialogue for change and mediators of consensus-building within communities. It is through this role that we can support communities as they create “safe spaces” for mediation, dialogue, negotiation and consensus-building at the local and national levels.

How Culture Matters to UNFPA

To all governments, multilateral organizations and civil society institutions, the MDGs constitute a minimum framework for development action. Many of these goals are reflected in the Programme of Action of the 1994 Cairo ICPD, which provided an important international forum for dialogue among civilizations to create the necessary consensus on highly controversial issues. Since it became operational 36 years ago, UNFPA has had to navigate its way through culturally difficult material—including reproductive rights, family planning, female genital mutilation/cutting, women’s empowerment and gender equality, issues which fall in the private spheres of families and communities, but have been brought under scrutiny in the public arena.

A few months ago, Dr. Nafis Sadik, my predecessor at UNFPA who remains a special friend and mentor, delivered the Rafael Salas Memorial Lecture at United Nations Headquarters, New York. She spoke engagingly about the history of UNFPA and its work over the years. She pointed out that our success as an organization was in our ability to be an “honest broker”. She said: “We responded to countries’ own priorities, and we developed programmes based on their own needs.”

UNFPA began its work as it has continued ever since, with a process of dialogue, globally, regionally, nationally and locally.

From Cairo in 1994 to the 2005 World Summit last September, the long process of negotiation and consensus-building and the mediation role that UNFPA and all of its partners played was crowned with the Outcome Document. World leaders committed themselves to the Cairo goal of achieving universal access to reproductive health by 2015 and integrating it in national strategies to achieve the MDGs. They also agreed to eliminate violence and discrimination against women, proclaiming that progress for women is progress for all.

Over the years, UNFPA has made progress, through patient advocacy, mediation and negotiations, as well as engagement with local communities, to promote the ICPD Programme of Action and the human rights and gender principles upon which it is grounded. We recognize the need to work through positive values that exist in all countries and in all cultures to realize further progress. We know that UNFPA needs to identify, engage and cooperate with local power structures and religious institutions to strengthen alliances and partnerships. We have learned through country experiences that culture matters. And, therefore, we are committed to deliberately, systematically and strategically institutionalizing a culturally sensitive approach to development that we can share with others.

Our work on culture is based on eight assumptions: 

• Assumption 1 is that cultures are the realities within the contexts in which development takes place.
• Assumption 2 is that people are not only the products of their cultures, but also the creators of their cultures. As such, they are not simply passive receivers but also active agents who can reshape cultural values, norms and expressions.
• Assumption 3 is that cultures are neither static nor monolithic. Every culture is characterized by diversity, contestability and private and public space for mediation and negotiation.
• Assumption 4 is that cultures have a strong impact on the social sectors and on social relations, but especially on gender power relations.
• Assumption 5 is that it is through change from within societies/communities that cultural norms, traditions and expressions are changed.
• Assumption 6 is respect for cultural independence and cultural diversity with the acknowledgement that change can be mediated in favour of human rights and gender equality.
• Assumption 7 is that cultures and religions share common denominators with universal standards, such as human equality, compassion and tolerance.
• Assumption 8 is that human rights can be recognized and internalized through a culturally sensitive approach that gives social basis and support to the legal approach.

This last point is spelled out in a policy note issued by the Executive Director and circulated to UNFPA staff in January 2004.

It says:

“We must distinguish between theoretical references to human rights in policy development and concrete applications at the programming level. As part of the process…we need to review reservations to treaties, and share comparative jurisprudence in customary and religious traditions, law reform and research within communities, in order to understand the evolving, changing nature of cultural norms and religious interpretations. Such effort would allow us to dialogue with the communities, express respect and win their confidence. In turn, it would allow them to feel their ownership of the change process itself because it is built on greater understanding of the complexities of the necessary interaction that would bring about change.”

