From Brides to the Banished: The Silent Suffering of Girls and Elderly Women in Northern Ghana

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By Richard Agodzo

Before their voices are even heard, they are silenced. Before they dream, their futures are written for them. In Ghana’s Northern Region, too many girls are married off before they are 18, and the women they grow into are later cast away, labelled witches, and forced to die in isolation. This is the brutal, cyclical violence no one talks about — and it must end.

In the dry, dusty villages of Northern Ghana, a quiet injustice unfolds daily — invisible to many, yet devastating to generations of women.

Gambaga witches camp in the Northern Region of Ghana

Girls as young as 12 are removed from school, handed to older men in exchange for bride prices or to ease a family's financial burden. Their lives become a series of burdens: childbirth before adulthood, unpaid domestic labour, and the trauma of leaving behind their childhood dreams.

“I was married off to a man older than my father,” shares a 16-year-old girl from Yendi. “I wanted to be a teacher, but now I’m a wife and a mother. I never went back to school.”

It is a story repeated in community after community.

Child marriage is not just a violation of human rights. It is the theft of opportunity, education, and often, life itself. Many girls suffer birth complications from early pregnancies. Some die. Most carry emotional scars that never heal.

But the tragedy doesn’t end there.

When these girls grow old — if they survive the harsh journey of womanhood — they are once again failed by society. This time, accused of witchcraft.

A cough in the neighbourhood, a poor harvest, a child’s death — all can be enough to have a woman blamed, beaten, and exiled.

Witch camps — places that should not exist in the 21st century — are still home to over a thousand women in Ghana. Many of them were widows, childless, or simply outspoken.

“I was blamed for my neighbour’s illness,” says an elderly woman living in a camp near Gambaga. “They beat me, and no one stopped them. My son was afraid. I came here to survive.”

These camps are often without electricity, healthcare, or any formal protection. Many women die there, not from curses or magic, but from neglect, hunger, and loneliness.

The root causes? Poverty. Patriarchy. Superstition. And silence.

In these regions, being born female means being at risk your entire life — as a child, and again as an elder.

Yet there is hope.


Activists, NGOs, and community-led groups are rising to break the cycle. Some girls are being pulled out of marriages and returned to school. Some witch camps are being dismantled through education and reintegration programs. Chiefs and local leaders are slowly being engaged to change harmful customs.

But progress is slow and fragile.

This is not just a Northern Ghana issue. It is a national shame.

We cannot preach progress while our girls are still being forced into marriages. We cannot claim justice while our elderly women die in exile, branded as witches by the very communities they served all their lives.

It’s time for Ghanaians — especially those in power — to look beyond statistics and confront this cultural violence head-on. We must challenge harmful norms, invest in girl-child education, enforce laws against early marriage, and shut down witch camps permanently.

Let us amplify the voices of the silent. Let us protect girls before they are forced into womanhood. And let us honour our older women with care, not with camps.

Because every girl deserves a childhood.

And every woman deserves dignity.


#EndChildMarriage #StopWitchCamps #ProtectGhanaianWomen

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