About

Building on the Swiss National Science Foundation research project on the ‘spiritual dimension’ of health in the WHO (2017-2020), this project, entitled “Spirituality and Health in the United Nations: Global norms for Local Practices” examines the role of other UN organisations in the development of health policy frameworks for interprofessional spiritual care. It is based at the Professorship for Spiritual Care at the University of Zurich.

Due to increasing global interdependence, persistent migration flows and the worsening ecological crisis, the question of how to design a just, humane and affordable health care system has become a key issue of international and national politics. In this context, new forms of cooperation between secular international organisations and faith-based organisations (FBOs) active in the health sector have been established in the widely ramified UN system in recent decades. The documents on health care that have been published in this context have hardly been researched so far.

The aim of the project is to examine the documents published between 1990 and 2020 in terms of their significance for the development of interprofessional spiritual care.

The project is committed to a discourse-analytical approach that combines hermeneutic and empirical methods. In focussed case studies, the following UN organisations are examined and related to the Swiss health system: UNHCR, UNAIDS, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), UN Women, UNICEF, the World Bank Group and the World Food Programme (WFP).

Particular attention is paid to the development of Mental Health and Psychosocial Support (MHPSS) by the United Nation’s Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), the longest-standing and highest-level humanitarian coordination forum of the United Nations system, and attempts to bring this field into dialogue with spiritual needs religious complexities of communities affected by conflict, disaster and displacement.