NGO Reports: Human Rights

Sorcery beliefs and practices in Gumine: a source of conflict and insecurity

A report conducted as a part of the Security and Community Initiative Research project in Gumine District, working with affected people to establish how the practice of witchcraft and sorcery relates to insecurities faced in many families and the wider community in Gumine.  Full report see here. 

Targeting of women as witches: Trends, Prevalence and the law in Northern, Western,and Northeastern regions of India

A report carried out by experts, and stakeholders seeking to establish the ways in which a centuries-old system is invoked to stigmatise and punish women in contemporary India. Full report see here.

UN: Violating children’s rights: harmful practices based on tradition, culture, religion or superstition – International NGO Council on Violence against Children

Each year, thousands of children die worldwide and the childhoods and development of millions more are scarred by harmful practices perpetrated by parents, relatives, religious and community leaders and other adults.

The report illustrates a devastating failure of international and regional human rights mechanisms to provoke the necessary challenge to these practices and their effective prohibition and elimination in all regions. It marks a failure of political and community leadership to move parents, families and societies on from harmful practices
to cultures fully respectful of children’s rights. It marks a failure of religious leaders to insist that no form of violence against children can be justified in the name of religion and to highlight, as the Convention on the Rights of the Child does, children’s own right to freedom of religion.
This report builds on the key recommendations of the UN Secretary General’s Study. It identifies a range
of international, regional and national bodies that need to work urgently and more visibly to end adults’ inexcusable justification of inhumanity to children.

Please click here to see report

UK: Safeguarding Children’s Rights: exploring issues of witchcraft and spirit possession in London’s African communities

May 2011: At a joint conference with the London Safeguarding Children Board, Trust for London launched this independent evaluation report of its Safeguarding Children’s Rights special initiative.

Safeguarding Children’s Rights was set up in 2007 to address the issue of faith-based child abuse linked to beliefs in spirit possession. Although this is a problem across many cultures and faiths, the initiative focuses on London’s African communities as it was established in response to concerns raised with Trust for London by African community groups we were already funding.

Download summary of report here
Download full report here

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