Success, we have learned, requires patience, a willingness to listen carefully and a respect for cultural diversity. Changing attitudes, behaviours and laws–especially those dealing with gender relations and reproductive health–has proven to be a long-term and complex task. The point is that we cannot achieve human rights for people; achieving human rights is the responsibility of the people themselves, but we can support their efforts in the process. The question is how to go about identifying the appropriate entry points. For example, there is a fundamental problem with human rights protection. The mechanisms for addressing human rights violations are at the national level. However, most often, violations occur at the microlevel, within the family and the community. To have an appropriate intervention, we know the “WHY” and the “WHAT” and, thus, we need to know the context for the “HOW”.

Therefore, a culturally sensitive approach to human rights-based programming is a prerequisite to its promotion and sustainability.

UNFPA’s Culture Project

I can tell you many stories of vulnerable and excluded women and men who changed their lives and about how culturally sensitive institutions have helped them do so. But the stories tell us what we development practitioners should know through our knowledge and experience; yet we tend to forget in practice. Through case studies, we have identified 24 tips. But in the field of international development as in many other human endeavours, it appears that “common sense is not so common,” as the French writer Voltaire said nearly three centuries ago.

The tips include: 

• Invest time in knowing the culture in which you are working,
• Hear what the community has to say,
• Demonstrate respect,
• Show patience,
• Gain the support of local power structures,
• Be inclusive,
• Work through local allies,
• Find common ground,
• Accentuate the positive,
• Celebrate achievements, and,
• Never give up; believe that it is possible. Do not expect to accomplish everything at once. Even small changes are significant and may be more enduring over the long term.

I have mentioned 11 of the 24 tips and I know that some of you in this room are familiar with them. They are intended to help development practitioners to understand and apply culturally sensitive approaches. It is one of the products of the culture initiative which started in UNFPA in August 2002, thanks to the SDC.

The culture project has three phases. In phase one, we conducted field-based research of UNFPA programmes in nine countries in different parts of the world. The idea was to provide hard evidence of how culture matters. We published the findings of the case studies in a report entitled, Culture Matters, and in a more reader-friendly version, Working from Within. It is from these that we developed the 24 tips.

From those case studies, we were able to document many interesting things. We found that in Yemen, for instance, UNFPA helped produce a guide for imams and other religious leader that relates family planning and reproductive health to the Qur’an and stresses the Prophet's teachings on the equality of women and men.

In Cambodia, we documented how UNFPA is exploring partnerships with Buddhist monks and nuns to address the emerging threat of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the vulnerability of young people. In Uganda, UNFPA won the support of traditional custodians of culture, the Sabiny elders, to promote healthier behaviours and eliminate harmful traditional practices, such as female genital mutilation/cutting.

In Guatemala, a deeply Catholic country, UNFPA facilitated consensus-building among a wide range of stakeholders to secure passage of a ground-breaking Social Development law that promotes reproductive health. Here, our staff members were confronted with a dilemma as to whether they should advocate for the inclusion of reproductive health into a law that was built on a constitution that talks about the sanctity of life from conception or have no law on reproductive health at all. It was not a question of having it all or nothing. It was a strategic decision to make, and an alliance of civil society organizations, including the Catholic Church, made the decision to choose between sticking to hard positions or facing the reality of poverty and maternal death. They chose to seize the opportunity to open doors to better reproductive health protection for Guatemalan women and couples. UNFPA played a facilitating role that provided “safe space” for discussions and alliance-building among the diverse institutional participants.

Another interesting case study comes from India, where millions of girls are “missing” due to prenatal sex selection, female infanticide and neglect driven by a preference for sons. In India, UNFPA worked with parliamentarians, medical officers and many other partners in a broad campaign to combat prenatal sex selection. This campaign, which raised awareness by documenting the sex ratios in different states, provided solid evidence to generate awareness and action. It showed, for instance, that the practice is common among all classes and income levels. The campaign was recently joined by a group of religious leaders who are urging their followers to abandon the practice. This case study is truly an example of making the invisible visible.

