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processes and procedures, including its strategic priorities and

notions of risk and vulnerability, or when they may simply not

have the desire to serve as ‘implementing partners’.

Other documented challenges and concerns about part-

nering with faith actors, especially local faith communities

and faith leaders, include charity-based approaches that can

neglect human rights-based approaches to humanitarian assis-

tance. In complex emergency situations, UNHCR staff also

recorded that coordination posed the greatest challenge to

partnering with local faith communities, their networks and

community-based organizations.

It is clear that partnership with UNHCR also poses specific

challenges for faith-based organizations, beyond the issue of

staff attitudes described earlier. One factor is the inherent

inequality of power between a large international organization

and a small local institution. An equally important challenge

for faith-based partners is UNHCR’s procedures and require-

ments, which they may be unable or unwilling to satisfy, and

the fact that staff rotation may affect UNHCR’s institutional

memory and presence in the deep field, with the risk of calling

into question long-standing positive cooperation, albeit on the

basis of ‘trust’ rather than formal arrangements.

Notwithstanding the challenges for both sides, faith-based

organizations, local faith communities and faith leaders have

traditionally contributed to a wide range of protection activi-

ties in humanitarian situations, including:

• providing physical protection and facilitating

humanitarian access

• deterring violence and alleviating suffering through

presence and accompaniment

• mediating tensions between refugees/internally displaced

persons and host communities in conflict or post-conflict

situations

• engaging in reconciliation and peace-building activities

• combating xenophobia and discrimination

• preventing and responding to SGBV or forced recruitment

• improving reception conditions and accompanying the

detained

• providing legal counselling and asylum case-management

• advocating for legislative changes benefiting persons of

concern

• supporting refugee resettlement and/or local integration.

Another initiative that sprang from the High Commissioner’s

Dialogue on Faith and Protection was a call to develop guidance

for faith leaders, which aims to promote tolerance and respect

for the human dignity and human rights of asylum-seekers and

refugees, migrants, internally displaced and stateless persons.

Image: UNHCR/B. Sokol

Winner of UNHCR’s 2013 Nansen Refugee Award, Sister Angélique Namaika instructs a literacy class near Dungu in the

Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many of the class are internally displaced people

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