The image of religion has taken a beating at recent international conferences on population and development.

The International Conference on Population and Development, convened by the United Nations at Cairo, Egypt, in 1994, was the first of the decennial population conferences to link population to sustainable development around the world.

Conflict emerged at Cairo between religious and secular organizations and between developing and developed nations, particularly over issues of reproductive health, population stabilization, and gender. Supporters of Cairo's aims accused the Vatican, Muslim groups, and other religious fundamentalists of disrupting and stalling the conferences with repeated objections to the Cairo consensus on reproductive health and related issues. The media played up these voices and overlooked the range and diversity of religious perspectives.

Numerous conferences, special sessions, and other assemblies have convened to discuss implementing the Cairo accord. Yet the quality of the debate has changed very little in five years. The Vatican and conservative Muslim nations have continued to oppose various planks in the reproductive health platform. Other religious voices have been largely absent.

A recently released assessment report featured occasional references to the need to respect "cultural values and religious beliefs" and the "religions, ethical values and cultural backgrounds of each country's people" in the more controversial areas of the Cairo program, but gave little sense that religion could contribute something distinctive to the area of population and development.

With a grant from A Better World Foundation, the Park Ridge Center will cooperate with a group of internationally recognized scholars in a project called Religion Counts, an independent initiative jointly managed by the Park Ridge Center and Catholics for a Free Choice. Since the Park Ridge Center does not engage in advocacy activities, the Center's involvement will be limited to the research component of the project, studying the role of religion in international debates over population and development. The research is designed to show how religion, so often relegated to the nebulous realm of "culture" in these debates, can contribute to public policy on population, development, and reproductive health.

The Park Ridge Center will examine the roles people of faith played as participants in the Cairo process, along with the obstacles and the opportunities they encounter at national and international levels. Research will focus on four areas: the role that religions believe they should play in debates over population and development; the linguistic, doctrinal, and moral resources that they bring to bear on these issues; the expectations of the United Nations and of the religions themselves respecting religious involvement in the debate; and the relationship between religions and secular, nongovernmental organizations in addressing the problems set forth at the Cairo conference.

Cairo was the third in a series of international conferences on population and development that have taken place over the last three decades. The problems of population and development nevertheless persist. Religion should neither be ignored nor seen as an obstacle in these debates. The wisdom, compassion, and experience of people of faith can be a powerful source of tradition—or of change—when it comes to these pressing human issues. The Religion Counts project will suggest ways in which religious voices can be heard effectively in debates over population, development, and other crucial issues.

M. Christian Green is a research associate at the Park Ridge Center.