UN Sustainable Development Goals

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I commend my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford) for calling it. I welcome the Minister for Development to his place and commend his long-time commitment to this issue. I also welcome his call for evidence for the White Paper on UK international development, and I am pleased to hear that there has been a great number of contributions. The Minister will not be surprised to hear that my speech will echo my submission to the White Paper, and I look forward to hearing his response.

If the sustainable development goals are to achieve their aim of leaving no one behind, the review looking towards 2030 must include a greater focus on and consideration of people experiencing inequalities due to their religious marginalisation. If people are excluded from healthcare, education or the job market on account of their religion or belief, they will be poorer for it. I will amplify that by quoting from an excellent paper from the Danish Institute for Human Rights. Referring to SDG3, on universal healthcare coverage, it said:

“In contexts where religious/belief minorities...are marginalised ...they often experience restrictions on their access to health care services and quality treatment. In the most extreme cases, health facilities may be destroyed, and staff attacked as part of religiously related conflicts or situations of violent oppression of religious/belief minorities. In other contexts, access is restricted through state policies and practices. Bias in health budgeting and priorities, for instance, may mean that infrastructure is lacking or of low quality in areas with a predominance of religious/belief minorities”.

With regard to SDG4, on access to all levels of education for all, it said:

“In contexts where religious/belief minorities and indigenous peoples are subject to marginalisation, discrimination or oppression, their levels of enrolment in school are often lower than that of the majority population. In a few cases, certain minority groups’ access to public education is explicitly restricted by law, primarily at university level.”

We can see an example of that in Iran, where the Baha’is are excluded from university. Violations and abuses of people’s human right to freedom of religion or belief are a driver of poverty in conflict and non-conflict situations. It needs to be recognised and addressed as such, just as work has been done to address the poverty challenges faced by women and girls or the less abled across the world.

This is not a small problem. More than eight in 10 people worldwide identify with a religious group—around 6 billion people. Of those, many millions experience discrimination or persecution on account of their beliefs, and that situation is getting worse year on year. Of course, marginalisation and persecution are complex issues, and they may not necessarily be motivated only by religion. There can be and often are other factors—economic, political, cultural, social and historical—but it is vital not to underestimate the role of religion and belief in marginalisation, discrimination and persecution. We in secular or more secular countries are often prone to do that.

The word “religion” barely merits a mention in the current SDG terminology, and traditionally international development has often adopted a religion-blind approach. Certainly, no one should be a priority for aid assistance on account of their religion, but in many countries where religion plays a greater role in life and essential services may be provided overwhelmingly by those belonging to a majority religion, a religion-blind approach risks ignoring the effects of religious otherisation, where people who are already socioeconomically excluded are further marginalised on the ground of their religion or belief. To many of our international partners, especially in the global south, that approach can be seen as religiously illiterate, and contributes to a failure to achieve the “Leave No One Behind” agenda.

To give a clear example of that, the Coalition for Religious Equality and Inclusive Development has done remarkable studies in India, South Africa and Uganda showing that when religious inequalities exist, they undermine the principle of equitable access to healthcare. In Pakistan, CREID found that where the caste system was prevalent and people were in extreme poverty, the vulnerability of Hindus and Christians in Sindh province was accentuated, because as religious minorities already on the margins of society, they were overlooked by the World Bank’s poverty alleviation programme. Similar concerns were raised about DFID’s Iraq emergency humanitarian programme in 2014-16, highlighting that with more than 75 mentions of vulnerable groups, in only one instance was religious or ethnic identity mentioned—that of the Sunni Arabs who might be displaced into Shi’a or Kurd areas.

To counter such situations in the future, a review of the SDGs must address the absence of discussion of religious inequalities in international aid discourse and seek to change that to include appropriate policies and practices to ensure inclusive development. In particular, it must listen to the voices of religious minorities, whose exclusion is seriously undermining the likelihood of the SDGs achieving the aspirations we all want to see of improving the lives and prospects of everyone and leaving no one behind.