About
About | What We Do | Who We Are | Supporters
About
The International Network Against Accusations of Witchcraft and Associated Harmful Practices was formed in 2022 to connect the different groups and initiatives working on this issue across the globe. It seeks to raise awareness about the human rights abuses taking place as a result of beliefs in witchcraft or sorcery and encourage action by states and individuals to end them. The International Network aims to raise support for the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Resolution on the Elimination of Harmful Practices Related to Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attack (July 2021). The members of the International Network fully support the right of freedom of religion and belief and recognise that activity related to belief in witchcraft and sorcery can be positive. Our mission focuses solely on the harmful practices that are related to such beliefs, such as attacks, tortures and stigmatisation of those accused of witchcraft and those individuals who are ritually attacked as a result of such beliefs. We use the terms witchcraft and sorcery as general categories to include all the terms used across the world to describe the belief that a person has the power to cause harm using supernatural means.
What we do
Inform: Provide the public with comprehensive information on the issue of harm arising from accusations of witchcraft and associated practices
Connect: Connect people and groups working on the issue in different countries and regions
Advocate: Raise awareness about the issue and socialise the UN Resolution on Elimination of Harmful Practices Related to Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attacks with a view to getting more countries to sign it and action it
Share: disseminate knowledge about what is being tried to address the issue, and what is having impact and what is not
Gather and share data: Monitor trends and make the data available and accessible
Who we are
Working committee members
Miranda Forsyth | Director
Miranda Forsyth is a Professor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) in the College of Asia and Pacific at ANU. Prior to coming to ANU, she was a senior lecturer in criminal law at the law school of the University of the South Pacific, based in Port Vila, Vanuatu. Miranda is the author of A Bird that Flies with Two Wings: Kastom and State Justice Systems in Vanuatu (2009) ANU ePress and co-author of Weaving Intellectual Property Policy in Small island Developing States, Intersentia 2015.
The central analytical question animating Miranda’s scholarship is how people’s diverse justice needs can best be met in contexts of multiple legal and normative orders. Her geographical focus has been primarily in the Pacific Islands region, particularly Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea. Previous projects include the relationships between state and customary justice in Vanuatu and a pluralistic approach to the regulation of intellectual property in the Pacific Islands.
Current research projects focussing on the Pacific include the potential of Restorative Justice for the Pacific islands region, particularly in relation to gender based violence; the promise and challenges of Community Rule-Making as regulatory innovation; and a multi-year project on overcoming sorcery accusation related violence in Papua New Guinea. Miranda is also working on the development of a new agenda for Environmental Restorative Justice in both Australia and internationally.
Miranda draws creatively upon theories and methodological approaches from the disciplines of law, anthropology and criminology to interrogate these issues, working in close partnerships with Pacific islands researchers and research institutions.
Dr Samantha Spence | Director
Dr Samantha Spence is the Course Director for Postgraduate Studies at Staffordshire University Law School. She has both academic and practical experience of the law, having worked in both national and international law firms, together with many years teaching experience in Higher Education. Her research interests include critical thinking, feminist theory and international human rights, specifically the rights of women and other marginalised groups.
Over recent years, her work has involved working with the United Nations, in order to highlight abuses linked to harmful practices. She is a member of an international working group who worked for many years to push for and produce a UN Resolution on the issue. In June 2021, they were finally successful, when the UN Human Rights Council adopted the Resolution on the Elimination of Harmful Practices Related to Accusations of Witchcraft and ritual Attacks at their 47th session. She has been personally invited to the United Nations in Geneva on several occasions, most recently to provide evidence to the Expert Consultation on Harmful Practices held by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights in July 2022.
She has been invited to attend parliamentary events held in both the UK Parliament and the Pan-African Parliament, where the international working group were once again successful when the Pan-African Parliament adopted the Guidelines on Ending Harmful Practices related to the Manifestation of Beliefs in Witchcraft in November 2022.
She is the International Lead for the Violence against Women and Girls Hub and a member of the Centre for Crime Justice and Security, both at Staffordshire University, UK. She is also a member of several international advisory boards relating to harmful practices and the rights of women and is a Visiting Professor at REVA University, India.
Dr Leethen Bartholomew
Dr Leethen Bartholomew has worked in frontline social work for over 20 years and is a safeguarding expert specialising harmful practices. He previously worked as the Head of the National Female Genital Mutilation Centre in the UK and is a trustee of a two UK based charities working to end human rights abuses related to witchcraft accusations and related harmful practices and female genital mutilation. He works internationally as a trainer and consultant on safeguarding children. His PhD thesis examined witchcraft and spirit possession accusations against children and their non-accused sibling, what these accusations mean, their contexts and impacts, and the challenges for professional response. His is the first research empirically to explore the experiences of non-accused as well as accused children, to do so from multiple participant perspectives, and to conceptualise the phenomenon through the combined lenses of critical realism, ecological and cultural anthropological theories. He is particularly interested in widening the focus to include the impact of accusations on non-accused siblings. His current work involves a joint project with UK based Medical Assistance Sierra Leone and Sierra Leone Association for People with Albinism on a project focused on improving the human rights of people with Albinism.
