Gender Minister-designate Sarah Adwoa Sarfo has said that if approved to be the substantive minister, she will work to rebrand all the witch camps in the country.
According to her, the first do is to engage and visit some of the camps and engage these alleged witches.
She added that she will further engage the traditional authorities and opinion leaders in these areas to get a very clear picture of what indeed ought to be done.
Honorable Sarah Adwoa Sarfo said this when she appeared before the Appointments Committee of Parliament during her vetting on Wednesday, February 17, 2021.
Witch camps exist solely in Ghana, where there are at least six of them, housing a total of around 1000 women. Such camps can be found at Bonyasi, Gambaga, Gnani, Kpatinga, Kukuo, and Naabuli, all in Northern Ghana.
“I chanced on some documents which indicated that in Gambaga Witch Camp, for instance, there are 600 inmates and when they were engaged, only one was willing to come back home. So, I believe that a rebranding of these camps because as far as the women are concerned, they have found families in these camps. And so…”
Some sources state the possibility of more camps, but these camps are more remote and there are not many records about them. Several of these camps date back to well over a century ago.
In 2014, the government created a plan to shut down the camps to stop the stigma and mistreatment of these women and reunite them with their communities.
The Ghanaian government began the shutdowns with the Bonyasi camp. However, activists feared that communities would refuse to reaccept these “witches” and the women would no longer have a home. The government has since halted its plans to shut down the camps, as many of the accused witches fear returning to the communities that sent them away.
Source: Mybrytfmonline/Kofi Atakora
