FAITH BASED ORGANISATIONS FORUM – ANNUAL MEETING 2010

Nairobi, November 22 – 23, 2010

Concept note on Principles of humanitarian assistance for FBOs:

During the last FBO Forum in 2009 the typologies of the faith based humanitarian/development and
peace organizations (FBOs) were deliberated on. There are many variations among FBOs, there are
challenges connected with being an FBO, and there are definitely advantages and added values
confirming the relevance of FBOs on the humanitarian and developmental scene.

As a follow up of last year’s consultation on FBOs, and after some informal bilateral consultation
between some of the members of this forum, the concern of reassuring target and host communities of
the 100% humanitarian focus and objective of the humanitarian FBOs have come up. A few
humanitarian FBOs have experienced allegations suggesting that they have a hidden agenda of
proselytation. There have also been other kinds of allegations suggesting that some FBOs have a political
agenda to change and radicalize people’s political stand points and to establish local structures as focal
points for external political agendas.

Based on this, being humanitarian FBOs that all have signed and committed ourselves to adhere to
Principles of the Code of Conduct for the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and
NGOs in Disaster Relief, some of us having adopted even stricter codes, as well as we respect and follow
international humanitarian law, we have been looking for ways of removing unnecessary suspicion and
fear in regard to the strategies and objectives underlying our humanitarian assistance. There may be
FBOs who provide humanitarian assistance that may be guilty to the kind of allegations mentioned
above, but most serious international humanitarian FBOs are not. We need mechanisms for relieving
host communities from suspicion and fear while we are providing humanitarian assistance in their
context. Such mechanisms will also contribute to protecting our selves from false accusations that may
create security risks for own staff and partners working with us.

We do all as FBOs adhere to Code of Conducts that clearly formulate our 100% humanitarian mission
and identity. But this is basically what we say about ourselves and what our individual commitments are
in this regard. In order to strengthen our credibility with host communities we have been looking for
ways of strengthening the credibility of who we are and are not. The need for this clarity basically comes
from fear and suspicion on the side of members of local faith communities that are followers of a
different religion than the actual humanitarian FBO represents.

Acknowledging that this issue is disturbing members of faith communities in particular, and the fact that
FBOs representing different religions face similar challenges, we thought that this interfaith FBO forum,
hosted by ACRL, would be a relevant structure that could contribute to reflecting on ways to provide
credibility to serious FBOs that have a 100% humanitarian agenda, not having any hidden strategies of
furthering any religious or political agenda.