Alice Markham-Cantor
Alice Markham-Cantor is a freelance writer and fact checker with New York Magazine, based in New York City. She is a member of the Campaña Por la Memoria de las Brujas, a Spain-based network organizing to investigate historical witch hunts. Alice's research focuses on the case of Salem, where her own ancestor was killed after being accused of witchcraft, and on the creation of a database of witch hunts around the world, with a particular interest in the economic contexts of witchcraft accusations. She was the co-subject of Yolanda Pividal's documentary A Witch Story alongside Silvia Federici.
Charlotte Baker
Charlotte Baker is Professor of French and Critical Disability Studies in the Department of Languages and Cultures at Lancaster University, UK. Charlotte is interested in contemporary French literature, and postcolonial African literature written in French and English.
Charlotte's research interests focus on the representation of marginalised and stigmatised groups in sub-Saharan Africa, theories and representations of disability, as well as comparative and interdisciplinary approaches to the body and identity. She is particularly interested in the realities and representations of albinism in African contexts and has published widely in this area.
Muluka-Anne Miti-Drummond
Muluka-Anne Miti-Drummond started her mandate as the current, and second, United Nations Independent Expert on the enjoyment of rights by persons with albinism in August 2022. She is also a Senior International Human Rights Consultant who has worked in the area of human rights for over 20 years and a Visiting Fellow at Staffordshire University in the UK.
She has previously worked as the Deputy Director and Senior Programme Lawyer at the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI); the Regional Advocacy Director at the Southern Africa Litigation Centre (SALC); the Researcher for Portuguese and Spanish-Speaking African Countries at Amnesty International; a consultant for the International Organisation for Migration (IOM); and as a legal expert at the Universidade Catolica de Mocambique.
Muluka holds a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the University of Venda; an LLM from the University of Pretoria, and a Master of Science (MSc) in Development Management from the Open University in the UK. She is also. In addition to English, she speaks Portuguese and Spanish.
International Advisory Committee Members
Jordan Alexander
Jordan has 20 years’ experience of safeguarding in policing across the UK having worked in Manchester, London and West Yorkshire in the role as a Detective Sergeant. During his career he has specialised in cases where others have been accused or exploited following accusations of witchcraft or spiritual possessions which then allowed him to lead on the first criminal court case in the UK where this abuse was finally recognised in 2018. He has developed and delivered CPD accredited training and awareness across the UK to statutory agencies and NGOs that has led to an increase in recognition and reporting of this abuse. Jordan takes the impartial approach of ‘respect and understanding’ of different beliefs in order to best safeguard anyone at risk, and to never judge someone based upon their culture, community or belief.
In recent years Jordan moved to work in the charity sector in a senior management role where he maintained working on creating awareness and understanding of this form of abuse. Having recently been elected to the role of National Chairperson for a forum of statutory and non-government organisations across the UK, a forum originally created by Parliament in 2012, he has a clear vision to bring an increase in awareness along with understanding and inclusivity of all communities to better safeguard everyone from this form of abuse.
Philip Alston
Philip Alston is Professor of Law at New York University. In his capacity as UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions he reported on various aspects of the victimization and killing of persons accused of witchcraft and sorcery. He has also been UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.
Dr. Amit Anand
Dr. Amit Anand is presently working as an Assistant Professor at School of Legal Studies, REVA University, Bengaluru. He has passed his PhD (Law) from Lancaster University, U.K. in 2022 on the topic ‘Unheard and Unnoticed: Violence Against Women in India (A Study of Practice of Witch-hunting, Honour Killing and Devadasi System)’. He holds LL.M (Human Rights) from the University of Reading, U.K. (2015) and B.A.LL.B. (Honours.) from National Law School of India University, Bengaluru (2014). He has presented two oral statements to separate United Nations Treaty Bodies in 2023. The first statement was presented before the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities on the topic “Impacts and challenges faced by persons with disabilities in situations of risk & the role of state and non-state actors in addressing them” and the second statement was presented to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women on “Equal and inclusive representation of women in decision-making systems”. His joint submission on ‘Measures to Prevent Sexual Abuse of Children in Residential Care Homes in India’ to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), September 2021 has also been cited by the UNCRC in its Children’s Rights and Alternative Care - Background Document. Dr. Amit has several paper publications in both national and international peer reviewed journals. His research interests lie in the area of International Human Rights Law (particularly on the issue of gender based violence, caste discrimination).
