In 2009, Magistrate Damson Banda of Malawi had the delicate task of presiding over the trial of three accused witches. Responsible both for applying a law that rejects the existence of witchcraft and serving a community that fears witches, Banda clarified his own objective: to prevent violence. 

As he explained in 2013 to Adam Ashford of the University of Michigan

, Banda saw his duty as ensuring “that conflicts were resolved within the framework of the law, without people taking the law into their own hands and committing crimes against suspected witches.”

In this particular 2009 case, Massautso Kasito had accused his father, sister, and son of using witchcraft to murder a relative who had died in unusual circumstances. These accusations couldn’t just be dismissed offhand. Vigilante justice — including witch-hunts — flourishes when institutions fail to serve the justice that society demands.

The nearly three-quarters of Malawians who believe in witchcraft see evidence of bewitchment in grave illnesses, inexplicable deaths, and sudden financial ruin. In their eyes, scheming, powerful witches brought about these misfortunes. Contrarily, international human rights observers consider the suspected witches to be victims rather than aggressors, noting that the accused endure unjustifiable mistreatment, abuse, and ostracism by their communities.

In the face of these conflicting worldviews, how can justice be served? Belief in witchcraft is protected under the 

 as part of its guarantee of “freedom of thought, conscience, and religion,” but this protection does not prevent discriminatory and abusive actions against suspected witches. The human rights of the accused witches must be preserved, even as their accusers deny their humanity altogether.

 that each year, thousands of people are accused of practicing witchcraft — and this number is rising. In Malawi, a country in southeast Africa that is home to about 16 million people, violent witch-hunts occurred 

. The fate of accused witches ranges from 

stigmatization, to banishment, torture, and even death

. Malawi isn’t the only country where witches are violently persecuted, as harrowing reports from 

Overwhelmingly, the individuals most often charged with witchcraft are those least able to defend themselves: elderly women, young children, and the disabled. Of the 45 witchcraft cases handled by 

 sums up the pattern, observing that “important or rich people are never accused in public. Instead, it is always the worst off and most vulnerable … [and] there are increasing numbers of accusations against children.”

The legal system, which would ideally protect the downtrodden, has a precarious role in a society where preacher-prophets and traditional healers have a stronger presence and demand greater respect than 

laws and courts established during colonialism

. Religious and other spiritual leaders stand to gain from the business of persecuting witches. Prophet Helen Ukpabio of Nigeria is just one of the many religious leaders who have made careers detecting and punishing witches, generating personal profits and fame along the way.

Nonetheless, experienced justices, such as Magistrate Banda, have found that their position can give them a platform to challenge the persecution of witches. Banda insists that suspicion or belief is not sufficient proof for a murder trial, and children’s testimony must always be corroborated. Therefore, in the 2009 case, he did not find any of the three accused to be guilty of witchcraft, but he took care to address the accusations thoroughly.

Witchcraft accusations cannot be written off as a lingering traditional practice. They are a contemporary reaction to “major social and economic evolutions,” and are often tied to a 

breakdown within traditional family structures and economic hardship

. In this case, the magistrate patiently heard family grievances and advised the family on how to move forward.

Some international organizations have been able to make headway as well. A 

 was established in Malawi in order to resolve witchcraft accusations through mediation, thus preventing mob violence. Engaging opposing parties in mediation proved to be “a powerful means of uncovering and resolving the roots of intra-familial and intra-communal conflicts which often manifest as witchcraft accusations,” observed Chi Mgbako and Katherine Glenn, who studied the clinic. A critical component of the legal clinic’s work was to inform Malawians that accusing people of witchcraft was actually illegal — 

a fact known to barely 15 percent of the population

. Though the clinic was able to deter many accusers, boosting awareness of the law is not a comprehensive solution when the law is at odds with popular belief and the underlying causes of accusations go unaddressed.

In Malawi, where there is one medical doctor per 50,000 people and national life expectancy averages just 36 years, witchcraft offers an explanation for why tragedy strikes. When families are faced with devastation — from young death to sudden financial ruin — it’s tempting to find a scapegoat. The justice system can step in to prevent one tragedy from taking additional victims.

