The notion of human development epitomizes the fundamental core of what we seek and imply when we speak of faith: a hope and a confidence in the very essence of the human spirit and its capability to soar. In every person, from the moment of their birth, no matter where and to whom, the gift of conscious life carries the potential to learn and contribute. This conviction, imbued with hope, is embedded in two different but related global calls: the Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, unanimously endorsed by all United Nations member states in 2015, and the concept of “integral human development” that is central to Catholic social teaching.
The SDGs grew from the Millennium Development Goals that marked a revitalized commitment to serve the human family in a spirit worthy of the turn of the new millennium in the year 2000. The SDGs continued the effort to set clear and measurable targets with visible deadlines but with an important difference: a focus on the complex intricate connections among the many goals (17) and targets (169). Ending poverty could not be disentangled from addressing threats to the environment, assuring better sanitation from ending conflict, and fulfilling the promise of universal quality education from decent housing. In that sense, integration is fundamental to the global architecture of commitments to shared progress in a multilateral spirit, crossing lines of social, economic, and political difference.
The global United Nations focus on interconnectedness reflects two deep and often hard-earned lessons from international development and humanitarian work since World War II ended. The first is simply that while clear focus in programs is obviously needed, isolated approaches divorced from a broader context are often doomed to disappointing results. The second is that people and communities fit poorly into sectoral silos. Long ago, efforts to pursue “integrated rural development” exemplify the realization that community governance, water supply, health, road construction, and education are tied together in complex ways; the needed integration processes, nonetheless, have proved difficult to implement, if not elusive, with significant pending challenges in our increasingly complex and dynamic world. Still more important, without focusing on human development, sometimes termed human capital, none of the other goals can be achieved in lasting ways. Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, in subtly different but related ways, highlighted human capabilities as the essential driver of social and political progress—for Sen, they were the essence of freedom and underlying human rights.
Catholic social teaching frames the essence of integral human development as a holistic view of human dignity, harking to its different dimensions: social, economic, political, spiritual, and cultural. More explicitly than the SDGs, it focuses on the human person as the start and end, but with a full recognition of the complex webs of interconnections among different facets of life. Education and health care take on special importance as they address the most immediate process of ensuring the development path for a child or adult, but a decent job that provides respect, capacity to contribute to society, and basic principles of social interaction are also vitally important to integral human development.
I see the two approaches—the UN SDGs and Catholic teaching on integral human development—as inspired by common convictions, principles, and life lessons. They share a sharp focus on the potential for human development and the core ethical belief that the means to it should be shared by all, no matter their culture, geography, economic situation, and religious belief. Both give pride of place to the must human of development tools of education and health, and escape from the miseries of extreme poverty and hunger.
So how might they differ? The UN SDG framework tends to be grounded in ideals of human rights, with the underlying value of equity as something owed to each person, a common obligation of the community. Human rights are also embedded in much religious teaching but often with subtle differences, sometimes simply of emphasis. The collective obligations tend to be framed as obligations to serve, for charitable responses, with ambiguity around different aspects of governance. And ideals of equality, taking as a prime example between women and men, can be understood differently both within and among religious traditions.
These assertions skim the surface of immensely important and complex questions. They open a Pandora’s Box of debates about secular versus religious approaches, rights versus charitable motivations and programs, and obligations versus freedom to act. But they point to some practical questions that urgently need attention: how can development policies and projects address failures to integrate different sectors and community realities? And how can the underlying analysis on which development and humanitarian work is grounded better reflect a truly human centered approach?
A first step towards the answer to both questions is for leaders representing the two deeply similar approaches (SDGs and Catholic social teaching), built on deep learning from experience and admirable ethical foundations, to listen to and hear each other—the international development world, sharply challenged now in fundamental ways, and the religious world, living with both ancient charitable principles and a vast array of programs in communities across the world. These two worlds, sometimes described as ships passing each other in the night, need each other now more than ever. And the simple words “integrated and integral,” with deep roots in thought and experience, point towards critical shared goals that link to the human spirit and the hope to keep the noble ambitions for human development front and center.
