2020-2030: Decade of Activism Against Witch Persecution in Africa

The Advocacy for Alleged Witches (AfAW) hereby announces a Decade of Activism against Witch Persecution in Africa: 2020-2030. The main objective of this initiative is to create a witch hunting free Africa by sensitizing Africans on witch hunting and spearheading the advocacy for alleged witches in Africa within the next ten years.
To realize this objective, AfAW will engage in the following activities:

· Share latest news on witchcraft allegation/witch persecution

· Engage state and non state actors in the field of witchcraft accusation

· Intervene to protect alleged witches, and to educate the accusers

· Lobby local, national and regional and global institutions in tackling abuses that are linked to witch persecution and witch hunting

· Cooperate with institutions with similar aims and objectives

· Organize public education and enlightenment campaigns to reason people out of the misconceptions that drive witch persecution and other harmful traditional practices through trainings, workshops and seminars for various interest groups..

AfAW uses a secular, humanist, skeptical and human rights approach to examine witchcraft narratives and address related abuses. AfAW’s campaign is founded on the principles that:

· witchcraft is a myth and an imaginary crime which no one commits

· attributions of causing harm through occult means are based on hearsay and misinformation, panic and anxieties, fear and superstition

· witch persecution, killings and trials are forms of human rights abuses that should not be tolerated in the name of religion, culture or tradition.

I urge all Africans as well as non Africans including all Africans in the diaspora to join efforts with us to achieve this important objective. Contribute to our Decade of anti-witch hunting programs and activities.
Visit our web site: https://advocacyforallegedwitches.law.blog/.
Send us reports from your countries, communities and provinces.

Join our Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/login/?next=https%3A%2F%2Fweb.facebook.com%2Fgroups%2F760341817780783%2F&_rdc=1&_rdr. There is also a Whatsapp group that you can join. Otherwise email us at advocacyforallegedwitches@gmail.com; nskepticleo@yahoo.com

Become an advocate for alleged witch today. A witch hunting free Africa is achievable.

Leo Igwe is the chief executive officer of Advocacy for Alleged Witches and initiator of Decade of Activism against Witch Persecution in Africa.

2020-2030: Decade of Activism against Witch Persecution in Africa

Leo Igwe

Leo Igwe (born July 26, 1970) is a Nigerian human rights advocate and humanist. Igwe is a former Western and Southern African representative of the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and has specialized in campaigning against and documenting the impacts of child witchcraft accusations. He holds a Ph.D from the Bayreuth International School of African Studies at the University of Bayreuth in Germany, having earned a graduate degree in Philosophy from the University of Calabar in Nigeria. Igwe’s human rights advocacy has brought him into conflict with high-profile witchcraft believers, such as Liberty Foundation Gospel Ministries, because of his criticism of what he describes as their role in the violence and child abandonment that sometimes result from accusations of witchcraft. His human rights fieldwork has led to his arrest on several occasions in Nigeria. Igwe has held leadership roles in the Nigerian Humanist Movement, Atheist Alliance International, and the Center For Inquiry—Nigeria. In 2012, Igwe was appointed as a Research Fellow of the James Randi Educational Foundation, where he continues working toward the goal of responding to what he sees as the deleterious effects of superstition, advancing skepticism throughout Africa and around the world. In 2014, Igwe was chosen as a laureate of the International Academy of Humanism and in 2017 received the Distinguished Services to Humanism Award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Igwe was raised in southeastern Nigeria, and describes his household as being strictly Catholic in the midst of a “highly superstitious community,” according to an interview in the Gold Coast Bulletin.[1] At age twelve, Igwe entered the seminary, beginning to study for the Catholic priesthood, but later was confused by conflicting beliefs between Christian theology and the beliefs in witches and wizards that are “entrenched in Nigerian society.”[1] After a period of research and internal conflict due to doubts about the “odd blend of tribalism and fundamentalist Christianity he believes is stunting African development,” a 24-year-old Igwe resigned from the seminary and relocated to Ibadan, Nigeria