The shocking photos of an aid worker giving water to an emaciated toddler in Nigeria have led to a flood in donations to an aid organization seeking to raise awareness about children who are abandoned after being accused of witchcraft.
Danish aid worker Anja Ringgren Lovén posted the heartbreaking photos of the starving boy whom she named “Hope” to Facebook on Jan. 31. Lovén detailed the harrowing story of how he was left on the streets of the Nigerian state of Akwa Ibom, by his family who accused him of being a witch.
“When we heard that the child was only two to three years old we did not hesitate,” she told the Huffington Post UK. “A child that young cannot survive a long time alone on the streets. We immediately prepared a rescue mission.”
Lovén founded the African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF) three years ago after travelling to Nigeria and being confronted with thousands of children labeled as witches.
“Thousands of children are being accused of being witches and we’ve both seen torture of children, dead children and frightened children,” she wrote on Facebook, appealing for funds to pay for food, medical bills and schooling.
A 2010 UNICEF report details the reasons for the spread of witchcraft that include poverty, the HIV/AIDS epidemic and civil war. Family members, often children or the elderly, are blamed for tragedies that are beyond their control, like disease or a death.
The report said urban children were the most at risk of being accused of witchcraft.
“Child witches,” UNICEF noted, were typically children with a physical disability or developmental disability such as autism or Down syndrome.
According to the report, children with albinism are also at risk of being killed “because of the magic powers supposedly contained in parts of their bodies, including their organs, hair, skin and limbs.”
A 2013 BBC documentary about the hysteria around child witches estimated that in the Nigerian state of Akwa Ibom — where Hope was recently found — there were roughly 15,000 children who had been accused of witchcraft and abandoned on the streets.
Lovén reported that within just two days of making the plea for donations on Facebook she had raised more than one million Danish kroner (CA$204,333).
“With all the money, we can, besides giving Hope the very best treatment, now also build a doctor clinic on the new land and save many more children out of torture!” she wrote. “It’s just so great!”
Over the weekend she posted photos of the boy smiling and looking noticeably healthier and heavier.
“Hope is getting so much better,” Lovén wrote. “Already gaining a lot of weight and looking so much more healthy. Now we only need him to talk.
“But that will come naturally when he is out of the hospital and starting his life among all our children.”
Donations to can be made African Children’s Aid Education and Development Foundation here.
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