Ritual servitude is a practice in Ghana, Togo, and Benin where traditional religious shrines (popularly called fetish shrines in Ghana) take human beings, usually young virgin girls, in payment for services or in religious atonement for alleged misdeeds of a family member.
This form of slavery is still practiced in the Volta Region in Ghana, despite being outlawed in 1998, and despite carrying a minimum three-year prison sentence for conviction.
Human rights organizations and other NGO's commonly use the words "servitude", "slaves", and "slavery" as non-technical, popularly understood terms that describe the reality of this practice.
[7] Cudjoe Adzumah made a study of the practice in the Tongu Districts of Ghana and defined "trokosi" as "slaves of the gods".
"[15] She then goes on to quote Article 7 of The Convention on Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, which defines a slave as "a person over whom any or all powers attaching to the rights of ownership are exercised".
For example, Togbe Adzimashi Adukpo, a shrine priest, admitted in an interview with BBC in February 2001, "Yes, the girls are my slaves.
Girls given to atone for such crimes in a sense are considered a kind of savior, for as long as she remains in the shrine or under its control, the anger of the god is believed to be averted from the rest of the family.
Thus a girl may be given into ritual servitude when someone believes a child has been conceived or a person has been healed, for example, through the intervention of the shrine.
Visitors to old Abomey today are shown a mass grave and told that the king's wives "volunteered", on his death, to be buried alive with him in order to accompany him and serve him in the world to come.
One researcher pointed out, "Of course, one should not make the mistake of ascribing modern democratic meaning to the word "volunteered" as if the wives wanted to die or had any choice in the matter".
But that distinction is not as clearcut as it might first seem, for the palace was the center of Dahomean religious life, and the place where sacrifices were made and rituals to the ancestors were performed.
[31] At the beginning of the 19th century, Nyigbla became the chief Anlo deity, and its shrines also began to demand slaves for its services.
Involuntary slavery, however, was not at that time and in that place common, since Nyigbla also instituted a practice called foasi, whereby two servants were recruited annually on a more-or-less voluntary basis.
The investigating District Commissioner, W. Price Jones, called it "a pernicious habit of handing girls over to the fetish", but for economic reasons, decided not to interfere.
Wisdom claimed to have later discovered these same women on one of his evangelistic missions, held in bondage in a shrine just across the Volta River from his home, but previously unknown to him.
[35] In the early 1990s, Ghanaian journalist Vincent Azumah found courage to write publicly about the practice and sparked a nationwide debate.
Then the International Federation of Women Lawyers in Ghana (FIDA) organized an investigation into shrine practices and issued a report in 1992.
[37] According to Emmanuel Kweku Akeampong, a Ghanaian professor of history at Harvard University, the practice of trokosi received significant national attention in Ghana in 1996 and 1997.
Some of the organizations that have joined the effort are UNICEF, International Needs Network Ghana, the Swiss "Sentry Movement", the Trokosi Abolition Fellowship, the Anti-Slavery Society, and Every Child Ministries.
Christian NGOs and human rights organizations have been fighting it—working to end the practice and to win liberation for the shrine slaves.
They have carried out their activities with strong support from CHRAJ—the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice—and the Ministry of Women's and Children's Affairs.
[41] The "tro" deity is not, according to African traditional religion, the Creator or what might be called the "High" or Ultimate God.
NGO's point out that practices in traditional shrines vary, but trokosi are usually denied education, suffer a life of hardship, and are a lonely lot, stigmatized by society.
[42] The period of servitude varies from a few months to life In some cases it involves payment of a heavy fine to the shrine, which can require many years of hard labor or even a lifetime of service to pay.
Supporters of the practice claim that in the vast majority of cases, there is no particular stigma attached to one's status as a former Trokosi shrine participant.
Every Child Ministries, a Christian NGO that has done much research on the topic, lists these as variations that they have observed in their work:[44] Most frequently those in ritual servitude are young virgin girls at the time of entry into the shrine.
[44] Stephen Awudi Gadri, founder of Trokosi Abolition Fellowship, speaks of "ritual violation after menarche" (first menses) as the beginning of a life of coerced sex.
"[47] Treatment of girls in the shrine varies as to feeding practices, reasons for and severity of punishments, sleeping and living conditions.
Other common duties are weaving mats, making and selling firewood (with all profits going to the priest or the shrine), fetching wood and water, sweeping the compound and attending the images of the gods.
The shrine is compensated for its loss and the former trokosi begin a process of rehabilitation which usually includes learning vocational skills.