Harmful Practices Related to Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attacks: Challenges for Marginalized Groups
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The killing and torturing of individuals in the name of harmful beliefs and practices associated with witchcraft and other ritual attacks has taken place in several societies across the world, including in Europe, Africa, and South Asia.
Victims suffer harm ranging from discrimination, stigmatization, disinheritance, banishment from families and communities to extreme violence, such as beatings, burnings, sexual abuse, cutting of body parts and amputation of limbs, grave desecrations, torture, killings, and exploitation in the context of human trafficking. Indeed, harmful practices arising from accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks (HPWRA) are a topic of contemporary concern, both from the standpoint of bringing new perspectives and critical tools to historical case studies and ongoing conversations about human rights, power, traditional knowledge, religion, and perceptions of the natural and ‘supernatural’ world.
The international conference focuses on the challenges faced by marginalized groups who can be most vulnerable to harmful practices. It offers a space for researchers and practitioners to engage in inclusive interdisciplinary dialogues about the many facets of harmful practices resulting from the belief in witchcraft and ritual attacks that often target these groups and other vulnerable individuals.