Ikponwosa "I.K." Ero
I.K. Ero served as the first United Nations Independent Expert on the enjoyment of human rights by persons with albinism (2015 – 2021). She is a lawyer by training and has over a decade of experience in the research, policy, and practice of international human rights. In this context, she has worked with and advised multiple organizations and governments around the world and was a key contributor to over twenty resolutions at the AU and UN on the human rights of people with albinism as well as on the elimination of harmful practices. I.K. is a principal architect of several historic international initiatives on marginalized groups including the African Union Plan of Action on Albinism in Africa (2021-2031) and the Pan African Parliament’s Guidelines on the elimination of Harmful Practices related to accusation of witchcraft and ritual attacks. Outside of work, I.K. enjoys landscape photography and learning new languages.
Marion Gibson
Marion Gibson is Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter and writes about witch trials in history. Her latest book is Witchcraft: A History in 13 Trials, which explores trials from Medieval Europe to present-day Africa and North America, in the form of judicial and extra-judicial persecution, cultural “witch-hunting” of scapegoated people, and trial by media.
Dr. Leo Igwe
Leo Igwe is a board member of the Humanist Association of Nigeria and Humanists International. He holds a doctoral degree in religious studies from the University of Bayreuth in Germany and wrote his doctoral thesis on witchcraft accusations in Northern Ghana. Igwe directs the Advocacy for Alleged Witches.
William Kipongi
William Kipongi is a Research Officer under National Security and International Relations Research Program at the PNG National Research Institute. He has been involved in a number of research work on Sorcery Accusation Related Violence in Papua New Guinea for over five years. He is a member of the core committee on Sorcery Accusation Related Violence National Action Plan Committee. He is also a member of the National GBV Advisory Committee to the National GVB Secretariat in PNG. He has published articles on SARV as individual author as well as a coauthor with academics from DWU and ANU. He graduated at Divine Word University with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Social Sciences and Religious Studies.
Meena Kumari
Meena has worked in front line services since 2005 and has worked with victims, perpetrators and children/ young people.
In 2008 Meena was awarded the Leicester Young Achiever Award (part of women of achievement awards) and in 2015 Meena was shortlisted as a finalist as part of the Iranian & Kurdish Women’s Rights organisation IKWRO Awards for her work in combating Honour Abuse and Forced Marriages.
In October 2020 Meena was shortlisted for the Emma Humphreys Memorial Prize.
In 2021 Meena was awarded Thought Leader Award part of the Baton Awards.
In 2022 Meena was awarded a High Sheriff of Leicestershire award for her work with women and girls and shortlisted in the Women of East Midlands awards in the category of Community Impact.
Meena has previously been a Magistrate (2019-2021) and sat in adult and family court.
Anton Lutz
Anton Lutz is an activist, writer and educator in Papua New Guinea in the area of sorcery accusation related violence. While based in the central highlands provinces as a lay missionary with the Lutheran church, he was involved in all aspects of SARV work, from advocacy and education to rescue and rehabilitation. Anton wrote Peter and Grace Make a Difference, a book for parents and children addressing SARV in Papua New Guinea. This book has since been expanded into a movie, comic book, teachers's guide and classroom resources which are available for free at stopsorceryviolence.org. Anton holds a BA from Valparaiso University, USA.
Benyam Dawit Mezmur
Professor Benyam Dawit Mezmur is currently Eleanor Roosevelt Fellow at the Harvard Law School, Human Rights Program. He is a Professor of Law at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa, and serves as Deputy Dean for Research and Post-Graduate Studies at the Law Faculty. He is also Coordinator of the Children’s Rights Project at the Dullah Omar Institute for Constitutional Law, Governance, and Human Rights, at UWC. Since 2012, he is serving on the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, and served as its Chairperson from 2015-2017. At the regional level, Benyam served on the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, a treaty body of the African Union, for a little over a decade (from 2010-2021). He served as its Chairperson twice (2012-2014 and 2015-2017). In 2018, Pope Francis appointed him to serve on the Pontifical Commission on the Protection of Minors.
Dr. Dinesh Mishra
Dr. Dinesh Mishra (DOB 29/11/1961), an ophthalmologist by profession has been voluntarily working to eradicate social evils cropping up due to superstitious beliefs and bring public awareness amongst the locals regarding witchcraft and human rights, female harassment and for women empowerment. He aims at bringing about the development of the society through the path of scientific illumination in the minds of people. He has travelled far and wide to various corners of the country and organized various lectures, seminars and interactions to bring out scientific truth and oppose such evil practices prevalent in many places even today. His aim is to promote awareness among the masses he has organized more than 2200 seminars and lectures without any government or non – governmental aid. For Rural areas, social and health awareness programs have been launched and taken as projects under his initiative in which hundreds of thousands of people have benefited largely. Also, his training programs and lectures organized in educational institutes like N.C.C or N.S.S. have helped more than 1,90,000 students.
