Extract

It is perhaps a truism to state that violence, in its interpersonal, intergroup, international, and global variants, generates displacement, and displacement in turn creates the search for safe haven or asylum. Over the course of that search, authorities involved in refugee status determinations expect proof of a key matter: well-founded fear of persecution.

Claimants seek to provide such proof with their various evidentiary efforts aiming to demonstrate eligibility for refugee status. As determinations continue to hinge on whether a claimant can demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution due to Geneva Convention-identified reasons (i.e. ‘race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion’), one might argue that some forms and types of violence, such as armed conflict or human rights violations, came to be more readily recognizable -or more conveniently legible- by relevant authorities in asylum claims.

How, though, does one go about seeking, denying, or granting asylum when claims are based on a supernatural phenomenon -witchcraft, so to speak- legally not as recognizable or legible? Katherine Angela Luongo’s insightful contribution, African Witchcraft and Global Asylum-Seeking: Border-Crossing Beliefs, tackles this thorny question, which is at once a legal, anthropological, and historical one.