Adjudicating Fear of Witchcraft Claims in Refugee Law
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Author | Jenni Millbank,Anthea Vogl |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/jols.12120 |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY
VOLUME 45, NUMBER 3, SEPTEMBER 2018
ISSN: 0263-323X, pp. 370±97
Adjudicating Fear of Witchcraft Claims in Refugee Law
Jenni Millbank* and Anthea Vogl*
In refugee applications involving witchcraft-related violence (WRV),
those accused of witchcraft are largely women, and those fearing
witchcraft are more often men. This is one of two interrelated articles
reporting on cases where claimants feared harm from witchcraft or
occult practices. It argues that WRV is a manifestation of gender-
related harm, one which exposes major failings in the application of
refugee jurisprudence. Systemic inattention to the meaning and appli-
cation of the Convention ground of religion, combined with gender
insensitivity in analysis, meant that claims were frequently recon-
figured by decision makers as personal grudges. The fear of witchcraft
cases pose an acute ontological challenge to refugee status determi-
nation, as the claimed harm falls outside what is understood to be
objective, verifiable, or Convention-related. Male applicants struggled
to make their claims comprehensible as a result of the feminized and
`irrational' characterization of witchcraft fears and beliefs.
INTRODUCTION
`Witchcraft' is an umbrella term for beliefs and practices concerning super-
natural powers and objects, which vary widely across communities, regions,
and time. Witchcraft and sorcery form an integral part of everyday life in
many countries, influencing how people understand the world and their
place within it.
1
While witchcraft beliefs and practices are strongly
370
*Faculty of Law, UTS, PO Box 123, Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia
jenni.millbank@uts.edu.au anthea.vogl@uts.edu.au
This research was funded by Australian Research Council grant DP120102025. Thanks to
Catherine Dauvergne and Sara Dehm for their comments on earlier versions of this
article.
1 See A. Ashforth, `On Living in a World With Witches: Everyday Epistemology and
Spiritual Insecurity in a Modern African City (Soweto)' in Magical Interpretations,
Material Realities: Modernity, Witchcraft and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa,
eds. H. Moore and T. Sanders (2001); P. Geschiere, The Modernity of Witchcraft,
Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa (1997).
ß2018 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2018 Cardiff University Law School
associated with African states, engagement in witchcraft also occurs in
Nepal, India, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and some Central American
states.
2
Human rights responses to witchcraft have predominantly focused
on witchcraft-relate d violence (WRV) arising out of a ccusations of
witchcraft, with an emphasis on how such accusations impact on women,
children and `vulnerable' groups; however, WRV also arises in the context
of witchcraft and sorcery being utilized by believers as a medium of harm
and control.
3
This article addresses refugee claims made by applicants who fear
violence in the form of witchcraft or from those whom they understand to be
witches. It reports findings from a larger project that examined all available
asylum cases concerning WRV in five refugee-receiving nations: Canada,
the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.
4
Among the 176 WRV cases comprising the data set, women were signifi-
cantly more likely to fear harm on the basis of being accused of witchcraft;
while men were more likely to fear harm from those who were seen to
possess witchcraft powers.
5
A previous article from this research project
focused upon claimants fleeing persecution on the basis of having been
accused of being witches.
6
A number of findings in relation to the first subset
of cases holds true of the cases we examine in this piece, which focuses on
the predominantly male applicants who claimed that they were victims of
sorcery or witchcraft rather than as accused witches themselves.
In order to make a claim for refugee protection, a person must demon-
strate that he or she has a well-founded fear of persecution based upon one of
five protected grounds (race, religion, political opinion, nationality, and
particular social group), from which their country of origin is unwilling or
371
2 See J. Powles and R. Deakin, `Se eking meaning: a n anthropologic al and
community-based approach to witchcraft accusations and their prevention in
refugee situations' (2012) UNHCR Research Paper no. 235; J. Schnoebelen,
`Witchcraft allegations, refugee protection and human rights: a review of the
evidence' (2009) UNHCR Research Paper no. 169; European Parliament, DG for
External Policies, `Child Witchcraft Allegations and Human Rights' (2013), at
DROI_NT%282013%29433714_EN.pdf>; J. Crisp, `Witchcraft and Displacement'
(2008) 31 Forced Migration Rev. 74.
3 A. Ashforth, `Witchcraft, Justice, and Human Rights in Africa: Cases from Malawi'
(2015) 58 African Studies Rev. 5.
4 This data set represents all publicly available decisions and is comparable in scale to
other case law investigations of comparable subsets of gender-related claims, such
as forced marriage.
5 Only 35 per cent of initial accused-of-witchcraft cases involved male claimants,
while a significant majority (64 per cent) of initial fear-of-witchcraft claims were
made by male claimants.
6 S. Dehm and J. Millbank, `Witchcraft Accusations as Gendered Persecution in
Refugee Law' (2018) Social and Legal Studies, published online, 1 February 2018,
doi.org/10.1177/0964663917753725.
ß2018 The Author. Journal of Law and Society ß2018 Cardiff University Law School
To continue reading
Request your trial