Tag Archives: religion

Engaging Local Religious Actors in Humanitarian Aid Delivery

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The delivery of humanitarian aid to crisis-stricken communities is often marred by corruption, particularly in active conflict zones where organizational oversight and due diligence may seem, to aid organizations, like unaffordable luxuries. Consider, as an example, Yemen, where 4.5 million people have been displaced by a nine-year civil war between Saudi-led forces and Houthi rebels. In 2019, more than a dozen U.N. aid workers were accused of enriching themselves with WHO and UNICEF aid funding. In one case, the deputy head of WHO’s Aden branch, Omar Zein, funneled several hundred thousand dollars in aid to his personal bank account. During his tenure with the WHO, he also served as the health minister of one of the warring factions while holding a $1.3 million contract with the U.N. for his private nutritional program NGO, which did not even have a ground operation in the city it purportedly supported. And it appears these are not isolated anomalies. A 2021 report by the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies found that aid workers in Yemen perceived corruption in the humanitarian aid sector as widespread and deeply entrenched. While civilians keep complaining about missing aid and international organizations keep reaffirming their zero-tolerance policy on corruption, there seems to be an unmitigated accountability gap between affected local communities and international aid agencies.

At the core of the aid corruption epidemic in Yemen and many other conflict zones (including Ukraine, Sudan, and Syria) is the disconnection of the organizations providing aid from the community in need. International organizations have not been able to provide sorely needed accountability and oversight of their local field offices. Additionally, there is often no direct social connection between local communities and these field offices. The intermediaries between the field offices and the local population are typically local NGOs, but these alleged “aid distribution partners” are often suspected of being established by political factions to attract international funds and channel those funds to specific regions for political and military advantage, or for personal gain. (Omar Zein’s NGO is an example.)

While there is no perfect solution to this problem, international aid organizations should consider greater strategic engagement with local religious institutions (such as mosques, temples, or churches) as an alternative to relying on international staff stationed in field offices or partnering with (often newly-created) secular NGOs in distributing and coordinating aid resources. There are a number of reasons why partnering with local religious institutions may be an effective way for international donors to increase accountability and reduce corruption in humanitarian aid delivery:

  • First, local religious institutions typically have a long history and deep roots in the community, predating the infusion of humanitarian aid. (In Yemen over 99% of the population identifies as Muslim, and mosques are not only places of worship but centers of community social life.) This history of engagement with the community in a variety of settings contributes to a relationship of trust and understanding within the community. Through working with these institutions, international organizations bring the decision-making of aid allocation (what resources and how much of it is needed) closer to the impacted community, thus improving the transparency in aid delivery.
  • Second, leaders of local religious institutions (both the clergy and the lay leaders) are themselves members of the community, and there is organic accountability rooted in their ongoing moral leadership. The personal connections these leaders have with community members make it much more difficult to evade accountability if supplies or funding go missing.
  • Third, religious institutions have a far deeper reach and access in a community than any international organization field office or local NGO. There are existing networks of relationships within a faith community, which makes it much easier for these institutions to identify people’s most pressing needs and constantly changing priorities. Even though local NGOs are also locally managed, their single functional focus on charity makes them more removed from people’s everyday lives, thus reducing the informal oversight from everyday interactions with local residents.
  • Fourth, the distribution of humanitarian aid is a good fit for the larger mission of religious leaders, as most major religious stress the importance of charity and support for those in need. Islam, for example, emphasizes the obligation of farḍ kifāyah, collective duty, with social services and welfare as key aspects of this obligation. Zakāt (charity giving intended for the poor and often collected by local mosques) is one of the five pillars of Islam, and the practice of zakāt gives mosques the capacity and expertise to manage aid funding. Though the administrative capacity to manage humanitarian funding might not apply to every faith tradition (which can be developed through cooperation with international organizations), the communal nature of religious institutions is shared across most religions in the world.

The strategic cooperation with local faith actors in the delivery of humanitarian aid is not a new idea. In September 2023, for example, USAID published a policy paper on strategic religious engagement in humanitarian assistance and development, which built on a 2004 USAID Rule for Participation by Religious Organizations in receiving USAID funding. in 2017, Oxfam also published a research paper identifying the need to engage with local faith actors in providing humanitarian aid. Among the many advantages of such engagement, working with local religious bodies has the potential to address the lack of accountability that breeds corruption in aid delivery. This is not to say that religious institutions are immune to corruption, or that this approach could work everywhere. But in countries like Yemen, where religion plays such a significant part in the local community’s social life, and where there are reasons to distrust many of the secular NGOs that purport to assist with aid delivery, a focus on partnerships with faith groups may be a promising way to ameliorate the corruption crisis in humanitarian aid.

