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Show Notes
In this profound interview, Ikponwosa Ero unpacks her work advocating for human rights of victims of witchcraft accusations and ritual attacks. As a lawyer and a former United Nations Independent Expert on the Rights of Persons with Albinism, she shares her professional journey and personal experience as an advocate with albinism. Through the interview, she provides extensive data on the nature and scale of the problem, explaining the global presence of harmful practices beyond Africa, in North and South America and Europe. She talks about her contribution at the United Nations, emphasizing the importance of human rights framework in combating these harmful practices. The conversation also covers the need for grassroots collaborations, the collection of reliable data, the importance of cross-movement partnerships, and the role of climate change in these harmful practices.
Recommended Reading
Papua New Guinea Sorcery and Witchcraft Accusation-Related Violence National Action Plan
Pan African Parliament Guidelines for Addressing Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attacks
Recommended Viewing
IK Ero On Next Steps For Ending Witch Hunts TINAAWAHP
Saving Africa’s Witch Children
Websites of Note
The International Network against Accusations of Witchcraft and Associated Harmful Practices
Grassroots organizations working with The International Network
International Alliance to End Witch Hunts
Storymap explaining the dynamics of sorcery accusation related violence
Transcript
Josh Hutchinson: Welcome to Witch Hunt, the podcast that delves deep into the haunting world of historical and contemporary witch hunts. I'm Josh Hutchinson.
Sarah Jack: I'm Sarah Jack, And today we bring you a profoundly eye opening episode that ventures beyond the usual narratives.
Josh Hutchinson: Witch hunting dates back thousands of years.
Sarah Jack: And Witch Hunts have never stopped.
Josh Hutchinson: In this episode, we will learn about Harmful Practices Related to Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attacks, which covers both witch hunting and violent assaults on persons with albinism.
Sarah Jack: We will be joined by Ikponwosa 'IK' Ero, former United Nations independent expert on the rights of persons with albinism,[00:01:00] who has been instrumental in elevating international advocacy against harmful practices.
Josh Hutchinson: IK's story is not just a narrative, it's a testament to resilience, advocacy, and the relentless pursuit of justice.
Sarah Jack: IK will walk us through the basics of the situation and share what has been accomplished so far.
Josh Hutchinson: We'll learn why she is optimistic about the future of anti-witch-hunt advocacy.
Sarah Jack: She will outline the next steps we can all take to further advance the issue and bring it towards resolution.
Josh Hutchinson: Stay tuned to learn how you can get involved.
Sarah Jack: We welcome IK ero, a legal professional who served as the inaugural United Nations Independent Expert on the Human Rights of Individuals with Albinism from 2015 to 2021. With over a decade of experience in international human rights research policy and practice, she has actively collaborated with various global organizations and governments. Her contributions include influencing over 20 resolutions at [00:02:00] both the African Union and the United Nations, addressing the human rights of individuals with albinism and combating harmful practices. Notably, IK played a pivotal role in shaping significant international initiatives, such as the African Union Plan of Action on Albinism in Africa and the Pan African Parliament's Guidelines on Eliminating Harmful Practices Related to Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attacks.
IK Ero: My name IK Ero. My full name is Ikponwosa Ero, which is a Nigerian name, and most people struggle to say it, so they can say IK, which are the first two letters of this very long name. I am Nigerian by birth origin. I grew up there, immigrated to Canada as a teenager with my family, and have basically spent the rest of my life based in Canada while traveling around the world in various capacities.
IK Ero: I am a lawyer by training. I have spent the last 15 years or so doing human rights law and advocacy around [00:03:00] the situation of people impacted by albinism, and that's how I came across the issue of witchcraft accusation and ritual attacks, all of which collectively are known as harmful practices.
Sarah Jack: What is the nature and scale of the problem of harmful practices relating to accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks?
IK Ero: We believe we're talking about tens of thousands of people impacted, and that's based on the data we have. We spent nearly five years gathering data from around the world, not just the continent of Africa but also South America and, to a lot of people's surprise, North America and Europe. Why these are important is that countries where practices, harmful practices like these are rampant, have immigrated and taken the problem with them, because ritual attacks and harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft is a mentality, it's an issue of a [00:04:00] mentality and a system of belief. So that can easily be transported with a person. So across all these countries and even in the Pacific, Papua New Guinea, and the small island states in the same region, we were able to gather tens of thousands of data. It's monumental, because this is data that we pulled together using a small team and just looking through media-reported cases alone. That's the tip of the iceberg, we think.
Josh Hutchinson: Would you be able to tell us about your experiences with the United Nations?
IK Ero: Sure. In 2015, the United Nations Human Rights Council, which is the United Nations main office in Geneva, Switzerland, looked into the issue of attacks against people with albinism. So people with albinism or albinos, as they have been called in the past, are people who have a genetic condition that results in little or no coloring in their hair, skin, and eyes.
IK Ero: I [00:05:00] myself, I'm a Nigerian, so I'm an African woman, but I have albinism. So I have African features, but I have white skin, blonde hair, blue eyes. This type of appearance has been the subject of harmful practices. The United Nations was aware mostly of the situation in Africa, which definitely was the most egregious reported as of that time. So by 2015, there were well close to 200 cases of ritual attacks against people with albinism. These are people who were hunted down and they stand out in their colors, it's hard to hide. And being a rare condition, everyone knows where you live. I remember everyone knowing, oh, hey, that girl with albinism lives down there.
IK Ero: And so these people were easily hunted, easily found, and their body parts were hacked off, limbs, hair, and fingers. Many times the attacks were done by machetes, because there was the belief in witchcraft that if you take it from a live person, the witchcraft potions you make out of [00:06:00] those body parts will be more potent.