Dr Joan Nyanyuki
Dr Joan Nyanyuki began her career as a medical doctor, working with survivors of torture and sexual violence before transitioning into human rights and social justice work. An advocate for women, children and survivors of violence, she has a wealth of progressive experience in human rights research and multi-tiered advocacy, partnership and community engagement, strategic and organizational leadership gained through her past roles. Dr Nyanyuki was previously Amnesty International’s Regional Director in East Africa and The Great Lakes Region. Earlier in her career she supported Physician for Human Rights (US) program on sexual violence, was Executive Director of Coalition on Violence against Women and Independent Medico-Legal Unit, both national non-profits in Kenya.
Dr Nyanyuki is currently the Executive Director of African Child Policy Forum, a Pan-African center for policy research, advocacy and influencing on child rights in Africa child rights. Alongside this she serves as a trustee for Frontline Aids, a UK based charity, as the Chairperson of African Partnership to End Violence and Co-Chair of Executive Committee of Global Partnership to End Violence against Children.
She began her career as a medical doctor. Her work with survivors of torture and sexual violence is what drew her into human rights, and social justice and development work.
Dr Elīna Šteinerte
Dr Elīna Šteinerte (LLB, Lawyers Diploma, LLM, PhD) is an academic and human rights lawyer with over 20 years of experience. She is a member of the UN Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT, 2023-2026) and former member and Chair Rapporteur of the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD, 2016-2022). She is also Jersey Law Commissioner, Visiting Professor at the Jersey Law Institute and Visiting Fellow at the Human Rights Implementation Centre of the University of Bristol. In April 2023 she was appointed independent expert of the OSCE Moscow Mechanism on the issue forcible transfer of children within parts of Ukraine’s territory temporarily controlled or occupied by Russia and/or their deportation to the Russian Federation.
Dr Šteinerte is an academic with extensive teaching background having taught public international and human rights law at numerous Universities in Latvia, the United Kingdom, and the Bailiwick of Jersey. The prime focus of her work and research has been the implementation of the UN Convention against Torture and its Optional Protocol (OPCAT). She has worked worldwide and published 5* academic outputs with respect to the implementation of the Convention including advising upon the calibration of domestic legislation and the designation and effectiveness of National Preventive Mechanisms. Additionally, she has provided expert advice on a variety of criminal justice reforms, including pre-trial detention, overuse of imprisonment, overcrowding and independent oversight over the places of deprivation of liberty and child justice. She has worked with the UNHCR on streamlining its methodology for monitoring immigration detention. In her WGAD role, Dr Šteinerte has lead numerous UN country missions including to Argentina, Sri Lanka, Hungary, Bhutan, Qatar, the Maldives, Botswana and Mongolia. She has participated in the delivery of over 450 WGAD Opinions regarding allegations of arbitrary deprivation of liberty globally. She was also leading the WGAD’s work on the formulation of its Deliberations on detention in the context of migration in 2017 and detention in the context of public health emergencies (COVID-19) in 2020.
Joe Wood
Joe is a British photojournalist and documentary photographer currently based between Lithuania and Portugal. Previous stories include: witchcraft accusation and associated persecutions in Nepal and India, de-institutionalisation of mental health services in Belarus and Ukraine, and low-impact communities in the UK. He holds a BA in Documentary Photography from University of Wales Newport and is a member of Sponge Lab, an analogue darkroom collective.
If you would like to visit Joe’s website, click here.
Organisations and Individuals Supporting the Network
ANPPCAN Malawi Chapter
African Network for Prevention and Protection of Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN) Malawi Chapter
ANPPCAN Malawi believes in the creation and nurturing of a democratic society in which all the citizens have the right to participate in the affairs of their daily lives and governance. The prevention of Human Rights violation and abuse is a non-negotiable responsibility which ANPPCAN Malawi has shouldered with full commitment as an organization and a humanitarian entity. ANPPCAN Malawi in the year 2013 has planned activities which aim at reducing and eradicating all the injustices, oppressions, segregation and abuses which are subjected to the vulnerable and minority groups including women and children.
The International Network Against Accusations of Witchcraft and Associated Harmful Practices is a Community Interest Company registered by the Registrar of Companies for England and Wales under under the 2006 Companies Act. The certificate of registration is here: