Flora Teckie
Development efforts should foster the well-being of all the members of society.
They should be animated by a set of universal values such as cooperation, collaboration, trustworthiness, and justice. Cooperation and collaboration must be with the aim of eliminating human suffering and ensuring that the basic human needs of everyone is met.
The Baháí International Community says: “…development means developing together. In fact it implies that development cannot be anything other than a reciprocal responsibility: that to allow development in the world around us we must first develop the world within us, but by the same token, development implies harnessing the best in the self by harnessing the best in others. This is not the simple call of ethics, but the lasting proof of the essentialoneness of humankind”.
A major challenge today is creating conditions of social and economic equity among and within the nations of the world. A deep moral commitment, and a fundamental reordering of priorities, will be necessary in order to create such conditions.
“Cooperation between countries is essential in eradicating the gross inequalities among nations that continue to destabilize the world”, says the Baháí International Community.
Regarding the disparity between the rich and the poor – with its serious implications globally – the Universal House of Justice (the governing council of the Bahá’í international community) states: “The inordinate disparity between rich and poor, a source of acute suffering, keeps the world in a state of instability, virtually on the brink of war. … The solution calls for the combined application of spiritual, moral and practical approaches. A fresh look at the problem is required, entailing consultation with experts from a wide spectrum of disciplines, … and involving the people directly affected in the decisions that must urgently be made. It is an issue that is bound up not only with the necessity for eliminating extremes of wealth and poverty but also with those spiritual verities the understanding of which can produce a new universal attitude”.
For development efforts to lead to prosperity for all inhabitants of the world, there will be need for cooperation and collaboration at all levels, and taking into account all aspects of development – moral and spiritual, ethical, emotional and intellectual. Embracing a unifying principle will facilitate both the discovery and the implementation of enduring solutions to humanity’s shared challenges.
The path to achieving socio-economic development must begin at the grass roots – a bottom-up approach – involving everyone in the process of building a satisfactory quality of life. It must involve those suffering, because of inadequate food, water, sanitation, housing, etc, in both decision and action.
According to the Baháí International Community, “successful development efforts require, above all, a spirit of cooperation and collaboration among the participants in the development process. The absence of such a spirit of common endeavour up to the present time – within local communities and nations as well as between countries – constitutes in our view the main reason for the limited success … and the persistence of gross economic inequalities. … The required higher level of cooperation can only be motivated by a sincere appreciation for the unity of all human beings. Only on such a basis can prejudices related to nation, race, religion, sex, and other prejudices that hinder determined and equitable development activities be eradicated”.
It is also essential that all members of a community have input into decisions that affect the entire group. Through dialogue at grassroots levels the experiences and aspirations of the people can be incorporated in shaping action.
Pretoria News