How Ethno-Religious Divisions Stymie Anticorruption Reform in Malaysia–and What to Do About It

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In 2018, Malaysia surmounted the biggest test of its democracy since gaining independence from Britain in 1963—the first democratic transfer of power in the country’s history. That change in leadership occurred in the wake of the 1MDB scandal—one of the largest kleptocracy schemes ever uncovered—which implicated former Prime Minister Najib Razak. The repudiation of Najib and his party, UNMO, in the 2018 election was seen by many as a hopeful sign that the Malaysian people were no longer willing to tolerate the systemic corruption that had long been seen as business as usual. To be sure, the leader of the victorious coalition in the 2018 election—nonagenarian Mahathir Mohamed, who had previously served as Prime Minister from 1983 to 2001—was an unlikely champion of anticorruption and good governance reform. Yet in 2018, Mahathir’s victory was cause for hope that there would finally be genuine systemic reform.

Within two years, that hope had all but vanished. Prime Minister Mahathir was forced to resign in the middle of his first term in office and was replaced by UMNO politician Muhyiddin Yassin, who had served as Deputy Prime Minister under Najib. What went wrong? In an earlier post, I explored how a free press and multi-party government may have contributed to the failure of Mahathir’s coalition. But that is not the whole story. Those democratic institutions were susceptible to manipulation because of the deeply embedded ethnic and religious divisions that have been a defining feature of Malaysian politics since independence. By exacerbating racial and religious tensions, UMNO managed to convince key voting blocs that the biggest threat they faced was not corrupt politicians, but rather their neighbors who look and pray differently. In short, the reformist coalition ultimately failed because the Malaysian populace lost sight of their common enemy: the corrupt system of governance robbing them all.

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Godmen or Conmen? How India’s Religious Trust Laws Facilitate Money Laundering Empires

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In the past two decades, India has witnessed the rise of so-called “godmen” (and “godwomen”), charismatic religious leaders who have amassed enormous fortunes. To take just a few of the most eye-popping examples: when the godman Sathya Sai Baba died in 2011, his holdings were valued at more than $9 billion. Another godman, Asaram Bapu, has a trust with an annual turnover of $49 million—which may seem like a lot, but pales in comparison to the over $1.6 billion in annual revenue earned by a company called Patanjali, controlled by yet another godman, Baba Ramdev. It would not be hard to supply many other examples. The godmen and their supporters will tell you that these empires are built on a combination of legitimate contributions and business savvy, and that the funds are used to support spiritual and charitable activities. But in fact there is ample evidence that the fortunes of these supposedly religious figures are tainted by extensive corruption, tax evasion, and money laundering.

One of the most common functions that godmen perform in the illicit economy is the conversion of so-called “black money” (unaccounted off-book money, often from illegal sources) into “white money” (or goods or services), in exchange for a hefty fee. Godmen are able to get away with this due to unfortunate features of India’s religious trust laws, which are opaque and riddled with loopholes, and leave religious trusts largely unchecked and unsupervised. Here’s how some of the godmen’s illicit schemes work:

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The Case for Engaging Religious Leaders in Anticorruption Efforts

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The Kenyan Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission (EACC) recently launched a somewhat unconventional initiative: an anticorruption Bible study guide. The EACC collaborated with the Evangelical Alliance of Kenya and the Fellowship of Christian Unions to first publish the guide in 2008, but in September it launched the guide’s use in a formal event with the Inter-Religious Sector. Though the EACC has worked with religious leaders from across traditions in the past, this guide is limited to the Christian faith. (Roughly 85% of Kenyans identify as Christian.) Intended for use in small group studies, the guide has 12 lessons divided into three sections: understanding corruption, developing values, and responding to corruption. Each lesson contains an introduction, discussion questions rooted in Scripture, a memory verse, and a final point of reflection. The EACC Twitter account declared that the study guide “is intended to help Kenyans interact with the Bible and discover God’s position on corruption and his direction on living a corruption free life.” And as the guide’s forward explains, “we believe that this fight will benefit from a much greater impetus if we use places of worship as the vanguard platform of advocacy against corruption in Kenya.”

