End Human Rights Abuses Against Alleged Witches

Dear Reader,

It is another exciting moment at Songtaba as we bring to you updates on our work on ending violence against persons accused of witchcraft. 

Every year between 25th November to 10th December, human rights organisations and individuals across the globe engage in serious advocacy to champion the end to all forms of violence including gender based violence. This year Songtaba as a women and child rights organisation joined the rest of the world to mark the 16 days of activism highlighting the wide spread of witchcraft accusation in the northern part of Ghana.

As part of the activities to mark this year's 16 days of activism, Songtaba organised visits to the alleged witches camps with the media to interveiw some of the women telling their stories for publication. The intention was to showcase these stories as compelling evidence for key stakeholder including government to speed up process to disband these camps.

beyond this community level actions, Songtaba also organised a national level key stakeholder dialogue to discuss the roadmap to ending this age long phenomenon. The national dialogue had both state institutions  and civil society orgnaisations participating and making significant contributions to put an end to this phenomenon. 

on a recently case were a 90 years old women was accused of being a witch and eventually lynched, Songtaba was the first organisation through a press conference to call for the arrest of the perpetrators of this crime. Some arrest was indeed made and subsequently grabted bail but arranged to court. Songtaba is still monitoing the case to ensure that the famility of this old women gets justice and also to serve as a lesson to prevent other future occurrences.

 The journey has been a very difficult one but it is important to indicate that some positive progress has been made. There appear to be a rudction in the frenquent occurence of the accusations and the also there has been a significant number of the women that have been re-integrated.

SONGTABA is please to highlight the course of our work where we present to our dear readers various updates and the progress made in ending violence against persons accused of  witchcraft. In doing this, Songtaba however wants to extend it profound appreciation to it cherish donors for their continuous support to End Abuses against Alleged Witches and also restore back their smiles and dignity they have lost for many decades. Last quarter SONGTABA continued it work on community level sensitization on alleged witch craft accusation in some feeder communities who are known to be feeding most of these allege witches’ camps especially the kukuo camp until  sometime where we had to suspend our activities due to the restrictions that were imposed as a result of COVID 19

During the quarter under review, Songtaba visited 2 reintegrated women to see how they were ferrying in the midst of COVID 19 pandemic and also took the opportunity to educate them on the various protocols to observe and supported them with some personal protective equipment and like nose mask, bar soap and alcohol based hand sanitizer. Also in addition were some food relief items including a mini bag of rice and one liter oil. They were taking through what COVID 19 is all about, the mode of transmission such as through direct contact with respiratory droplets of an infected person through coughing and sneezing, and touching surfaces contaminated with the virus and also its symptoms which include fever, cough and shortness of breath. They were also taking through the various methods of prevention such as regular washing of hands, wearing of nose mask, using of sanitizers and if possible stay at home/self-quarantine.

One of the women Fusheina shared her happiness to the team that visited her. Am very happy for the kind of education offered to me, today has been one of the interesting moments in my life because I now know what the virus is all about, the various causes and its preventive measures. The nose marks and the soap will go a long way support me in fighting the virus. Initially I used not take COVID19 seriously but now, the kind of education I have received will help me to change my perception towards the pandemic.

I want to say a very big thank you to all those who has made it possible for this kind of education and the PPEs. But I want to assure you that, I will impact the knowledge gain to my family and friends.