Children without Humanness. Criança-Irân Infanticide Cultural Practice Challenging Human Rights in Guinea-Bissau

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the discrepancies between the onto-metaphysical foundations of criança-irân ritual infanticide (practised in Guinea Bissau) and the principles underpinning international, legal human rights. Bissau-Guinean cosmological beliefs justify the infanticide, excluding infants from the category of human being.

This paper argues that the practice and its underpinning principles constitute a threefold challenge to human rights, as analysed in the three sections constituting the paper. The first part reveals the apparent inconsistency between the primary human rights corpus and given cultural practices, in the framework of the right to culture. The second it takes into account the universalist and the relativist stances in the discernment of individualistic and societal features as benchmark for human rights formulation, implementation and protection. Last, resorting to ethical pluralism, it exposes the dichotomy between the practice and human rights’ foundations, emphasising the peculiar ways in which humanness, and hence rights-holder, have hitherto been conceptualised.

Acknowledgements

I am deeply thankful to my supervisor, Professor A. S. Valente, for the support she provided me with during the months conducting research. Also, I will be forever indebted to the Bissau-Guinean families that opened their doors talk with me on such a sensitive subject.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Guinea-Bissau people often resort to the Kriol expression ‘ki ka padido diritu’, literally meaning ‘that who was born wrong’. Translation by the author.

2 Although the term Irân has no clear boundaries, it refers to a metaphysical entity, a spirit, a powerful force. Despite its otherworldliness, it is regarded part of the physical world, its presence is sensed, and it is appointed as the last cause of positive and negative occurrences. It is regarded as an utterly good and bad entity, and it is endowed with power to help (in terms of health, wealth, career, love life) inasmuch power to punish or to seek revenge, causing misfortune, illnesses and even death. Among the more extensive studies on irân, the workpieces of Carreira (1971a, 1971b) and Quintino (1949a, 1949b) are a cornerstone for anthropological, social and political queries in Guinea Bissau.

3 Balanta (26%), Papel (9.2%), Bijagós (2.1%), Manjaco (9.2%), Mancanha (3.5%) are the most significant animist ethnicities, representative of almost 50% of the total population, whether Fula (25%) and Mandinga are the main Muslim ethnicities (Nóbrega 2003).

4 According to the study conducted by Gonçalves (2015) on the all Guinea Bissau territory, education is not a discriminatory parameter in the sharing of the belief: a strong majority of students believe in the existence of non-human children, while university students avoided answering the questionnaire question, or provided ambiguous responses. Data gathered through fieldwork among the Pepel attested the tendency, since university students and teachers of primary and secondary school, whilst denying the ritual, stated believing in criança-irân or knowing at least one.

5 The declaration was proclaimed by and to the civilised world, according to what is stated in the report of the UNESCO Committee on the philosophical principles of the Rights of Man (titled The Grounds of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1947).

6 The reference to native and traditional used here refers to the prevalent animist groups, as Pepel, Balanta, Bijagós, Mancanha, Manjaco, thus excluding those groups whose customs are interlinked with the long-ago imported tradition of Islam, such as Fula and Mandinga.

7 The achievement of personhood is considered a threshold for right holding in Ubuntu moral formulations, along with Afro-communitarianism. The literature informs at great length on conceptions and divergences within the latter, in light of the open debate between radical and moderate communitarian scholars. For the purposes if this paper, it should be noted that moderate communitarianism recognise personhood as inherent element of one’s metaphysical substratum (Gyekye 1997; Gyekye and Wiredu 1992), while the radical understanding sees it as a status to be achieved through social and ritual transformation (Menkiti 1984, 2004). Whether personhood is ‘something at which one can fail’ (Menkiti 1984, 173), one cannot cease to be a human being, a trait that is ‘biologically given’ (Menkiti 1984, 173–174) (also, Ikuenobe 2018).

8 Open interviews with local ritual specialist, as djambakos, balobeiros, and régulos, conducted between October and December 2016, in Biombo region.

9 Ôô (or aôô) is, in Pepel language, the word depicting the ontological depth of meaning of life and of life itself (Nanque 2017, 44). Withal, in our conversations the ritual specialists would more often use the creole word alma, borrowed from the Portuguese for soul. Kriol is commonly used among Bissau-Guineans and its etymology has come to replace ethnical languages, thus engendering a conciliation of common epistemological backgrounds.

10 Open interviews with local ritual specialist, as djambakos, balobeiros, and régulos, conducted between October and December 2016, in Biombo region.

11 Informal conversation with Aresse, Balobeiro, November 10th 2016.

12 Interview with Fernando, using testimonio technique, November 12th 2016.

13 Local authority, according to traditional legitimation

14 The term literally means ‘play and cry’. The animist funeral ceremonies are used to lead the souls of the deceased in the travel to the other world, hence the weeps, the screams, and the music in charge of guiding the soul need to be sound and clear.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by FCT, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, under the project grant UID/CPO/00713/2019 and grant SFRH/BD/129431/2018.