There are currently around 1,000 women living in 6 of the witches’ camps in Ghana’s northern region.

Many of them are elderly women who have been accused of inflicting death, misfortune, and calamity on their neighbors and villages through sorcery, witchcraft, or “juju,” a term used throughout West Africa.

The women enjoy a certain degree of protection within these camps, located some distance from their communities in which they could be tortured, beaten to death, or lynched, but the conditions of the camps are often poor. The “accused witches,” as they are sometimes referred to, live in tiny thatched mud huts, and have limited access to food and must fetch water from nearby streams and creeks.

Most of them were sent there due to symptoms such as memory loss, forgetfulness, or disorientation,
which had been misinterpreted to be wichcraft.

An elderly woman who lived in Nabule witch camp in Gushegu a district in the Northern Region for the past 18 years, told the story of how she was forced to leave her village. Dressed in a headscarf, faded T-shirt, and cotton skirt.

Her husband had died unexpectedly and after the village soothsayer had said she caused the death of the child, her family tried to make her confess to murdering him through sorcery. When she refused to admit she was beaten with an old bicycle chain, and later her husband’s family members rubbed pepper sauce into her eyes and open wounds.

It was later realized that she exhibited signs of dementia such as waking up early, increased anxiety, difficulty in remembering, among others.