Gender Equality Ghana Project #23422

End Human Rights Abuses Against Alleged Witches

by Songtaba

End Human Rights Abuses Against Alleged Witches

Summary

This project will work to safely return the hundreds of aged women who have been accused of witchcraft and living in designated camps. Also, this project will create awareness on the new law passed by Parliament if Ghana criminalizing all forms of accusations based on suspicion and allegation and persons holding themselves up as witch finder. Women in these camps have been confirmed with varied levels of depression and must be support with some psycho-social services to recover

$40,000
total goal

$15,870
remaining

275
donors

2
monthly donors

7
years

Challenge

In Ghana's Northern Region, old and vulnerable women are often accused of witchcraft and lynched, beaten or banished from their communities. For their safety, they flee to the "witch camps" in the Northern Region where they lose all family support systems and their social and economic rights are continuously violated. The camps often have little to no access to potable water, little access to food, and the women themselves often cannot provide for themselves.

Solution

In addition to providing short term improvements to the camps such as increased access to water and better housing, this project will help to reintegrate the alleged witches back to their original communities. The reintegration requires communicating with the feeding communities to provide sensitization education and decrease future accusations in addition to decreasing the number of alleged witches currently living in Kukuo.

Long-Term Impact

This project will directly educate local district and community chiefs to provide safe environments for alleged witches. By reintegrating women from the camps, we also decrease the risk of future accusations and pave the way for future women accused to safely return after cleansing procedures performed at the witch camps. Currently, most women settle around the shrines rather than risk their lives returning to their original communities.