WUNRN
TROKOSI
is a Traditional Practice of Sexual Slavery in Parts of Africa.
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Ritual servitude is practiced in Ghana, Togo, and Benin where traditional religious shrines take young girls in payment for services, or in religious atonement for alleged misdeeds of a family member —almost always a female. In Ghana, it is practiced by a small tribe called Ewe in the Volta region. The girls are sexually abused, serve at hard labor without compensation, suffer harsh punishment, and are denied education and human affection. If a girl runs away or dies, she must be replaced by another girl from the family. Some girls in ritual servitude are the third or fourth girl in their family suffering for the same crime, sometimes for something as trite as the loss of trivial property. It is still practiced in the Volta region in Ghana, in spite of being outlawed in 1998, and despite carrying a minimum three year prison sentence for conviction. Among the Ewes who practice the ritual in Ghana, the practice is also called trokosi or fiashidi. In Togo and Benin it is called voodoosi.
NGO's and other Human rights organizations are fighting the practice. Some have openly labeled it slavery, although this term is disliked by traditional advocates of the practice. The NGO's use of the term slaves comes from former trokosi who have been liberated.1 These groups have actively sought to liberate girls held in ritual servitude.
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http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200807250736.html
Ghana: Let's Unite Against Trokosi
Public
Agenda (Accra)
Editorial
25 July 2008
It is quite
disturbing that after more than 10 years of stakeholders bringing the obnoxious
Trokosi system to national attention, it is still live and kicking.
A
recent research on the practice of Trokosi in Ghana sponsored by Australian Aid
Agency (AusAID) revealed that the concept of Trokosi has not changed within the
practicing communities, 10 years after the enactment of laws by Parliament to
abolish the practice.
At a
National Dissemination Workshop on the Study of Trokosi Practice in Ghana on
Wednesday Mercy, a liberated Trokosi narrated the story of how at a tender age
of eight, her parents condemned her to a Trokosi camp to atone for the sins of
her aunt.
On several
occasions when she tried to escape, she was unsuccessful; in part because when
she returned home her parents escorted her back her to the shrine.
With no one
to turn for help, even in the era of democracy, when there ought to have been
avenues for redress, Mercy began her condemned life as a Trokosi, where she
woke at dawn and cleaned the shrine and worked on the farm. Worse, the priest
sexually abused her, leaving her with four children to fend for. "The
Trokosi system is not good," she told the gathering. "My generation
and the generation before mine missed out in education."
This is the
story of one of several thousands of girls and women have suffered and continue
to suffer such inhuman treatment under the guise of culture and tradition. What
is more disturbing is that in this day of some much noise about human rights
and good governance, this inimical practice is being practiced with impunity,
partly because those charged with protecting the dignity of every one in this
country do not want to hurt the sensibilities of the perpetrators. To add to
that even a number of intellectuals who hail from the areas that are practicing
the system and ought to know better see nothing wrong with it.
Is it any
surprising that to date, there are no credible statistics on the number of
women and girls still being held at the various shrines .
We all need
to be concerned about this practice, especially when females tend to bear the
brunt of most inimical cultural practices. Such laws which debase our humanity
cannot co-exist with our constitution which guarantees freedom for all.
Ghana has
earned so much international fame for promoting human rights and freedom, but
how can we reconcile the so-called international acclamation with the fact that
several women and children are still being held bondage by an outmoded cultural
practice.
We need to
move beyond research and workshops on the issue and take decisive, executive,
legislative and judicial actions to stop this cultural practice that is reminding
us of the gory days of slave trade.
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