THE Pan-African Parliament, the South Africa-based legislative body of the African Union, has adopted new guidelines to help prevent harm and abuse experienced by people accused of witchcraft and the victims of ritual attacks.
The parliament met last week in Johannesburg to officially launch a wide-ranging set of guidelines that aim to provide governments across the continent with strategies to help tackle often dangerous superstitions linked to witchcraft beliefs.
The proposals include legal steps such as criminalising violent acts which result from accusations of witchcraft as well as outlawing the trafficking of body parts used in rituals. The directives also introduce nonlegal efforts such as community education and awareness campaigns to address misguided beliefs that perpetuate witchcraft accusations.
Although data is scarce and cases underreported, violence and abuse toward people thought to be involved in witchcraft is widespread across Africa but also exists in other continents. Contrary to some beliefs, witchcraft-related attacks are not decreasing, but appear to be on the rise, according to experts.
A recent United Nations report found records of more than 20,000 victims of harmful practices linked to suspicions of witchcraft and ritual attacks in the last decade across 60 countries. Another survey, conducted in 95 countries and territories, found that more than 40 percent of all respondents claimed to believe in witchcraft. The survey also showed that this belief cuts across socioeconomic groups.
Children, women, the elderly, persons with disabilities, and persons with albinism are especially vulnerable to witchcraft attacks. Finger-pointing can lead to stigma and exclusion, including banishment to live in a ‘witch camp.’ But being singled out as a witch can also result in physical violence and even killing. Persons living with albinism are especially vulnerable to attack and mutilation due to beliefs that their body parts hold special powers.
Victims of witchcraft allegations tend to be outcasts and thus struggle to access education and employment. Similarly, persons with albinism or disabilities are often hidden away by their families for fear of attacks.
‘Whether you believe in witchcraft or not, there is no denying that witchcraft is having a negative impact in our continent and this impact needs to be addressed,’ Muluka-Anne Miti-Drummond, a UN expert representing people with albinism, said during the meeting. ‘These guidelines give us hope that, if implemented, these harmful practices can start to be eradicated.’
Awareness of the issue has been growing in recent years. In 2019, the UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution condemning violations associated with witchcraft. However, experts say the issue needs to be taken more seriously, especially by national and regional authorities.
Miti-Drummond said that she ‘constantly’ receives reports of children and adults being abducted, having their body parts mutilated, and living in fear of others, including their own family members.
And yet, the issue is ‘rarely talked about’ or included in professional discussions, she said. This is partly due to ‘secrecy and taboo around such topics and lack of reporting.’
Things are changing, though, as demonstrated by the adoption of the guidelines, said Miti-Drummond.
One challenge in trying to stop witchcraft-related abuse is that it can be seen as an attack on deep-rooted cultural beliefs, according to Miranda Forsyth, director of The International Network Against Accusations of Witchcraft and Associated Harmful Practices.
‘There are many sensitivities around the cultural aspects of beliefs in witchcraft, such as the important part such beliefs play in the provision of traditional healing,’ she told Devex.
‘Some are concerned that calling out abuses based on beliefs in witchcraft entails being critical of certain cultures and portraying them as backwards or barbaric.’
That is why the Pan-African Parliament guidelines and the UN resolution refer repeatedly to ‘harmful practices’ stemming from witchcraft superstition, to signal that the focus is on the harms that come from these beliefs and not the beliefs themselves, Forsyth explained.
The report aims to provide a human rights approach to help governments regulate the belief in witchcraft, said Michael Nyarko, the lead author of the guidelines and a lawyer at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria.
‘Not as a means of prohibiting people from their beliefs, but to prevent harm being caused because of the belief in witchcraft,’ he said during the launch event.
In fact, the guidelines recommend repealing colonial-era laws, existing in some countries, which criminalise belief in witchcraft since this challenges rights to freedom of belief, religion, and expression.
The initial focus of the report was attacks against persons with albinism, but it became quickly evident that thousands of others were affected, especially elderly women, Nyarko said.
‘This is an endemic problem across the continent,’ he said.
In many cases, these attacks on women were not prompted by ‘real belief’ in witchcraft, Nyarko said, but to ‘dispossess them of inheritance or as a means of settling scores.’
However, they could also be linked to ‘ignorance’ about medical conditions associated with aging. Common symptoms of dementia such as confusion and memory loss are routinely assumed to be evidence of witchcraft among some communities, Nyarko said.
This is symptomatic of a broader lack of understanding and information about ‘human diversity,’ which can result in those who appear different being branded as supernatural, Nyarko said.
‘African governments have not done much to educate populations about human diversities which has resulted in all kinds of myths which in a lot of instances fuel suspicion and violence against people who are “different,”’ he said.
The report also recommends that governments include rolling out comprehensive education and awareness-raising campaigns which target stereotypes and myths about aging, gender, albinism, disability and other genetic and health differences that can trigger witchcraft accusations.
It calls for information to be disseminated about disease control and natural disasters since spikes in allegations are often linked to outbreaks of disease or drought as people seek to find an explanation for their misfortune.
Governments should work with the media to encourage the spread of information that does not ‘sensationalise’ witchcraft or spread the kind of ‘dangerous myths and stereotypes’ which can fuel accusations, the report said.
It also states that governments should regulate the practice of traditional medicine to stop witch doctors who facilitate finger-pointing and attacks as part of their treatment, and adopt mandatory birth registration systems so that officials can monitor the well-being of children, especially those born with disabilities or albinism, and who are at most risk of attacks linked to witchcraft beliefs.
