Peace is often discussed during elections, ethnic tensions, armed conflict, and political violence. But it can be lost closer to home, in families and communities where people depend on one another for security, livelihoods, and belonging. In northern Ghana, witchcraft accusations illustrate this quieter but deeply damaging conflict.
An illness, death, family dispute, or troubling dream can trigger accusations. Once someone, often an older woman, is labelled a witch, ordinary disagreement can become exclusion, displacement, and sometimes violence. The issue is not only belief but what happens when fear replaces trust and accusation replaces dialogue.
Amnesty International’s 2025 report, Branded for Life, found roughly 500 people, primarily older women, in four informal camps in the northern regions. They lack adequate health services, food, safe housing, clean water, and livelihoods. These are human-rights and peacebuilding concerns.
When Suspicion Breaks Social Trust
Amnesty International’s Branded for Life found accusations usually follow a death, miscarriage, or illness. Financial misfortune or a dream can suffice, and accusations often start within the family. Widowed, divorced, unmarried, or childless women, or those seen as successful and independent, are more likely to be targeted.
The danger begins when suspicion hardens into certainty. A relative becomes an accuser. A neighbor becomes a witness. A leader is asked to rule on whether the story is true. Amnesty found chiefs are the authority women most often turn to after an accusation, yet many felt unprotected. Someone who once belonged becomes a person others believe they must be protected from.
Then the accusation itself becomes the conflict. On 23 July 2020, 90-year-old Akua Denteh was beaten to death in Kafaba, East Gonja District, Savannah Region, after being accused of witchcraft. Part of the attack was filmed and circulated online, provoking nationwide outrage (Amnesty International, 2025). On 3 July 2023, the Tamale High Court sentenced two women shown beating her to 12 years for manslaughter.
Fear also silences. Amnesty found violence against accused people is rarely reported to police and not systematically investigated when reported. “If I had reported it to the police, the accusers would have finished with me. I didn’t report it because the pressure on me was too high,” a woman in Gambaga camp said. Songtaba and ActionAid Ghana recorded 19 beatings linked to witchcraft accusations between 2020 and 2024 in the Northern, North East and Savannah regions, seven fatal, with only seven arrests in two cases and two convictions in one.
Exile Removes the Person, Not the Conflict
Banishment is the most visible consequence. The so-called witch camps are not just places on a map. They physically express a broken relationship with family or community.
A 2023 study by Adam and colleagues surveyed 277 people in the four camps, finding depression in 52.7 percent and low or extremely low quality of life in over 97 percent. Onzaberigu and colleagues (2024) foundabuses against elderly Gambaga camp residents, including torture and forced labor.
Exile may remove someone from the immediate source of conflict without resolving it. The death, illness, land dispute, or hardship preceding the accusation remains. The family may never confront the disagreement; the community may never examine the rumor. The accused may lose their home, farm, and relationships without a chance to clear their name. Banishment is conflict displacement: the person moves, but the grievance remains. Amnesty documents women who stayed in camps for fear of re-accusation, and one sent back after a failed attempt to return home.
Why Ghana’s Peace Challenge Starts at Home
Witchcraft accusations are not a major driver of armed or inter-community conflict in Ghana. Evidence instead points to violence at family and intra-community levels—exclusion, displacement, and seven documented killings between 2020 and 2024 (Amnesty International, 2025). In Melanesia, researchers found in 2015 that such accusations can fuel large-scale conflicts, but Ghana should not be assumed to follow it.
The more relevant lesson is early prevention. Peacebuilding does not begin only once violence is organized. It also means spotting processes turning suspicion into hostility and hostility into violence.
Traditional Leaders Are Part of the Peace Architecture
Chiefs and elders hold influence, but Amnesty found they often cannot protect the accused and sometimes take part in expulsion. “The chiefs have power, but they can’t protect you up to your bedroom,” a Kukuo camp woman said.
On October 3, 2024 in Yendi, Commission on Human Rights and Restorative Justice (CHRAJ) commissioner Joseph Whittal advised chiefs against sending alleged witchcraft cases to chief priests at camps for ritual determination, urging referral to Police, the CHRAJ and the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) rather than settling criminal cases in palaces, Ghana News Agency reported.
This is both a peacebuilding strategy and rights position. Traditional authorities can convene families before disputes escalate, encourage mediation and challenge rumour, but should work with formal institutions protecting rights and investigating crimes, not replace them.