In the second phase of the initiative, we applied the knowledge and wisdom we had gained through the fact-finding exercise. We applied it to develop learning, training and capacity-building for a culturally sensitive approach to programming for UNFPA staff, and we hoped for development practitioners. We trained the Executive Committee of UNFPA. And we developed a knowledge asset and a new section of the UNFPA web site that can be used by development practitioners, donors, researchers and others.

Some of you took part in the pilot training, which we conducted here, and your insightful feedback has been incorporated into the UNFPA home-grown training manual, which was then tested again in Africa, in a training of trainers workshop for selected UNFPA staff and personnel from the Centre for African Families Research. The module has now been taken over by the African institution and its material is being Africanized to meet the cultural context of the region, with its diversity. This exercise will continue in other regions through 2006.

Another important component of this phase was an in-depth analysis of the cultural dimension of the global survey that was undertaken for ICPD+10 review to measure progress and determine challenges.

The survey showed diversity of regional responses. Culture and religion were seen as powerful forces, with both positive and negative impacts on programming. Sex and sexuality are widely regarded as taboo, especially adolescent sexual and reproductive health. A number of harmful practices related to marriage were identified: child marriage, polygamy, widow inheritance, sex selection as related to son preference and many others.

The cultural profile in Africa appears to be of a much more complex nature than elsewhere. This is due to a number of cultural factors, both positive and negative. Factors identified include: pronatalism/encouraging childbearing; polygamy; customary law. Religion does not appear to be as strong a cultural factor in the continent as in most other regions.

In Arab States, certain cultural factors constitute obstacles to the advancement of development, gender equity and women’s empowerment. These include ultra-sensitivity and taboos surrounding discussions of sex and sexuality, particularly with adolescents, and the stigmatization of people living with HIV/AIDS or those perceived as high-risk groups.

In Asia, patriarchy, dowries, son preference and child marriage are viewed as cultural practices having a negative influence on behaviour.

In Eastern Europe, the factors that obstruct reproductive health and HIV prevention efforts include patriarchal social structures and taboos surrounding discussions on sexuality, and the stigmatization of people living with HIV/AIDS.

The culture of machismo and patriarchy in the Latin American region put at risk gender equity and equality as well as women’s empowerment. Ensuring the rights of indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples also constitutes a challenge as they are the most marginalized segments in a region characterized by inequity. And religion, and religiosity, with the predominance of Catholicism, present special challenges.

And, finally, in the Caribbean, patriarchy appears to be a barrier to gender equality, and in some parts, as in the Pacific Island countries, matriarchal social structures contribute to elevating the status of women.

These considerations were factored into the regional staff retreats on culture, the last one of which ended just last week. The first retreat for Africa region took place in Ghana last year. It was exploratory; alive, active, stimulating and focused. Knowing that Africa has a diversity of politically and socially influential community, cultural, religious and social leaderships structures, the Accra retreat discussed the way forward on the promotion of reproductive rights, gender and human rights, through culturally sensitive approaches. It came up with practical recommendations to improve learning, knowledge sharing and skills building.

The retreat for the Arab States was less challenging, but had the flavour of the region—confrontational at times, in denial in other times, generalized statements in yet other moments. Yet, it was hard-working and tried to be constructive at all times. Unlike the Africa retreat, it had case studies focusing on: narrowing the gap in access to reproductive health; the Arab adolescent girl; CEOSS grass-root approach to reproductive health/family planning in Upper Egypt for both Muslim and Coptic communities together; and family laws in the Arab World; and comparative analyses of Tunisian family law, Moroccan Moudawana and other family laws in selected Arab countries. The retreat ended with a set of recommendations that varied from developing staff skills, to general statements, such as the need for flexibility and for selectivity in working with faith-based organizations.

