Thank you Roy for inviting me to make a presentation at this seminar, and thank you friends for coming.

In a speech today (14 March 2012) at the plenary of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, IHEU representative Leo Igwe criticised governments for aiding and abetting belief in witchcraft, leading to the torture and killing of innocent women and children in Africa and around the world.

To quote the ancient Greek biographer Plutarch, “An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.”  This is also true for the world as a whole.

Leo Igwe, IHEU’s representative for West and Southern Africa, is working to combat widespread human rights abuses caused by belief in sorcery and superstition. On November 11, 2010, he raised the issue of ritual killing and human sacrifice at the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, with the following statement.

Professor Bolaji Idowu in his book, African Traditional Religion: A Definition (1973), said “In Africa, it is idle to begin with the question whether witches exist or not....To Africans of every category, witchcraft is an urgent reality”. Well, while this statement by this foremost scholar might have been true decades ago, when he wrote his seminal book, today it is not.

From April 12-15, I represented IHEU at the regional conference on the abolition of the death penalty for North and West Africa. The conference, organised by the Working Group on the Death Penalty of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR), was held at Benin Atlantic Beach Hotel, Cotonou in the Republic of Benin.

Leo Igwe, IHEU’s representative for West Africa, spoke about Freedom of Conscience and Religious Persecution in Africa at the 47th session of the African Commission on Human and People's Rights meeting in Bajul, the Gambia, on 13 May 2010. Below is his statement in full: