The Prosocial Benefits of Religion: A Case of Modern Slavery

 

 

Rights Lab project lead: Kevin Bales. In collaboration with The Arise Foundation.
Funder: Templeton Religion Trust
Duration: August 2020-January 2022
Programme: Law and Policy  

 

Tousands of religious sisters do anti-slavery work. In India alone there are at least 800 - double the size of the world’s largest anti-slavery NGO. Despite their numbers, the efforts of sisters may be the least understood of the many approaches to abolition. Unlike international groups and NGOs that self-publicise and monitor and evaluate their interventions, religious sisters practice a humility about their processes of liberation and reintegration that means the wider movement rarely learns of or from their unique and powerful approaches. We hypothesise that sisters make a distinctive contribution to efforts against modern slavery, and intend to investigate whether that hypothesis, and related hypotheses, are true or not. If it is true, we want to understand how religious sisters make that special contribution.