IK Ero: So this belief system led to several scores of people, mostly children, because they're easy to attack and hard for them to fend off several perpetrators, which most of those cases involved more than one attacker, and many of them bled to death from these attacks, known as ritual attacks. And sadly, a lot of the perpetrators were known to the victims, so there was a bit of grooming, or sometimes family members such as stepdads, uncles, were involved in some of these cases, all predicated on the beliefs that these are not human beings.
IK Ero: So in 2015, the United Nations, the Red Cross had described the situation as a small-scale genocide, and this is where the machinery of human rights kicked in, because human rights doesn't only look at large scale groups. It also looks at minorities, quantitatively speaking. So in 2015, they appointed somebody, they appointed a mandate to look into the issue and try to put a stop to it, or at [00:07:00] least try to bring the cases to light. And I was the first mandate-holder in that position in 2015. I served my two full terms until 2021, and it was in the capacity as a mandate holder for people with albinism that I worked on their rights as people with disabilities, on their rights as human beings, and then, of course, on their rights as people who should not be subject. No one, essentially, should be subject to harmful practices. So that was the first time that witchcraft as a harmful practice came to the fore.
IK Ero: Until this mandate, most people were scared to talk about it at the UN, because they were afraid of, yeah, of many things, right? How dare you talk about something that are some people's religion? Or how do you define this as witchcraft when it's just a crime? Or how can you talk about this when you're, like, from Europe, and so this is a colonial approach? So I came with several hats on. I came as an African, I came as also someone who understands the Western world as a naturalized citizen of Canada. I came as a woman, someone who'd experienced witchcraft in practice. I'd witnessed [00:08:00] it, who had experienced discrimination on the basis of harmful practices, and so when I brought it up, nobody, there was very little challenge anyone could bring back against me as to why I was bringing it up, because I seem to fit the mold of the kind of person who could bring it up.
IK Ero: And so I did, and I'm glad today that several resolutions have been passed. I'm glad today to see the first ever guidelines on this issue in, on the African continent, which I hope other continents will emulate. So we've come a long way and above all, we define the issue. We could define the issue in a way that everyone was happy with.
Josh Hutchinson: The United Nations passed a resolution in 2021, and then the Pan African Parliament issued guidelines. What is the significance of those two events?
IK Ero: The first significant aspect of those two initiatives was the conceptualization of the issue, right?Your podcast has a witch in it. So now what does that mean to someone who sees that? It conjures a lot of images, [00:09:00] right? So the first thing we had to do was if we're going to take this bull by the horns in a way that mattered across several countries, we had to come up with a concept that everyone could accept. So the major victory of those initiatives was a working definition. The first victory was a working definition. And the definition we came up with was not to define witchcraft, because this is where we're getting hung up.
IK Ero: We had several events at the UN and there would be arguments and counter arguments as to what witchcraft was. Some people were like, this is something that was a colonial label for something that was a cultural practice. Some people said, what you're calling witchcraft is actually criminal activity and shouldn't be confused. Some called it a religion. Some said it's a Eurocentric word that doesn't translate into other people's culture.
IK Ero: Then finally we said, 'look. One thing we all agree with is that no one should be harmed in the name of witchcraft. Whether you are a practitioner of witchcraft today as a religion, a culture, or you're an academic who thinks it's a Eurocentric [00:10:00] word or what have you, we all agree that nobody's body part should be cut off. Nobody should be subject to torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment and punishment in the name of anything. And sinceharmful practices have been linked to witchcraft, we all know that it's condemnable.' So we agreed on that. Okay.
IK Ero: The second thing we agreed on was what exactly is harmful practice? Let's make sure we know what that is. Like, if I discipline my child and say, 'go to your room,' is that a harmful practice? Versus someone who cuts off someone's hair to go use it in a practice of witchcraft for good luck. What is condemnable under human rights law, under criminal law?
IK Ero: So in the end, what we were fortunate about is the UN already had the definition of harmful practice because of female genital mutilation, early child marriages. These are practices that are very well known around the world, because they've been classified as harmful practice, because the United Nations had come up with a criteria for [00:11:00] determining harmful what, what exactly falls under this phrase, harmful practice that is condemnable and could be criminal. So they included criteria such as their practices and customs that are seen intractable or unchangeable in society and because several types of degradation or affront to human dignity. So it's very well laid out what this criteria was.
IK Ero: So what we did was we took that already established term and linked it to this not so established term, witchcraft, which has been appropriated in these crimes. So we said, harmful practices related to witchcraft. And instead of saying, let's have resolutions on witchcraft, we had, let's have resolutions and a guideline on harmful practices related to witchcraft. And then we expounded on the same harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft. And then I fought to have and ritual attacks included, because ritual attacks is not necessarily witchcraft [00:12:00] practice, but in many cultures in Africa, it is linked. It is linked, because it's all about this supernatural use of power to allegedly cause harm to someone. So I fought to put ritual attacks under the umbrella, and that was the biggest accomplishment we have. Because once we got over this consensus of what we're talking about, then everything else was faster, even though it wasn't smooth sailing. So our biggest accomplishment was understanding what we're talking about, agreeing to condemn what we needed to condemn.
IK Ero: And then now we have guidelines that show on the African continent, as you said, the Pan-African Parliament developed this guidelines with my support, saying, 'okay, this is what governments can do to bring an end to the beliefs that enable these attacks, and this harmful practices.' And at the resolution level, there was more of a recognition at the United Nations of putting these harmful practices under the catalogue of the umbrella term of harmful practices. So now it's not only [00:13:00] female genital mutilation and early childhood marriage, it's now also accusation of witchcraft and ritual attacks.
