Story-Based Trauma Healing

The project seeks to bring comfort and hope to persons (particularly women and girl child) who continue to face various forms of discrimination and abuses in most parts of Ghana through the Story Based Trauma Healing.
In northern Ghana hundreds of women and men are accused of sorcery and witchcraft by relatives or members of their community ends up living in ‘specialized camps’ after fleeing or being banished from their homes. These camps (6), which are home to majority of women and children, offer poor living conditions and little hope of a normal life. These persons have trauma issues having fled discrimination, threats or even mob justice after being accused of witchcraft and blamed for ‘crimes’ such as causing sickness, droughts or fires, cursing a neighbour or even just appearing in someone’s dream.

In 2011, the Ghanaian government announced that the camps should be closed down with immediate effect. Social groups have firmly stood against the closure of the camps in such short space of time, because the camps do provide a safe haven for women accused of witchcraft. The women themselves say they would prefer to stay in the camps rather than face discrimination or risk violence or death back home. The situation is not entirely different from children who are sold into slavery to work in hazardous situations to support families back home.

The 2005 Ghana Country Report reveals that, Ghana is amongst the countries that records high levels of gender based violence including physical, psychological, economic and sexual abuse. Records available to the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana police service indicated that, between the period of 1999 to May 2010, 109 784 cases of domestic violence were reported of which a greater portion was perpetuated against women.