Particular attention should be paid to the inclusion of women, towards whom we challenge the religions to change their own attitudes and practices. Putting people at the centre of development means that any development process which creates or perpetuates poverty is illegitimate. Some religions have a tradition of historical reflection which leads to the understanding of poverty as a process, focusing on how people become, or are made, poor, and why some remain poor while others manage to get out of poverty. Given, too, the heterogeneous nature of the poor and the complexity of poverty, one implication of this need to examine the historical characteristics of particular poor people is the vital importance of recognising that poverty is not the same everywhere. It follows from this that poverty cannot successfully be tackled by applying a uniform set of policies across different countries or even across the communities within them.
Culture is a key element of development.
A failure to take people's values and beliefs into account will lead to their being either alienated from their own roots or excluded from the development process. However, this is not to overlook the value of cultural dynamism in the context of a changing world. We do not argue that all aspects of any culture should necessarily be preserved, especially as regards gender relations, but changes must come about within cultures, and according to their own contexts. We are concerned that the WDR gives relatively little space to the issue of work. In this context the notion of restraint and the acceptance of limits is of key importance.