Conflicting Discourses on the Trokosi Practice in Ghana: Exploring Tensions in the Global/Local Human Rights Translation

Trokosi is an old West African practice that involves the sending of a young virgin girl to a shrine as atonement, for a crime committed by a family member. Since the early 1990s this practice has been subject to a tense debate reflecting a clash of perspectives. The universalist approach to human rights opposes this practice, seeking to protect the right of the child through abolition by including the practice in the framework of gender-based violence and as a violation of the human rights of the female child. The cultural relativist defends its significance based of the socio-cultural and legal norms that belong to the practicing communities that has largely been ignored by the abolitionist approach. This paper explores the power dynamics at play in the translation of universal human rights norms in the local context of Southern Eweland in Ghana. It places the Trokosi practice in its cultural context to provide new insights on how the indigenous culture frames “rights”, giving meaning to the practice and how local communities and the subjects involved (the girls sent to the shrines) perceive the practice. The paper suggests that a modification of the discourse on human rights is called for to make it “non-alien” to the practicing communities and avoid the perception of being a Western imposition. Making the human rights discourse more relevant for the local communities requires an inter-cultural dialogue on the right of the Trokosi child. Rather than simply defending a particular approach, this paper seeks to shed light on the need for cross-cultural dialogue and sensitivity towards culture and spirituality, mirrored in the process of human rights translation as it applies to Trokosi.