Posts by whrin_admin

Felix Riedel: Children in African Witch-Hunts – An introduction for Scientists and Social Workers.

Children are branded as witches on a mass-scale in Congo,Nigeria and Angola. Recent interpretational frameworks about these child witch-hunts employ a simplistic materialism centred on political and economic crises. Meanwhile, historic sources from distinct regions disprove the claim of a purely modern problem. While the concept of child-witchcraft is old and equally well-known from the European context, the recent crisis points indeed at a massive shift in propaganda and victimization strategies. In this text, two showcase film-analyses further question the importance of a crisis for the ideologemes. In the meantime, journalistic evidence and experiences of social workers spearhead the research as ethnographers seem to avoid the issue. Moral demands call for an implementation of advanced theory, psychological competence and social work with children accused of witchcraft.

See full paper here

21.11.12 – Angolan Church frets over ‘chronic’ witchcraft problem

See news report here 

ECPAT UK

ECPAT UK – End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and the Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes.

ECPAT UK is active in research, campaigning and lobbying government to prevent child exploitation and protect children in tourism and child victims of trafficking. For website see here 

 

 

 

 

Katherine Luongo: Witchcraft and Colonial Rule in Kenya, 1900–1955

Focusing on colonial Kenya, this book shows how conflicts between state authorities and Africans over witchcraft-related crimes provided an important space in which the meanings of justice, law and order in the empire were debated. Katherine Luongo discusses the emergence of imperial networks of knowledge about witchcraft. She then demonstrates how colonial concerns about witchcraft produced an elaborate body of jurisprudence about capital crimes. The book analyzes the legal wrangling that produced the Witchcraft Ordinances in the 1910s, the birth of an anthro-administrative complex surrounding witchcraft in the 1920s, the hotly contested Wakamba Witch Trials of the 1930s, the explosive growth of legal opinion on witch-murder in the 1940s, and the unprecedented state-sponsored cleansings of witches and Mau Mau adherents during the 1950s. A work of anthropological history, this book develops an ethnography of Kamba witchcraft or uoi. Click here for more information.

Training: Safeguarding Children: Child exploitation through the use of juju and witchcraft – ECPAT UK

ECPAT UK provides a range of learning and development events on safeguarding children from all forms of exploitation and trafficking for all practitioners who work with or make decisions about children. Find out more here

UN: PROMOTION AND PROTECTION OF ALL HUMAN RIGHTS, CIVIL, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS, INCLUDING THE RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT Report of the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston

The present report details the main activities of the Special Rapporteur in 2008 and the first three months of 2009. It also examines four issues of particular importance: (a) responding to reprisals against individuals assisting the Special Rapporteur in his work; (b) upholding the prohibition against the execution of juvenile offenders; (c) the killing of witches; and (d) the use of lethal force in the process of policing public assemblies. Please click here for the full report

Ghana: Witch-hunt Victims Empowerment Project

See here for more details

Norman Miller – Encounters with Witchcraft: Field Notes from Africa

A renowned authority on East Africa examines the effects of witchcraft beliefs on African culture, politics, and family life.

Encounters with Witchcraft is a personal story of a young man’s fascination with African witchcraft discovered first in a trek across East Africa and the Congo. The story unfolds over four decades during the author’s long residence in and many trips to Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. As a field researcher he learns from villagers what it is like to live with witches, and how witches are seen through African eyes. His teachers are healers, cult leaders, witch-hunters and self-proclaimed “witches” as well as policemen, politicians and judges.

A key figure is Mohammadi Lupanda, a frail village woman whose only child has died years before. In her dreams, however, she believes the little girl is not dead, but only lost in the fields. Mohammadi is discovered wandering at night, wailing and calling out for the child. Her neighbors are terror-stricken and she is quickly brought to a village trial and banished as a witch. The author is able to watch and listen to the proceedings and later investigate the deeper story. He discovers mysteries about Mohammadi that are only solved when he returns to the village three decades later.

Buy the book here 

Jean La Fontaine: The Devil’s Children: From Spirit Possession to Witchcraft: New Allegations that Affect Children

A number of cases of serious child abuse have resulted from beliefs that children may be possessed by evil spirits and may then be given the power to bewitch others. Misfortune, failure, illness and even death may be blamed on them. The ‘cure’, nowadays called deliverance rather than exorcism, is to expel the spirits, sometimes by violent means.

This book draws together contributions on aspects of possession and witchcraft from leading academics and expert practitioners in the field. It has been put together following conferences held by Inform, a charity that provides accurate information on new religions as a public service. There is no comparable information publicly available; this book is the first of its kind. Eileen Barker, founder of Inform, introduces the subject and Inform’s Deputy Director goes on to detail the requests the charity has answered in recent years on the subject of children, possession and witchcraft. This book offers an invaluable resource for readers, whether academic or practitioner – particularly those in the fields of the safeguarding of children, and their education, health and general welfare.

Find out more about the book here 

UN: Children Accused of Witchcraft: An anthropological study of contemporary practices in Africa – UNICEF

This study addresses the issue of children who are victims of violence and mistreatment due to local beliefs, representations and practices, in particular, relating to witchcraft. While the harmful consequences of these beliefs have been publicised internationally, their origins often remain unclear. The objective of the present document, therefore, is to reveal and analyze the diversity and
complexity of these phenomena ‐ often falsely associated with “African tradition” ‐ related to beliefs in witchcraft and the “mystical” world. Using examples from sub‐Saharan Africa, the study aims to clarify the basis for certain social practices that are wholly or partially misunderstood by western observers. See full report here.

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