End Human Rights Abuses Against Alleged Witches

Dear Reader,

It is yet another interesting moment to share with you some progress made in promoting the rights of persons accused of witchcraft in northern Ghana. 

This quarter, Songtaba wants to thank it cherish donors for their continuous supports over the years to end human rights abuses against allege witches.  It is yet another end of quarter where Songtaba is delight to share the progress of it work in ending human rights violation especially women accuse of witch crafty. Songtaba continue it work on sanitizing various communities to help change their attitude, traditions and perception on witch craft accusations.

 As part of ensuring that women rights are protected to avoid any form of harassment and maltreatment, Songtaba has held series of community level sensitization on gender based violence and its effects on victim. The outcome of these sensitization is quite enormous and has achieved a lot of impacts through the reduction in new cases or banishment of accused persons for some period now. As part of the process officers from the human rights and administrative justice and social welfare department were invited as the state mandated institutions to educate the communities , chief priest and chiefs who are the custodians of these communities on the need to protect the rights of everybody including the allege witches. The chiefs however have made a lot of commitment to protect the life and dignity of women who are accused or banished. During the sensitization one of the men shared how it changed his attitude towards women accuse of witchcraft Alhassan Initially I never thought beating up or causing physical harm to an accused person is violation of the person rights because of my believe that the accused persons also cause harm to people, I have learn a lot today that everybody devoid of gender or sex has rights, which will positively change my perception towards human rights violations. There are laws to regulate our way of behaviour and that people must not take the laws into their hands.

Songtaba shall continue to organised these community level engagements as well holding dialogue meetings with key duty bearers including the district authorities, traditional leaders and religious leaders to develop strategies to stop these rights violations. discussions have been held with religious leader to develop topical sermons to educate their congregation to change their attitude and practice.