Resolution on the Elimination of Harmful Practices Related to Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attacks

The Resolution on the Elimination of Harmful Practices Related to Accusations of Witchcraft and Ritual Attacks, adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2021, is the first UN resolution to name witchcraft accusation and ritual attack, including violence against people, often older women and children, accused of witchcraft, as a human rights concern in its own right rather than folding it into broader categories. Its strength is that it is a primary international legal instrument, verifiable against the UN's own record, and its adoption itself is a documented milestone in how the issue is formally recognised. Its limit is that a Human Rights Council resolution states a normative position and calls for action, it does not itself document the practice, so a claim about the actual prevalence or regional pattern of witchcraft accusation violence needs the human rights reporting and scholarship the resolution itself draws on.