The State Must Protect Before Communities Break Apart
Amnesty found Ghana has no law specifically addressing witchcraft-related abuses. Parliament passed the Criminal Offences (Amendment) Bill on July 27, 2023. In December, then-President Akufo-Addo declined to sign, citing constitutional concerns because it began as a private member’s bill. It lapsed with the Eighth Parliament.
In March 2026, MPs and advocates pressed for a bill, warning that delay exposes women and girls to violence, banishment, and death. In June 2026, a minister told Parliament that, until a bill is enacted, Ghana lacks a comprehensive law specifically criminalising witchcraft accusations. On July 28, 2026, five MPs reintroduced the bill.
The lesson goes beyond a statute. Legislation requires institutions able to prevent abuse, protect victims, investigate violence, and provide remedies.
Closing a Camp Is Not Restoring a Community
Returning someone to where they were expelled from is not restoring peace. Amnesty calls for a well-resourced state policy to reintegrate people into communities of their choice, and for protected places where return is too dangerous. On an August 7, 2026 visit to Gambaga camp, gender minister Agnes Naa Momo Lartey assured residents the government would explore sustainable solutions, including improved amenities and permanent shelter, working with traditional authorities and stakeholders to “facilitate family reintegration where possible.”
Successful reintegration may demand family dialogue, community education, livelihood support, protection against renewed accusations, and ways to resolve earlier disputes. The goal should not simply be to close a camp, but to make communities safe enough that people do not need camps at all.
Peace Begins Before Violence
The Kafaba video showed that images can reinforce stigma or promote accountability. A headline calling someone a “witch” can reproduce the label that led to their exclusion. Responsible reporting should ask what triggered the accusation, who made it, whether violence occurred or was reported, and whether reconciliation was attempted. That is peace journalism: not hiding conflict, but explaining its causes, human consequences, and routes to resolution.
Peace also requires collaboration among traditional authorities, religious leaders, police, DOVVSU, CHRAJ, social welfare institutions, health workers, civil society, journalists and communities. Women in danger must first be protected, but lasting peace depends on confronting the grievances behind the accusation.
Keywords: peace, witchcraft, accusations, northern Ghana, northeast Ghana, Ghana, conflict, conflict resolution, banishment, ostracism, women, gender, miscarriage, dream
Abubakari Najimu is a deputy registrar at Tamale Technical University, Ghana, and a PhD student in Public Law at the University of Venda, South Africa, with interdisciplinary academic training in law, management, human resource strategy, business planning, and development studies. He holds an MSc in management and human resource strategy from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, as well as postgraduate and undergraduate degrees from the University for Development Studies, Ghana, and a Master's in Labour Law and Practice from the University of Ghana, Ghana. This interdisciplinary background, law, human resource strategy, development studies, and labour rights, combines to produce research interests in conflict prevention, institutional accountability, and inclusive development. He focuses his research on employment and labour law, particularly workplace justice, labour rights, and public regulation. Beyondhis academic work, he has extensive professional experience in university governance and administration at Tamale Technical University, where he has served in several roles supporting academic planning, accreditation, quality assurance, and faculty administration. His broader research interests include public law, employment relations, governance, and the legal and policy dimensions of social protection, conflict prevention, and inclusive development in Africa. He is particularly interested in how legal and institutional reforms can promote fairness, stability, and social justice.
Abdul-Rahaman Wasilatu is a Ghanaian administrator and development practitioner with
extensive experience in community development, project coordination, stakeholder engagement,
and programming for vulnerable groups. She currently serves as an administrator at the
University for Development Studies (UDS) in Tamale, Ghana.
Her career spans NORSAC, where she worked on child-marriage prevention, as well as the
Forestry Commission and the Savelugu District Assembly. In these roles, she worked directly
with communities, supported the delivery of development projects, conducted community-based
research, and contributed to initiatives addressing pressing social and development challenges.
Wasilatu holds a BA in Integrated Development Studies and an MBA in Human Resource
Management, both from UDS. She has also completed training in project planning, crisis
management, conflict resolution, and community development.
Her interests include inclusive development, community resilience, social protection, and
peaceful community relations. Combining hands-on expertise in community engagement,
facilitation, research, and reporting with a deep understanding of the social realities of northern
Ghana, she is committed to practical, people-centered development.