Josh Hutchinson: In your talk recently for The International Network Against Accusations of Witchcraft and Associated Harmful Practices, you had spoken about applying a human rights framework to the concept of harmful practices. What is the significance of the human rights framework in this context?
IK Ero: The significance of using a human rights framework is that human rights, first of all, centers on the human, right? That's why they're called human rights. And human dignity is paramount, it's priority. For instance, I'll give you an example. So I've had arguments with, good arguments with colleagues who work in the scientific aspect of albinism research, and trying to work with them to understand the human rights frame, and to see if they could interface that in their work.
IK Ero: Because if you're [00:14:00] studying the genetics of albinism, the human being becomes an object of your study, doesn't matter what your study is doing to them, doesn't matter what impact your study will have on them. Of course, there's ethics and all that, but what I mean is, usually people have complained to me that, 'oh, this researcher came, interviewed us, and we had no idea what the research is being used for.' Now, the researcher is following his own research ethics, but he hasn't involved or engaged a person as a human. There's no centering of the person, so the person is an object of study, whereas in the human rights framework, you are obligated to do more than just research ethics. You have to consult the people who are the objects or subjects of your research, you have to help them to participate in it in a meaningful way, have to consult them in a meaningful way, and try to report back in a meaningful way. All of this in our understanding that their human dignity is equal to yours. And just because you are working at this level doesn't make them any more or less then you in dignity or more or less deserving of the information that you're working [00:15:00] with. So that's one of the important parts of bringing the human rights frame into this work.
IK Ero: But even more profound, I think, or even profound in another way, is the need to consider all the rights of people involved. So if I say this is witchcraft practice, yes and no. In many cases, you have to really tease it out. So for instance, I was in Tanzania, visiting as the independent expert on an official country mission. And I had a meeting with so called practitioners of witchcraft, and they said, look, we're actually practitioners of traditional medicine. Some of our members go off to do questionable things, and that's what you could call witchcraft. But we are not witches, we don't practice witchcraft, but we understand there's an overlap between what we do and what some of these other people do.
IK Ero: And so there's a lot of confusion. So the human rights approach allows you to say, okay, these are traditional medicine practitioners, we need to respect their rights. Or [00:16:00] these are witchcraft believers, they don't have any ritual practices that are harmful. They just like Wiccans or, neo pagans. They just have a religious belief. So we need to respect their rights to religious freedom. And then, classified next group, okay, these people practice these cultural things, like they kill a goat and use the blood on some of the children in the village, which I actually participated in as a child with my grandfather. Is that witchcraft? Some people would say yes, like some of the nowadays Christians would say yes, then some people say no. But I have a right, my grandfather had a freedom of religion, which is protected by his human rights. So the importance of this frame is to protect everyone in the discourse and the discussion, and to make sure that in trying to solve one issue, we're not creating another one, which tends to happen, right?
IK Ero: So human rights mitigates this risk. And that's why I believe that frame is important if we're going to ensure that when we're trying to resolve these issues, we are at the very least protecting other people's rights or acknowledging them. Because they [00:17:00] already exist, right? So this is why it's crucial to bring in this framework, even in other perspectives.
Sarah Jack: I heard you say earlier that human rights has started to protect not only grand scale groups. And sometimes these misunderstood and vulnerable people may fall into these less noticed categories. So this is very significant.
IK Ero: Exactly. And again, that's a good point, because this is also why the human rights framework is very useful, because it has a way of treating people who are minorities. All minorities according to the declaration on minorities, which has classification of what that means. People who belong to a peculiar ethnic group or peculiar culture, peculiar religious, or heritage. So there's that type of minority, and there's also the minority by numbers. Either way, they are protected under the law. And [00:18:00] bringing in the human rights framework gives you an added advantage because there are established standards on how to ensure that just because there are few doesn't mean they should be ignored.
IK Ero: I had to confront that all the time when I was on the mandate because I would visit a country and they would look at me like, okay, your colleague came last year, and she came to deal with violence against women, or she came to deal with women in law, and you're talking about nearly half the population, and then I show up, and I'm like, let's talk about people with albinism who are maybe less than 0.01 percent, like in a country like Tanzania, there could be like 30, 000 people with albinism out of like 55 million people. So in terms of government planning and budgeting processes, or like macro system, you're talking very little, but I had to show them that, well, that's exactly why you should do it, because it only takes one year of your focus or five years of your focus to transform their lives, because they're not many.
IK Ero: So I flipped it back for them, or I would remind them of their obligations to do more, because this [00:19:00] UN Sustainable Development Goals, which replace the Millennium Development Goals, has a pledge, a central pledge. That is 'leave no one behind, especially those furthest left behind.' So you as a country have made this pledge, according to the United Nations publications you have to make an effort, because the MDGs helped everyone in an aggregate, but the ones who were not reached, again, the smaller groups, minorities, those on the margins, so the SDGs is trying to correct that. So I brought up all these arguments through the human rights framework to make sure that faith and harmful practices were acknowledged and at least some responses put in place.
Josh Hutchinson: You spoke about human dignity. Is there a definition for that in international law?
IK Ero: That's a good question, Josh. I believe I saw something explaining what that was. I don't have the exact wording in my memory, but I can paraphrase that it said something about the worth [00:20:00] of it, of each person that was inherent to them by the nature of them being humans. So essentially it means once you are human, you have this inherent worth that nobody had a right to take away from you, and you have no right to take it away from anybody else. So, that's the simplest way I can put it, from memory.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you. It came up yesterday. what dignity every human is worthy of. We needed a definition to help understand what every human should expect as a minimum in regards to how they're treated.
Josh Hutchinson: There were a couple of things that you spoke of in the video about the human rights framework and harmful practices concept. You said, 'culture and tradition can never be an excuse for practices that are harmful' and 'freedom of religion or belief does not extend to actions that inflict harm on others.'
Josh Hutchinson:
IK Ero: On the first [00:21:00] point about culture and customs do not justify any harmful practice. This is a principle of human rights. One of the principles of human rights is the universality of human rights, which means it transcends local contextual factors. Human rights is very much linked to human dignity and gives expression to human dignity. You are worth this, because you're a human being and everyone has the same worth in that regard.
IK Ero: And so now this right is going to express how you live out your dignity, and it's going to express how others live out their dignity. And you have a right to move, to be mobile. You have a right not to be discriminated against. All of these are linked back to your human dignity as to what the minimum, as you said, or there's minimum expectation from other people to have a life that is free, fulfilling, and without unnecessary hindrance. So essentially, the universality of human rights [00:22:00] explains what I just said, but also takes it further to ensure that when people object and say, this is how we've always done it, or this is what we've always believed, or this is our culture, human rights says that's all well and good, but the human dignity of the person you're harming takes precedent.
IK Ero: It takes precedent. So even though we respect your culture and you actually have a right to it, this person's life and their flourishing and their protection and their right to peace takes precedence, and that's why, even though there's always a controversy about a hierarchy of rights in human rights discourse, the truth is there is some degree, there's just no way, after all, the rights of life cannot be compared totally with your right to practice your faith or your right to life cannot be compared to say,the right to health, let's say, even though they are very much linked, right? So you can think about rights in that sense, that there is a hierarchy, and sometimes you have to struggle to make sure someone has [00:23:00] the right to life. They have to be protected, because without the right to life, they can't talk about right to employment. You wouldn't have, you wouldn't be alive, you wouldn't be alive to work. Because of that, even though people have a right to their culture, and their set of beliefs, they and most people do recognize that at the end of the day, making sure that you are not cutting off people's body parts takes precedent over those.
IK Ero: So that's one, one thing. And then the other thing you had said about, of religion and beliefs, that those are rights that do not extend to harm? Yes. So this is another tricky area. And thankfully, the UN has hashed this out, that they have a committee on civil and political rights that have written very useful comments on this. And what they said very clearly was everyone has a right to religion or belief or lack thereof, but in holding those beliefs or lack thereof, you have to be aware that those will stop the moment you start to create harm on other people, now, especially [00:24:00] harmful practices.
IK Ero: So this is why harmful practices also have to be defined, because what do you say if, somebody goes to, like a Pentecostal Christian goes to their pastor and says, 'my husband and I think he's possessed, right? Can you exorcise him?' And they start to exorcise in Pentecostal style. He falls on the floor, his head is being lambasted, and he looks like in a very bad state. Does that become a harmful practice? So this is why harmful practice was already defined, because in this situation, it may not, you may be able to argue that it's not.
IK Ero: And so, however, if you, someone else brings their child, and these are all based on real life stories, someone else brings their child who is autistic, and they don't understand it's and say, this child is bewitched, he doesn't speak, but when he does speak, what he says is unnaturally correct. Now the pastor says, oh, I got the spiritual vision that this is a supernatural child who's a witch. Now let's like put a nail through his head. [00:25:00] Or some really abhorrent act. Is that a harmful practice? Probably. So I think that religious practices, people are free to believe what they want, but they have to stop where it causes harm, and a lot of that is the use of their common sense, respect of their criminal law to know where harmful practices begin and also to follow like human rights criteria as to what is harmful practice. Not always easy, but this is the working definition and how to respect other people's human rights or balanced rights so that in a way everyone is protected while doing what they want to do.
Josh Hutchinson: We have this saying in the States that my right to swing my arm stops where your nose begins. And it sounds like applying the same thing to religious and spiritual practices, that it's great that you're practicing what you believe in up to the point where you start to harm someone else.
IK Ero: That's a good summary of the whole extrapolation I [00:26:00] made. But one thing I should say is that, that it remains challenging is what if the, because we know there are some conditions that tend to lead more to these types of harmful practices than others. So what if the condition is somebody's belief is in witchcraft? They don't necessarily do it, but they believe in it. For instance, someone might believe that a person with albinism's body parts can bring good luck in witchcraft potions, right? They haven't done it, but they hold the belief, right? There are some arguments. Some people think that when we try to mitigate this problem, we should go after these beliefs and, tell them it's not okay to hold it, even if they have a right to hold it.
IK Ero: Whereas there's another school of thought that says it doesn't matter, as long as they don't act on it, they can think whatever they want. But the former school of thought is like, if you let those thoughts flourish, one day it's going to burst out. So there's a lot of schools of thought as to how to react to these things without harming people's human rights.
IK Ero: There's some complications that we will sort out in practice going forward.[00:27:00]
Sarah Jack: Thank you for all your work. And in your recent keynote, you were able to express optimism about the efforts that you accomplished, what milestones they were. What good outcomes can we look for?
IK Ero: I believe that we now have a small movement, whereas before there really was not. There were reports of these harms in a scattered and ad hoc way. However, we now have a group of academics and advocates who have come together to do more in a strategic way to build on the work of the resolutions and of the guidelines.
IK Ero: I think we started off at minus five, and now we are on ground zero, or at least a few points ahead of that. Now that the foundation is made, I don't think we could ever go back to where we were, where we couldn't name these issues, and where we couldn't call on any types of concepts to protect people as easily.
IK Ero: So I am [00:28:00] optimistic, because now what seems to remain is good strategic work going forward, taking what has been done and making a buffet out of it, so that the changes become real to the people we're trying to protect. All we need now is not so much fighting about concepts, which is really huge and draining, but more about strategic movement building and making it into reality, things that already exists.
IK Ero: I'm afraid though that the movement is not like a well-funded, oily machine, but I do believe that those who are at the helm of it have the necessary passion, knowledge, and skill to do a lot with what they have. So this is where my optimism is coming from.
Josh Hutchinson: Yes. And you have outlined several next steps. One that you outlined was the ongoing popularization of the UN resolution. How important is that and how can that be done?
IK Ero: It's very important that people understand what has been achieved in [00:29:00] terms of the understanding of how the issue is, right? Now you still mention witchcraft practices to people and they're still thinking the lady on the broom with the Halloween hat. We've gone past that into the postmodern forms of witchcraft.
IK Ero: The same way as there's a huge literature on modern-day slavery, we need to get these issues about so-called accusation of witchcraft and ritual attacks into the modern parlance. People need to be aware that there's a modern form of what they think is more medieval, so we need to do some catch up.
IK Ero: And this can happen through a lot of social media engagement. Even small videos with little animated cartoons, or, AI, like feeding information into AI, since we're relying on that more. And then also you're having campaigns with campaign organizations like AVAS or AVAS, I don't know how to pronounce them. Were really interested in this issue at some point. And as we're negotiating with them, the resolution passed and it went moot because they were going to help us have a campaign to get the [00:30:00] resolution adopted. But I think it's worth revisiting, going back to them or Amnesty International, some kind of campaign organization or organizations working on elderly people, because this is a rising issue as the world slowly ages.
IK Ero: The issue of the elderly is gonna be more front and center, and organizations taking that on, such as Human Rights Watch, need to be brought into the fore to get them to have campaign messages in which we can insert things about accusation of witchcraft, ritual attacks, trying to get people to see it as part of the catalog of harmful practices.
IK Ero: So that even those doing early child marriages, female genital mutilation, can add that to their catalogue. This is all very much related, especially since women tend to be the majority of the victims of all of these harmful practices. So these are some of the ways we can carry out the campaign and to popularize the resolution and the guidelines.
Sarah Jack: You talked about replicating the Pan African Parliament guidelines in other locations. Could you explain the need for that and [00:31:00] how that might work?
IK Ero: So Africa is one that we focused on for several reasons, including the type of mandate I had. But when we had a few workshops, we realized that some other regions also had similar harmful practices, especially like in Papua New Guinea, which is like in the Pacific region, some parts of South America. So we believe, and even some parts of Europe who have taken in immigrants, right?
IK Ero: So we believe that some other continents, many of which have their own continent wide parliament, like the Pan African Parliament, because many of them have similar mandates to issue guidelines, could also have this as part of their work, their mandate, either to do it as a standalone or a part of a directive on immigration and how to deal withthe protection of minors or protection of people in vulnerable situations, who come in through immigration.
IK Ero: So we are hoping that if Africa did it, as they say, what's good for Africa is good for everywhere else, because Africa is uniquely, has [00:32:00] diversity in everything. And it's one thing people don't realize, like they talk about Africa as a monolith, but the most diverse of everything is there. If we're able to overcome those differences to agree on this, we believe that the foundation has been laid again.
IK Ero: And it's just a matter of taking those guidelines and adapting them to regions after consulting with the local activists, there's several activists at local level trying to prevent these crimes, working with them, consulting with them. And even if parliaments at the continental level cannot do it, then they have continent wide national human rights institutes that work continentally to drive practices in human rights and those can have issue guidelines like nothing is stopping them from issuing guidelines and it was a lot of work to get this work off the ground because we're conceptualizing as we're drafting. We've done all the hard work for them so there really is no reason for them to not have one at this point so we're hoping that it will get replicated and adapted to their own context.
Sarah Jack: In what [00:33:00] ways does continuing to gather data propel things forward?
IK Ero: Data is one of the things people cannot argue with, although nowadays that's changing a little bit with artificial intelligence and the incredible technology driven ability to alter data. However, for the most part, data can still be useful if it is something that comes, that is traceable, has traceability.
IK Ero: For instance, when I recorded cases of people attacked, people with albinism. I used to work at, I work at an organization called Under the Same Sun, where we have over a decade of attack data, each case is traceable, at least 90 percent of them, because we have down to the villages, and I learned that strategy from the international criminal court, because I worked there at a time.
IK Ero: And so as long as data is that good, they're real, they're traceable, they're protected, what available. People always believe it's hard to fight against [00:34:00] people who have data. And we try to replicate that with the witchcraft related data that we gathered with this new movement. And so I believe that convincing people, persuading them, as they say, when it comes to the C suite or the high levels of decision making bodies or authorities. At that point, communication, persuasiveness become very useful skills. And the only thing that can make that better is data. And I saw that happen with albinism, was one of the reasons we were able to get as far as we did, both on my mandate and even on this issue in particular, was to say, look, this is what's happening, this is the data, what are you going to, you can't argue with data, you really cannot. At the end of the day, it's an objective signal of what needs to be done, and I cannot underscore how important, how, it's, some places outside of Africa have very few data available because many people are not collecting them. I would say aside from data being necessary in general, some regions are behind in getting the data that we know exists. We just need more hands on deck, more researchers to [00:35:00] pull out more data from regions outside Africa as well to show that it's more of a global issue.
Josh Hutchinson: And you've spoken of the need to engage grassroots organizations in their efforts. What are the benefits of working with grassroots organizations?
IK Ero: Yeah, so this ties into the data issue, as well. If someone from Papua New Guinea is able to find data and report that data to, say, an authority at the UN, it's very powerful because she's on the ground, the official is not, and she can trace the case. And many times at the UN when cases are reported there, the person reporting them even gets the consent by signature of the victim or their family members if the victim is unable or deceased to sign the consent. So it's so raw. Like I got some forms where I could see the signature of a victim who was still in hospital saying, 'this is what happened to me.' So it's very important that people who are really on the ground be involved because they not only help with data, they also bring [00:36:00] some level of authenticity that cannot be replicated by just doing research on the computer and also bringing them into the forays of this.
IK Ero: So bringing grassroots people into the processes at the UN of how to report to this expert, how to report to this mandate or the Human Rights Council, this process is how to do it, then that really gives them a power that maybe they don't think they have. It also puts accountability on the government.
IK Ero: Because imagine Mrs. A reporting to the UN about a case in Papua New Guinea, now the government will be embarrassed at the UN and want to do something. So it's a way of getting accountability much quicker, bringing authenticity, bringing data, empowering the local activists, with other ways of getting things done.
Sarah Jack: So you spoke about bringing a test case before the United Nations. How would that work and what would be the benefit of doing that?
IK Ero: Essentially, the UN has some quasi-judicial bodies, [00:37:00] called committees, who function under what are often known as optional protocols to conventions. So there are conventions, and then optional protocol to that convention, which allows complaints to be brought before the committee.
IK Ero: So as an example, there's a committee on the rights of people with disabilities called the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, the CRPD. It's an international law that sets standards on how people with disabilities ought to be treated within human rights. So CRPD has a committee that checks compliance, yeah, so there's a committee of the CRPD. Now they have now an optional protocol to the CRPD, by which the committee assesses cases brought by individuals.
IK Ero: So now, what we had done as part of our advocacy strategy, working on the rights of people with albinism some years back, was we brought a test case before the committee governing the optional protocol. There was a woman who had been attacked, they cut off both of her arms, she bled so much they had to amputate both of them,so now she went from [00:38:00] a woman with albinism to someone who had now multiple disabilities, albinism being only one of them at this point, cannot feed her son who was less than 10 years old, her other kid, like completely caused havoc in her life, to put it lightly. So we took her case, among others that we actually combined all three of them. We got the support of a human rights clinic at a university in Africa called the University of Pretoria in South Africa. So this is another strategy. Lots of universities have this human rights clinics at faculty of laws where the students are just buzzing with energy to do something to make a difference. And this is an excellent opportunity for them to put their work into practice while benefiting those who were survivors or victims of these atrocities. So what we did with this case, cases, we combined the three of them, this woman being one of them, and we brought them before the optional protocol.
IK Ero: It took two years, because that's how long it takes. They don't have all the resources in the world to work faster. And, but at the end, the decision was so strong in favor of the victims, [00:39:00] like requested the country to bring remedies, legal remedies, social remedies, economic remedies, I mean, you can't compensate people like that, but you can do as much as you can to like provide some remedies.
IK Ero: So they asked the government to provide those remedies, and now we as advocates at that point, what we had to do was follow up with that. First, we went to the press and did like a press release and made a whole buffet of this thing. And we're like, the government has to do all this things to remediate.
IK Ero: We brought in the survivors to speak on their own behalf. They expressed contentment. Like their cases never went through the local courts, but it went through the optional protocol. In a way they got justice, so even if the government fails to provide remedies, they know that they were vindicated, even though evidently they were victims, but nonetheless, this is the power of those cases, is that you can make a huge buffet out of it and put fire under the feet of the government, and even though they only supported, to some extent, those remedies, or provided, what they did was the next time they were called to the UN to give accounts for their implementing other [00:40:00] human rights obligations, because almost every country has a report under each convention that they ratified how they were implementing it, they felt obligated always to provide an update. Oh, and the situation with people with albinism we're doing XYZ, because this case against them was public, was published, and there's a level of embarrassment. There's a lot of benefits that could come out of a test case. So if we bring a case of someone who, say, was burnt to death because of an accusation, whereas they were like 70 year old woman having early stages of dementia. That's an excellent case, I mean terrible. What an excellent opportunity to make those countries realize that we are watching you, we are watching you and we know this is happening in your country, you better do something about it. So so far I don't think there's been that type of case, from what I know, and so I think it could be really useful to try to do that.
Sarah Jack: How will partnerships with international organizations that are working on related issues be a key strategy?
IK Ero: It's a key strategy because [00:41:00] people are overwhelmed, eh, in activism. I'm sure you have an awareness of that there's a lot of issues in this world. At some point when I was going to places to give talks or presentations, you could see in people's faces, especially in people working in human rights and development, they're just like, 'okay, what else, what other craziness is happening in this world that I should add to my agenda? Or what other craziness is happening in this world that I really cannot take on because I'm up to here, right?'
IK Ero: So it is a strategy really to be realistic that the people who are working in the field of human rights are human as well. And there's only so much a human being can take. And if you want to help them to help you, you have to show how your work fits into their existing work, right?
IK Ero: So for instance, if you're working on, Sarah, you're working on climate change, right? And then I show up to your office and I start talking about attacks, ritual attacks against people with albinism. You might just be like, okay, that's sad, but I can't help you because I'm going to COP in Dubai, [00:42:00] and I'm like up to here in work. But if I come to you and then suddenly I only raise another aspect that overlaps with yours, then for instance, I could say,Sarah, there's a lot of people with albinism who are dying because of climate change. UV rays are rising in many countries. And because of that, many of them are not able to work outdoors or they're dying more rapidly from skin cancer. All of this is true, by the way. Suddenly you're like, 'oh, I could actually say that. I could put a line in my report or I could mention that'. So I'm just saying that if we want to help people who are working in this space who are mostly overwhelmed, we have to find a way to make it easier for them. And one of the ways to do that is to show them, hey, you, Josh, you're working on the issue of children, stuck in armed conflict. How about you also mention next time you're presenting to the big guns, children who are accused of witchcraft? Because in some of these camps where the refugees are staying, you have received reports of witchcraft accusations and harm has been done. And then Josh can include it without us driving him [00:43:00] crazy with adding more issues to his plate, right? So it's really a strategy I think that is more humane, more respectful of the reality of what our world is and of the stress levels that are rising among development workers.
Josh Hutchinson: Why is it important to participate in dialogue on climate change and climate justice?
IK Ero: Good. So this is related to the issue, one aspect about so-called witchcraft practices or accusations of witchcraft is that they tend to go up when there's like economic, socioeconomic pressures. So the literature is rife with data showing that when there was a drought, or a famine, or some kind of economic collapse, accusations of witchcraft went up, especially in rural areas. And this is not only Africa, we get some of the reports from the Pacific. So it's very important that when these socioeconomic shocks happen, there has to be a strategy to mitigate people suddenly finding their causes of this pandemics or disasters, right? Cause usually it's 'oh wait, let's go see the [00:44:00] witch doctor. Why do we suddenly have a famine? Why did all the crops die?' And then suddenly they're like, 'oh, is that old lady who lives alone down the street? It's just her and 10 cats. She doesn't even remember her name. She must be a witch, cause sometimes she gets up at night to dance alone or whatever.' And everyone goes there and then they do whatever to the poor woman.
IK Ero: So climate change is a source of a lot of disasters that impact people, not only in terms of their farming, but all their socioeconomic activities as a whole, because we know there's an ecosystem. So when something goes wrong, prices go up, something else goes down elsewhere. The idea is to try to bring in the issue of accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks as harmful practices. People speaking about climate change should be aware that groups at risk, because they have a list of groups at risk in climate change, such as small island states who often have natural disasters. We need to add our indigenous communities. We need to [00:45:00] have in that list of groups at risk, where it says bringing maybe women, bringing people with disabilities, then it's up to us to go advocate to say, especially those who are vulnerable to being accused of witchcraft or vulnerable to ritual attacks, so people are aware in their work on climate change and groups at risk already that there could be this cultural issues popping up and it gives a certain level of awareness to say like a somebody manning a refugee camp in a drought -impacted country to be on the lookout and to do some sensitization like when they talk to people about hygiene. Then adding just a paragraph about, 'okay, if you have a belief system that somebody has done something wrong to you, you cannot harm them, you must come to me and report it,' so that there's a kind of, management of the situation.
IK Ero: So those are just tweaksthat could really make a huge difference in protecting vulnerable people. My point of bringing up climate change was just to advocate to those doing that work already, to bring their awareness that this could go up, these harmful [00:46:00] practices could go up with the pressures brought about by climate change.
Sarah Jack: The mutual realization of human rights goals can come from strategic cross movement approaches. Can you tell us about that?
IK Ero: It's related to what I said about how to bring the issue to people already working on other thematic areas. It's related to that. But I, this one maybe is even deeper and be more strategic is for instance, we saw in our data a very high number of women victims. There's a lot of men as well, but the women and children are more striking. So it could be beneficial to go work with the huge movement, feminist movement. They're huge, they're powerful, and they're representing half the world. So they have a huge platform. It could be beneficial to go into those spaces.
IK Ero: So when they have the large conferences on women, which they do in New York every April, or other similar events that bring in women from around the world. It could be [00:47:00] beneficial to join another organization to have a panel to talk about, let's say, another big issue like women, elderly women, right? Because to talk about a very small issue is very hard in such a big space,
IK Ero: For instance, we can go to the conference on women in New York in April and have an event, like it's what they call the side events, so these are the events around the main event, which many people attend, the side event with another prominent organization and say let's have an event on elderly women, this will interest everyone. Almost everyone will become an elderly woman who is already a woman. Have this event, and then say you, maybe Human Rights Watch, you already have a portfolio in the elderly, could you be one of the speakers and speak about your work? Then I will come and speak about women who have been accused of witchcraft and their vulnerability with economic shocks going on right now, generally, and with climate change, this event will attract people working in the area of women, elderly people, and they have such huge access, not only to resources, but also to the change making [00:48:00] halls, right? So imagine them listening to you talk about harmful practice, accusation of witchcraft, just adding one line of those things into their reports.
IK Ero: People don't realize, they think, oh, it's just writing. It makes a huge difference. We've had people receive protection in United States courts because of one line in a UN report, 'cause it gives credibility to a situation so it's less anecdotal and hearsay, and it also gives lawmakers and policies the grounding upon which to allocate resources to respond to these issues.
IK Ero: Doing that for women, for instance, and then doing the same on children. I got major inroads working with the Secretary General's Envoy on Violence Against Children. So I work with her a lot in respect of bringing the issue of accusation of witchcraft and ritual attacks on children into her mandate, because it's violence against children, and she has many important reports where she mentioned the issue now.
IK Ero: So this is another strategy, but I was asked, I was calling for a more ongoing one, where if they have a network of, feminist organization or women based organization that we can find a seat [00:49:00] on as a movement fighting these harmful types of harmful practices so that the issue is constant and becomes more normalized.
Josh Hutchinson: I do look forward to a time when we will also have a day, like an international day. I believe it's been celebrated informally, which is a good start already sometime in August. I hope that day becomes formal, or at least be more celebrated by people who are the grassroots level anyway, before it becomes concretized in a formal way, as a way of aggregating our solidarity and bringing more awareness to the issue, because one spark really can be the source of protection to someone in the future from these harmful practices.
Josh Hutchinson: And now for an End Witch Hunts special report. End Witch Hunts is a 501(c)3 dedicated to raising awareness of harmful practices related to accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks. Mary, Sarah, and I are on the board along with Beth Caruso [00:50:00] and Jen Stevenson. Mary and Sarah join me now to discuss what we've just heard from IK and what it means for us as hosts and listeners. Now that we've heard what can be done, we can do it.
Josh Hutchinson: What are your general impressions from the interview?
Sarah Jack: One of the first things I took away from it was that purposeful action from the right person at the right place can make a huge difference. The work has begun. I think that we can be excited and have confidence that this train has left the station and it has a destination.
Mary-Louise Bingham: And I like how she says that the goal is not to achieve the end result quickly but carefully and methodically as part of a team effort through education, relying on data and human experience.
Josh Hutchinson: She brought up how in [00:51:00] addressing one problem, you can't create other problems. You have to respect everyone's human rights throughout the process. And how she talks about the absoluteness of human rights. They're not relative to traditions and cultures.
Sarah Jack: I think there's a takeaway here with teaching all ages about human rights and human dignity, but especially the young generations, despite the variance in religion, cultures, this absolute value of the dignity of humans is something that means no matter the environment or the curriculum or the framework of education, this can be there. It's a fundamental that needs to be [00:52:00] prioritized with children.
Sarah Jack: Sometimes we look at this young generation and we talk about how they don't see all the things, all the negative things that humans judge later in life. So if children are really starting out just seeing another child and then we educate them about human dignity, that's a really strong starting point.
Josh Hutchinson: Human dignity should basically be the foundation and guiding light for every decision that we make and everything we do interacting with other people should be in support of their dignity and our own dignity.
Josh Hutchinson: Use your voice and your platform, whatever that is, to raise awareness about the crisis. Read and share UN Resolution 47 8, Elimination of Harmful Practices Related to Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attacks. The link is in the show notes.
Josh Hutchinson: If you have a [00:53:00] show, if you do a radio show, a TV show, if you make documentary films, if you're a journalist, if you have a podcast or a blog, or any way of spreading, communicating, maybe write a column for the newspaper or, something like that, Any way that you can spread the word, please reach out to us and we can put you in touch with these advocates, and you can share what the advocates say, the people who are on the ground doing this work, intervening, as has been said, to save lives.
Josh Hutchinson: If you work with a human rights organization, whatever the primary cause that you're devoted to, consider if there is overlap with harmful practices, and consider how you can include these practices in your messaging. Violence against witches is violence against [00:54:00] primarily women, children, senior citizens, persons with albinism, persons with disabilities, indigenous persons, persons of a lower caste or class status, and members of other disadvantaged and vulnerable communities. For example, if you're working against gender based violence, know that women are the primary targets of harmful practices.
Sarah Jack: Absolutely. And if there is this component in your writing, your social media, your speaking. If you're looking for a human rights effort to support, this is the one because it does have this intersection with violence against women and children.
Josh Hutchinson: Violence against other vulnerable people, people with albinism.
Mary-Louise Bingham: Elder abuse or people that have Alzheimer's disease or [00:55:00] anybody like, in the aged community, because we know now from our other friend and advocate, Dr. Leo Igwe, that those people are vulnerable and have been accused of, quote unquote, witchcraft, because their communities don't understand what is medically happening to them.
Josh Hutchinson: I encourage you to read the documents that we're talking about today, the United Nations resolution. There's a United Nations report that came out in March of 2023 that is very good on breaking down the current situation and what's happened over the last decade or so. And, I encourage everyone to read that, also to read the Pan African Parliament Guidelines and the Papua New Guinea Sorcery Accusation Related Violence National [00:56:00] Action Plan. Those will get you informed on what's being done and what kind of activities are needed in a little bit more detail. Use your voice and your platform to share the documents. Encourage the leaders of your nation and regional human rights apparatuses to adopt similar guidelines. Links to all of these documents are in the show notes.
Josh Hutchinson: And find a grassroots organization in your area that's working to prevent harmful practices, get involved that way. Links to those are in the show notes. We have links on endwitchhunts.org to other organizations that are involved.
Josh Hutchinson: So you can work on the ground where you are with local advocates, or you can work virtually the way that we do from afar. Wherever you are in the world, you can help. And wherever you are in the [00:57:00] world, you might start noticing harmful practices in your own area now that you're aware of what they are. So report on those and share those and tell us about those.
Josh Hutchinson: Thank you for listening to Witch Hunt.
Sarah Jack: Join us again next week.
Josh Hutchinson: Subscribe wherever you get podcasts.
Sarah Jack: Visit aboutwitchhunts.com/.
Josh Hutchinson: Remember to tell your friends about the show.
Sarah Jack: Join our efforts to end witch hunts. Visit endwitchhunts.org to learn more.
Josh Hutchinson: Have a great today and a beautiful tomorrow.
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