Many in Kenya are not so sure. The decision to invoke God in the fight against corruption was met with skepticism and outright derision on Twitter and local media. (See here, here, and here.) Critics argued that the anticorruption Bible study guide would be ineffective (and therefore was a waste of resources), and also that anticorruption advocacy should be grounded in general morality, not religion. And it is hard to ignore the hypocrisy of religious groups and leaders speaking out against corruption given their imperfect records. (See here, here, and here). Furthermore, the collaboration between a government agency and religious leaders in producing this guide raises concerns both about the separation between church and state and about whether scarce government resources are best spent recruiting religious organizations into the anticorruption fight.

These criticisms are overblown. Working with religious stakeholders—and framing ethical arguments in religious terms—is a powerful and legitimate tool in the anticorruption movement’s arsenal, and activists should not shy away from using it. Religious leaders and organizations make particularly effective partners in anticorruption efforts for several reasons: Continue reading →

Saudi Arabia’s Anticorruption Purge: A Sham to Consolidate Power and Lure Investors

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Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS, for short), has been cleaning house. In the last month, he has arrested 11 princes, four ministers, and dozens of ex-ministers, all of whom are being held in five star hotels across Riyadh. He has also detained more than 200 others for questioning. Scores of commentators and media personalities have praised MBS’s anticorruption purge (see here and here), while others have condemned it (see here and here), which goes to show just how difficult it is to understand what the recent anticorruption purge means in the context of a country like Saudi Arabia. On the one hand, in Saudi Arabia, any measure to address corruption seems to be cause for optimism. Taken against the backdrop of the many social reforms advanced by MBS, ranging from permitting women to drive, diversifying the economy, and moderating the religious establishment’s brand of Islam, the anticorruption measures appear to be part of a genuine effort to reform Saudi Arabian society. Yet this optimistic assessment naively conflates a progressive social agenda that taps into our hopes for Saudi Arabia’s future (and the Middle East’s writ large) with what Saudi Arabia’s anticorruption purge really is: an attempt to consolidate MBS’s power and reassure foreign investors. Continue reading →

Culture Matters: How Indonesia Should Account Culture to Eradicate Corruption

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Corruption in Indonesia is endemic, permeating all levels of society. As I argued in my last post, Indonesia’s culture of corruption is a result of the corruption of culture: Far too many people see corruption as unsolvable and even “normal,” even though they clearly realize its wrongfulness.

To date, Indonesia’s independent anticorruption agency, the KPK, has pursued a main strategy of prosecuting the “big fish”—the high-ranking officials (including numerous parliament members and powerful politicians) whose corrupt behavior has caused massive damage to the country. Laudable though the KPK’s bold enforcement efforts have been, eradicating corruption requires more than prosecutions. Rather, the KPK needs to complement its aggressive law enforcement with preventive measures designed to change Indonesia’s “culture of corruption” to a “culture of anticorruption.” There are several strategies the KPK could pursue to foster such cultural change:

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Can Religion Reform Cultures of Corruption? Lessons from the Philippine Catholic Church

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During his visit to the Philippines earlier this year, Pope Francis called on the Philippine government to put an end to corruption in the country, and challenged citizens “at all levels of society, to reject every form of corruption which diverts resources from the poor.” While the Pope’s admonishment may seem like mere rhetoric to some, his call to action may have more significant political implications in a country where nearly 83% of the population identifies as Catholic, and where the Church plays a major institutional role in the nation’s culture and government.

In his 2010 piece “’Good News’ in the Fight Against Corruption,” and more recently in a June 2014 working paper on systemic corruption, Professor Roberto Laver highlighted the role religion plays as a cultural force in society, which in turn may impact how societies respond to corruption in government. Religion can affect ethical behavior in obvious ways, but it can also affect how public power and authority are arranged within society. Professor Laver argued that religion, which is often overlooked as a resource for anticorruption efforts, should be used as an “entry point” for a “second generation of reforms” to battle entrenched cultures of corruption.

Assuming Professor Laver is correct that religious institutions are not playing a large enough role in anticorruption efforts worldwide, the Philippine Catholic Church may be an exception to that rule. The Church has been at the center of numerous political debates for decades, and, if the Pope’s speech earlier this year is any indication, it will continue to play a major role in issues involving development, poverty, and corruption. The Philippine example highlights the essential role an institution like the Catholic Church can play in addressing systemic corruption. And by the same token, it demonstrates the costs that come with entrusting that power to religious institutions and leaders.

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