“Witchcraft, Justice, and Human Rights in Africa: Cases from Malawi,” 

“Witchcraft Accusations and Human Rights: Case Studies from Malawi,”

George Washington International Law Review

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Witchcraft accusations are on the rise in Malawi, challenging the legal and political system to address startling assaults on human rights.

Behind Malawi's increasing witchcraft accusations, growing desperation

the highest price ever for a work of art at a public auction: $179 million

. An auctioneer declared the painting “

,” while a critic described it as an absurdly overpriced work lacking the “

You will probably never get to see it in person and judge for yourself. The anonymous buyer will likely keep the work safely locked away, protected from the flash of tourists’ cameras or risk of thievery.

The Geneva Freeport advertises itself as just the place for that famed Picasso, and thousands of other valuable works of art. If it were a museum, it would probably be “the best museum in the world,” 

, director of Geneva’s Fine Art Fund Group. Instead, the Geneva Freeport is a state-of-the-art storage facility, guaranteeing optimal conditions and security for the valuables it houses. Also enticing is the fact that free ports, zones with relaxed regulations for goods in transit, are 

Conveniently, there is no timeline requiring these goods “in transit” to leave their secure vaults — ever — and goods can change hands within the facilities, also tax-free. There could be as much as 

 stored in the Geneva Freeport, though that information isn’t publicly available (secrecy is another key selling point of the facility).

 and mistrust of traditional financial assets, the global art market has been booming in recent years — particularly for the most expensive pieces. A record-breaking 

 was spent on art last year, according to the European Fine Art Foundation. Yet the market is not as healthy as the impressive numbers might suggest.

Explaining the Art Market’s Thefts, Frauds, and Forgeries (And Why the Art Market Does Not Seem to Care)

,” Gregory Day explores the secretive state of the art market today, where all the players involved are incentivized to reveal as little information as possible. Rather than striving towards an efficient market, where resources are allocated according to widely available information, buyers, sellers, auctioneers, and private dealers seem to have agreed to deal in the dark — and there’s no government regulation to stop them.

At first glance, it’s unbelievable that buyers are willing to shell out millions for an item with uncertain value. As a unique good, art doesn’t have a “going rate” to serve as a benchmark, so a dealer’s asking price begins the conversation. Auction houses, as public venues where experts can view and weigh in on the work, should add more validity to the price, but bidders are often anonymous, and it’s common practice for sellers to hire agents to bid up prices.

About half of art sales take place in private deals, where dealers are allowed to represent both the sellers and buyers without disclosing this conflicting interest to either party. In such a situation, the dealer clearly would have little interest in finding a “fair value,” questioning the work’s authenticity, or looking into whether or not it had been stolen in the past, which would give someone else a claim to it. These concerns, which are central to determining the value of an artwork, are rarely adequately addressed.

Day explains that “the norms of the art world [instruct] dealers and buyers to refrain from questioning a work’s origin and transactional history,” which is remarkable considering that when a work’s authenticity is called into dispute, its value plummets, and works that have been stolen typically must be returned to their rightful owner, no matter when the thievery took place.

Buyers are willing to refrain from asking these questions precisely because they consider their purchased art as an investment — an asset they will sell at an opportune time. They adopt the seller’s perspective; doubts that could diminish the price tag are pushed aside under the assumption that no one later down the line will bring up the issue either.

Investigating the history of a work at art is expensive and challenging, partly because of the difficulty of finding a disinterested expert. Specialists who own works by a particular artist are wary of authenticating other works by the same artist, since they could drive down the value of their own holdings. Experts can stand to lose from questioning the authenticity of a work: some owners have been known to sue them for threatening the work’s marketability.

The current legal regime is ill-suited to monitoring the art market, requiring “a level of information that almost never exists,” according to Day. Considering the art world’s long history of undisclosed ownership and sketchy record-keeping — and the fact that nearly half of Europe’s art was stolen during WWII — virtually all artwork has a disputable past. Since neither buyers nor sellers expect to meet legal standards, they push negotiations farther underground.

No one seems keen on changing the shadowy status quo. The interests of buyers and sellers are sufficiently aligned, for a buyer expects to benefit more as a seller tomorrow than she risks losing as a buyer today. After all, art tends to gain value as it hangs on the wall, or sits in storage, as the case may be.

