Fabian Winiger on the WHO’s first conference on spiritual care
What’s this conference about, and why is it important?
When it was founded in the aftermath of the Second World War, the United Nations declared equality, dignity, freedom and justice an inalienable right of every human being.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in many ways was based on Christian social ethics of the time (Moyn, 2015). The relevance of religious belief, however, was largely confined to article 18, which declared the “freedom of thought, conscience and religion”.
It is not surprising, then, that in the following decades, the many agencies and programs of the UN-system looked to religion mostly in situations of conflict, where intolerance and discrimination was in play. Religion was a risqué and uncomfortable topic.
In the early 2000s, attitudes began to change. Organizations like the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN’s environment program and yes, even the World Bank began to appreciate the importance of working with religious leaders and communities. They began to understand that a just and peaceful world could not be achieved without communities of faith, who in many places hold much more sway than diplomats and government agencies.
The ‘Spiritual Dimension’ in the World Health Organization
For a long time, the World Health Organization (WHO) did not catch on to this trend. In the 1970s, the Christian Medical Commission of the World Council of Churches had inspired the WHO’s development of the primary healthcare-paradigm. Since then, the ‘spiritual’ dimension of health featured in the organization’s agenda, but just as often, it was left out (Peng-Keller et al., in press; Winiger & Peng-Keller, 2021)
This may seem surprising, because it is precisely in poor countries, where governments often fail to provide adequate healthcare, that religion is a part of daily life for most people, and religious communities provide important healthcare services.
Enter the Covid-19 pandemic.
In early 2020, WHO noticed the rapid spread of the novel Coronavirus in religious communities across the globe. “Super spreader”-events fanned the pandemic across the globe, and mis- and disinformation, seized on by politicians, began to derail efforts to control the pandemic. As the WHO’s earlier experiences with HIV/Aids and the West African Ebola epidemic had shown, ignorance of religious beliefs could also cause grief related to inappropriate death and burial.
It became clear that the organization could not rely on technical advice given to ministries of health, as it had for much of its history. An “all-of-society”-response was needed which addressed not just diplomats in Geneva and New York, but directly spoke to the needs and fears of people. A small team, curiously named ‘EPI-WIN’ (“Information Network for Epidemics”), was launched and tasked with this challenge.
For the first time since the early days of primary healthcare, WHO really began to really lean into religion. It held extensive consultations on how to translate public health messages into the languages of the world’s religions, created guidelines for faith communities, held webinars on topics of relevance to them, and launched regular discussion groups with representatives of faith-based organizations to cooperate on areas of shared interest, which it called “communities of practice”.
The intention was not just to coopt religious communities as amplifiers of public health messages, but to humbly listen, and to build a relationship of mutual trust and respect.
The World Health Organization‘s first conference on spiritual care
Planned over six months and in ongoing conversation with religious leaders and faith-based organizations and in partnership with Religions for Peace, a global network dedicated to interfaith dialogue, it represents the WHO’s attempt to connect with those people who are carrying communities of faith through the pandemic.
It is also the first time WHO is hosting an event on spiritual care.
The conference, which is livestreamed on YouTube, is bringing together representatives from every faith and continent to speak about the impact of the pandemic on their communities, and their efforts to overcome it. It looks at the critical role played by healthcare chaplains, spirituality in palliative care, new ways of providing spiritual and mental health care, and the effects of closing places of worship on social care.
And it is laying the foundation for closer cooperation between WHO and what EPI-WIN has begun to refer to as its “faith partners”.
It is early days yet, but the shift of attitudes towards religion in the UN seems to have made inroads in its high citadel of medical science. For an organization which for much of its history has preferred giving technical advice from the sidelines, it is an important moment.
It marks a step towards the recognition that, though religion can be a source of intolerance and discrimination, for a large part of the world’s population, life derives significance through connection with something greater – and that this ‘spiritual’ dimension has profound implications for health and illness.
Dr. Fabian Winiger is Project Lead at the Professorship of Spiritual Care at the University of Zürich.
The conference discussed above, which is ongoing, can be registered for here.
Recordings of completed sessions are available here. Lab Director Wendy Cadge and Scholar in Residence Cheryl Giles spoke on panels recorded here.
Moyn, S. (2015). Christian Human Rights. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Peng-Keller, S., Winiger, F., & Rauch, R. (in press). The Spirit of Global Health—The World Health Organization and the ‘Spiritual Dimension’ of Health (1946–2021). Oxford University Press.
Winiger, F., & Peng-Keller, S. (2021). Religion and the World Health Organization: An evolving relationship. BMJ Global Health, 6(4), e004073. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2020-004073.