The retreat for the Asia and Pacific region last month also had case studies that focused on changing attitudes on son preference, prenatal sex selection and the elimination of girls; working with faith-based organizations for reproductive health; and culturally sensitive approaches to promoting reproductive health and sexuality education for youth. There were intensive discussions, and I must admit, some scepticism at the beginning, but by the end of the retreat, most participants were converted. We also discovered that there was a need to learn from the remnants of “communist culture”, such as in Cambodia, Viet Nam and Laos.

The final retreat took place last week for the Latin America and Caribbean region. It was a rich and rewarding gathering that was organized around four main topics: culture, religion and reproductive rights; youth, culture and citizenship; cultural, ethical and political perspectives on reproductive rights—masculinities and feminism; and State, multiculturalism and identities.

The case studies focused on youth culture, globalization and human rights—the case of urban “tribes” in Latin America; lessons learned in the implementation of sexuality education in Costa Rica, Nicaragua and El Salvador; empowering women through the exercise of reproductive rights in a conflict situation in Magdalena Medio, Colombia; expanding reproductive health choices through the implementation of emergency contraception: the cases of Mexico and Peru; black women, racism and poverty, and maternal death in North-eastern Brazil; and Jambi Huasi, the provision of reproductive health services through an intercultural approach that incorporated indigenous and Western healing practices and methods.

Given the scope of the subject matter and the temperament of our Latin American colleagues, the discussion were naturally extensive and long, but rich and substantive, dealing with the meaning of society, human rights and the differentiation between respecting differences—such as the fundamental procreative differences between women and men—and agreeing that all human beings are equal.

I was struck by the programme in Colombia in Magdalena Medio, coordinated by a young doctor who is also a Jesuit priest, Father Libardo. It is a live expression of what the whole initiative of culture is about, especially in working with persons displaced by conflict and threatened by violence and abuse. The case study convinced me that working from within is essential for recognizing the immediate right—in this case the right to reproductive health—as an introduction to recognizing the right to health and human rights in general.

This conclusion is in line with and an internal exercise we undertook to scan the environment in which we work. We realized that we are squeezed in a small space called governments, international organizations, donors and a few others. We are not reaching the communities that are blocked from us not only by many layers and forms of bureaucracy, including our own, but also by economic, social, political and cultural barriers. Thus, for us to make the vulnerable visible—those for whom we claim to work—we need to support them to create safe spaces for them to be the actors: the social subjects and the agents of change. Thus, our role to facilitate, mediate, strengthen and empower is critical to any political process for universalizing human rights from the bottom up, at the micro level, moving upward into social and political movements.

At the Latin America and Caribbean retreat, it was also said that the body is the primary humanitarian space that needs to be protected. This is an interesting concept that displaced persons can easily relate to, since they often own nothing but their own bodies.

There were also rich discussions on religion and the role of religious institutions. I believe that there are many reasons for working with religious and faith-based organizations: they have access to people, they live in the community, have legitimacy and credibility among the people who listen to and seek their advice and counsel, have strong structures and outreach programmes, and have institutional, human and financial resources. In the final analysis, they also deal with the well-being of their people, just as we also do—this objective should bring us closer to one another.

We also realized that people in our programme countries face a real dilemma. The secular structure does not always care about them; it makes them invisible and often the only strong institutions to respond to the needs of the poor are the “churches” or institutions of religions. This creates a tension between the “church”—which occupies public space, has a public form, is very powerful politically and sometimes is the only actor for the poor—and us, development organizations, who are less powerful and often alienated from the real people and their contexts by our own fears about dealing with culture and religion, among other reasons.

And we saw that fundamentalism is not solely an expression of religion, but also an expression of political action because religion was pushed into the private space. We need to demand and protect secularity; however we need to allow some public space for the “churches” because if we do not allow this space, they will act politically. Within a secular State, the religious institution should have legitimate public space in society, just as other social institutions.

Therefore, I concluded, culturally sensitive approaches to the promotion of human rights is about opening spaces for the vulnerable to question and to express themselves in their own ways and through their own institutions, including their religious institutions. It is a political process at its heart and it is a true struggle for participation and representation, a struggle for democracy.