Explaining the Art Market’s Thefts, Frauds, and Forgeries (And Why the Art Market Does Not Seem to Care

Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law

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Sold to anonymous bidders and quiet buyers, classical masterpieces often go into hiding for years at a time. The art market has been operating with minimal transparency or oversight for years – dragging treasured artwork from the spotlight to the shadows.

The Disappearing Act of the World’s Most Valuable Art

Floods, storms, and earthquakes make for compelling images — they’re immediate and violent spectacles, and as such, capture both headlines and the public imagination. Their power churns the international aid agenda, spurring government commitments and mobilizing private resources to assist the displaced.

It’s an unpleasant reality, but it’s easier to ignore other environmental phenomena that are just as catastrophic (if not more so) for people whose livelihoods are at risk from slow-moving disasters like climate change, years and decades in the making. Rising temperatures, changing rain patterns, and soil degradation upend the lives of families and entire communities in developing countries, but the amount of time required to produce unlivable situations muddies the causality between the environmental factor and the choice to leave home.

The causal relationship between flooding and homelessness is straightforward and easily justified. But farmers who lose their livelihoods due to climate change-induced heat stress are 

. Are they “environmental migrants,” driven from their homes by unprecedented environmental changes? Or are they “economic migrants” seeking to improve their quality of life?

While the decision to migrate is always intertwined with social, economic, cultural, and political factors, a closer look at migration patterns reveals the strong influence of climate change. A 

study of 7,000 Indonesian households over the course of 15 years

 found that earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and landslides have little to no impact on province-to-province migration rates; families are either able to weather these disasters or return home shortly after they occur, often with assistance from the state or charities.

On the other hand, researchers uncovered a strong correlation between heat stress and permanent migration. In Pakistan, 

, while the focus of a substantial amount of international aid, does not have a statistically significant impact on migration, but temperature does: a rural Pakistani male is eleven times more likely to move out of his village if temperatures are extremely high.

Heat stress lowers the yield of wheat, corn, soybeans and other crops, with painful effects for farmers and everyone dependent on them. Starting at 25°C, any temperature increase intensifies emigration exponentially; a one degree jump to 26°C is associated with a 12–15 percent decline in the value of a household’s assets, and as temperatures rise higher, the losses are even greater. 

Scientists studying similar developments in Mexico

 took their research a step further, predicting that the declining crop yields caused by higher temperatures will spur the emigration of 5.5–6.7 million Mexicans by 2080. No longer able to make ends meet, families become desperate enough to leave.

While wealthy societies may find ways to adapt to climate change without migrating, others don’t have this luxury. The poorest families feel the financial strain most acutely, lack the resources to adapt, and have the least land and fewest assets to leave behind. Climbing temperatures exacerbate inequalities, as 

, including indigenous populations, are uprooted. Communities with inadequate infrastructure and long-term public health challenges — malnutrition, poor health care facilities, and insufficient clean water — 

struggle to rise to such profound new challenges

; the most vulnerable amongst them leave first and in the greatest proportions.

 of a complex phenomenon, the world they foretell merits action. As 

the Asian Development Bank stated in a recent report

, “[Although] the full impact of these incremental processes will not be evident for several decades, the interventions needed are often very large in scale and will therefore need to be put into operation over time. The crucial point is that the need for action … is urgent.” For the families already packing their bags, this point goes without saying.

“Heat stress increases long-term human migration in rural Pakistan,”

Pratikshya Bohra-Mishra, Michael Oppenheimer, and Solomon M. Hsiang, “

Nonlinear permanent migration response to climactic variations but minimal response to disasters

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

, Vol. 111, No. 27, July 8, 2014, pp. 9780–9785.

Shuaizhang Feng, Alan B. Krueger, and Michael Oppenheimer. 

“Linkages among climate change, crop yields, and Mexico-US cross-border migration,”

, Vol. 107, No. 32, August 10, 2010, pp. 14257–14262.

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As rising temperatures uproot families, it remains difficult to point the finger at slow-moving transformations.

The Neglected Victims of Climate Change

” At a summit in Riga this May, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker greeted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbàn with this pointed greeting. The EU has been warily observing Mr. Orbàn’s tightening grip on power since the leader of Hungary’s rightwing Fidesz Party took office in 2010 with a supermajority in Parliament.

