​The Unit for Religion and Development Research (URDR) is an interdisciplinary research unit based at SU. It empowers communities, organisations and governments through evidence based research, theory building from below and capacity building through education and training.

The Unit offers a unique research space, positioned within multiple worlds, with a focus on social transformation and sustainable development.

This enables it to sensitively navigate the faith and secular divides still prevalent in development work today; to nurture cooperation between the worlds of theory and practice, academics and faith institutions, and government and civil society; and to offer multi-sectoral, interdisciplinary approaches to the complex issues surrounding key sustainable development goals.

The URDR was founded in 2002 with a focus on nurturing evidence-based good practice. It emerged in response to the need to equip faith communities, in particular, to play an ongoing and effective role in social transformation in post-apartheid South Africa. A critical religious development discourse was required to meet new challenges and contexts, to map and understand emerging trends, and to equip faith communities to play an effective role alongside other actors in sustainable community development.

The URDR was recently commissioned by Girls Not Brides to do a study on understanding the role of resistant religious leaders from Christian, Muslim and Hindu traditions in efforts to end child marriage and develop effective strategies for working with them for change. Child marriage violates girls' rights to health, education and opportunity. It exposes girls to violence throughout their lives and traps them in a cycle of poverty.

Currently, 12 million girls are married every year before they reach 18. Almost one in three of these girls are living in sub-Saharan Africa – up from one in seven girls 25 years ago. One in nine girls in the developing world is married by age 15. Through Girls Not Brides the URDR research team had access to 1 000 partner organisations across multiple faiths and in more than 95 countries. Key informant interviews with practitioners from all over the world, review of programme documentation from organisations working with religious leaders on child marriage, as well as a literature review were conducted.

While not all religious leaders oppose ending child marriage, this study focused on those who do to help support activists who are facing challenges in their attempts to work with religious leaders. The following seven overlapping drivers (or underlying roots) were identified as shaping the attitudes and practices seen to typically fuel religious resistance to ending child marriage:

• Marriage viewed as a religious ritual;

• Lack of awareness of child marriage consequences;

• Child marriage seen as ordained by religion;

• Fear of premarital sex and pregnancy;

• Reinforcement of patriarchal power;

• Parental protection and power over children;

• Religious fundamentalism.

 Several strategies were suggested in relation to understanding the particular drivers within a specific context and building on what is being seen to work in the field across multiple faiths.

*The article appears in the latest edition of the Stellenbosch University Research Publication. Click hereto read more. 

Photograph: Stock image – Unsplash​​