As you see, the staff cultural retreats were rich and a true learning experience, based on the staff accumulated years of first-hand experience and knowledge.

Another part of UNFPA’s culture project is that we are presently conducting field-based research on UNFPA-supported projects on violence against women that uses cultural sensitivity in the design and implementation of projects in nine countries. The research, due to be completed in March-April 2006, will result in producing programming tools to assist programmes with violence against women components.

The third phase of the culture project will be to use this capacity-building tool to empower our people in the field and at Headquarters to become leaders to the international community in a culturally sensitive approach to development. Also, a number of UNFPA Representatives in Africa have initiated sociocultural research in preparations for the development of new country programmes.

I am confident that this approach is not only an effective strategy, but also a prerequisite to the achievement of the ICPD and Millennium Development Goals and increasing aid effectiveness.

Culture and Improving Aid Effectiveness

The Paris Declaration, adopted in March 2005, represents the latest consensus on what is needed to achieve greater effectiveness in development cooperation and focuses on five key principles: national ownership, alignment, harmonization, managing for results and mutual accountability. There is an emphasis on a multi-stakeholder approach, which involves civil society.

This new framework for aid effectiveness challenges all of us who work in development and humanitarian assistance to change the way we do things. I believe very strongly that increased social and cultural intelligence is critical to this new endeavour. While in the past, organizations have emphasized bureaucratic conformity, upward accountability and the meeting of financial disbursement targets, the behaviour required for these tasks are inappropriate for the needs of the new environment in which we find ourselves. The new environment requires greater flexibility and innovation, multiple lines of accountability and the development of skills for relationship-building, such as language and cultural understanding, and it aims at the empowerment of governments and citizens. Internally, new organizational norms, based on learning, growth and mutual respect, are needed to encourage teamwork and innovation and to support the development of country programmes that empower communities and ensure ownership.

Playing the role of the honest broker—through promoting safe space for contestation and negotiation—is central to breaking down power imbalances, opening up communication channels and developing trust. These elements are fundamental to developing an assistance system that recognizes complexity and which evolves accordingly into a system that will be more effective in reducing poverty. For some, this means that development should focus on supporting the freedom and capacity for action of local actors - and what emerges should not be expected to automatically follow prescribed patterns of Western economic development. At the same time, issues of power appear at every level, from apparently taken for granted cultural practices, to global economic and political structures, to unequal relationships among countries and within countries. Local actors who understand a particular situation are well-placed to bring an informed knowledge of local conditions to their own development. But if our attention is only focused on the local, the wider cultures of communication and power that sustain global inequity will continue to thrive. In which case, little will really change, as we search the horizon for the next development fix.

Here, the United Nations as a whole has a critical role to play in fostering dialogue and building consensus. Because beyond designing a new assistance architecture to finance development and building a real partnership for development, the success of our development-oriented actions will depend in part on the way we deal with culture, equality and diversity; how we work at the macrolevel and ensure empowerment and ownership at the microlevel.

An important aspect of building partnerships and alliances is about finding common space and common objectives to work together to serve the vulnerable and excluded. Therefore, alliances are not about US – but about THEM; it is about finding the best way to provide the support to make the vulnerable visible. It is not about our own conceptual powers, intellectual muscles or organizational positions, but about our moral obligation to make vulnerable people visible. So, it is their own agenda. We have to ensure that we do not usurp their right to decide, by deciding for them and imposing our agenda.

Finally, I would like to conclude with the words of the great Nigerian writer and Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, who summarized it all by asserting:

“Culture is a matrix of infinite possibilities and choices. From within the same cultural matrix we can extract arguments and strategies for the degradation and ennoblement of our species, for its enslavement or liberation, for the suppression of its productive potential or its enchantment.”

We, as promoters of human rights, must believe that it is all possible for without this belief, none of us would be in this room. So, we have to remind ourselves always that it is truly possible, even though it might take longer than we wish.