Orbàn has not shied away from conflict with European Union leadership, declaring his intent to construct an “

” democracy, putting national interests above individual freedom, aided by a new constitution and more than seven hundred associated laws that have substantially weakened checks on executive power. Orbàn’s constitution, 

drafted rapidly on an iPad by a close friend

, has undermined the independence of the judiciary and frightened journalists into self-censorship.

The Fidesz Party leadership also rewrote the electoral law in its favor, giving the party an “undue advantage” in the 2014 elections, as the typically staid Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe put it. The elections saw Fidesz hold onto its two-thirds parliamentary majority, allowing it to continue to rush through transformative legislation without giving civil society a chance to react — a phenomenon Eleni Kounalakis, former U.S. Ambassador to Hungary, referred to as the “two-thirds revolution” in her new book.

Though Orbàn claims to be shaping a new, non-Western type of democracy, Jan-Werner Müller of Princeton University observes that Orbàn is actually eroding freedom and the rule of law in Hungary. In a recent article published in the 

, Müller writes that in the absence of free media, truly competitive elections, and active civil society, a country is not a democracy at all, regardless of whether or not there are periodic elections.

Hungary’s turn towards authoritarianism presents an unprecedented challenge for the European Union, whose membership is based on core values including democracy and the rule of law. But beyond cheeky comments to the prime minister, how can the EU respond to a member state that violates the most fundamental aspects of what the organization stands for?

Ironically, critics frequently blast the EU for failing to be democratic itself. But the EU does not pretend to be a continent-wide democracy. Its legitimacy is based on the fact that national parliaments of liberal democracies freely voted to join and abide by the organization’s values and laws. On these grounds, the EU has an obligation, for the sake of all its member states, to preserve democracy within its borders.

Thus far, the European Union has not been successful in slowing Orbàn’s undemocratic reforms. In fact, the Hungarian prime minister has become increasingly defiant in recent weeks, threatening to 

Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union is intended to address exactly this type of situation. When a member state fails to live up to central obligations by committing “serious and persistent breach” of the Union’s fundamental values, the treaty allows for a the suspension of that country’s voting rights in the European Council. However, no such suspension has ever been imposed; no state seems to want to risk Article 7 being used against it or a neighbor.

There are other legal safeguards, but they have thus far been ineffective. When a member state violates EU law, the European Commission can bring infringement cases to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). In 2011, the commission brought a case to the ECJ in response to Hungary lowering the retirement age for judges from 70 to 62 — a policy enacted with the clear goal of opening judicial positions for Fidesz appointees. The European Commission won the case on the basis of age discrimination, but did not make headway on the political issue it sought to address. Since the former judges had already stepped down, the Fidesz loyalists were able to keep their positions, further undermining the independence of the judiciary.

As existing legal instruments are either too politically charged or too indirect to be effective, Professor Müller lays out a new, more promising framework to preserve democracy and the rule of law within all EU member states. He proposes creating an impartial Copenhagen Commission (named after the criteria to join the EU) to provide consistent, comprehensive judgment as to the state of democracy and the rule of law within member states. To be effective, this Copenhagen Commission must be able to trigger meaningful action upon the release of a negative report, such as cutting EU-specific funds or imposing substantial fines.

The Copenhagen Commission’s challenge would be to fairly evaluate the strength of democracy within member states. There is no ideal model to which each nation can be compared, and no checklist of specific laws or institutions that can be applied, since each state’s unique historical, political, and legal context justifies a diverse set of government structures. If created, the organization must be careful to only condemn member states with a clear “track record of violating liberal-democratic political principles” in a way that cannot be reversed through domestic mechanisms. Hungary would be the first candidate for scrutiny.

The EU’s toothless response to Orbàn’s overreach has a high price. When Hungarians overwhelmingly voted to join the EU in 2004 (

almost 84 percent of voters supported EU membership

), they must have believed that membership would guarantee the success of their own fledgling democracy. For the sake of its own credibility and message to its own members and beyond, the EU must actively ensure that democracy and rule of law are not empty principles, but concrete realities for its citizens.

“Should the EU Protect Democracy and the Rule of Law inside Member States?”

, Vol. 21, No. 2, March 2015, pp. 141-160.

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As Hungary’s leader stamps out democratic freedoms, the EU searches for the tools to respond. Can a dictatorship be born in the EU?

Nicole Orttung