The following article examines the treatment of witchcraft under customary law and common law, both historically and under the new legal order, and analyses the implications this comparison reveals. See full article here
Using rainfall variation, this study investigates the impact that income shocks have in causing violent crime, in particular; attacks on women branded as witches, to assess and conclude that economic conditions are a driving force behind witch murders. Full article here
This following article provides an insight into the concept of witchcraft and its legal implications for women, particularly older women in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. Part I explores the foundation for the belief in witchcraft and witchcraft’s place in and effect on the social ordering within communities in sub-Saharan Africa. Part II examines the clash of customary/traditional laws against state legal systems. Part III analyses various international treaties, principles and norms and explores international law and human rights standards that could arguably protect this victimised class of women. The article concludes by suggesting potential methods to handle situations involving witchcraft accusations. See the full article here
Taking a functionalist view of the role of witchcraft within contemporary African societies; this Article explores potential community-based interventions to assist victims of witchcraft accusations, based on forty-five case studies from an experimental mobile legal-aid clinic in Malawi, a country in south-eastern Africa where witchcraft accusations are widespread and often irreparably harm those accused. See the full article here
Belief in witchcraft is widespread across the African continent. Recently, attention has been drawn to the relatively new phenomenon of witchcraft accusations against children, leading to punishment that severely violates their human rights. Analysing the recommendations made by NGOs and United Nations organs regarding this issue, the author argues that they neglect a normative conflict between cultural belief and human rights as well as lacks philosophical depth. The following article presents, clarifies and discusses the normative problem surrounding the phenomenon of witchcraft belief and accusations against children from a theoretical perspective, in order to facilitate an in-depth understanding of the issue in a wider context of moral values as well as improve the possibilities for successful prevention strategies. Universalism and cultural relativism is presented and discussed, as well as the indeterminacy of human rights. Ultimately, the conclusion states the choice between treating a child as an individual or as a part of the community an important normative consideration, however the main normative problem is found within universalism in the form of conflicting human rights. See the full article: witchcraft belief and accusations against children in sub-saharan africa
Belief in witchcraft is found across the world and in some societies alleged witches are persecuted and killed. This article explores the rise of false accusations of witchcraft and the resultant killings in South Africa in the last three decades; as many as 20 000 may have died between 2004 and 2008. The article considers these lynching’s in the light of killings associated with witch-hunts in Europe (1450–1750) focusing on the witch-hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In many cases, people’s credulity is abused by those who accuse others of practising witchcraft. The accusers often stand to gain in some way and exploit the vulnerability of those they accuse. This article explores witch hunts as a reaction to disaster as related to gender bias and relational problems. It shows that such persecution is difficult to control with social institutions; it is a self propagating discourse with potentially tragic results for the victims. See the full article here: witchhunts in modern africa and early modern europe
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.
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