<![CDATA[Witchcraft accusations against children have persisted in Cross River State despite legal prohibition and sustained human rights advocacy, producing a troubling pattern of abuse, abandonment, and homicide justified through appeals to spiritual malevolence. Existing scholarship has examined this phenomenon largely through sociological, legal, and child protection frameworks, but comparatively little attention has been paid to the underlying metaphysics of evil that renders such accusations intelligible and, for some communities, morally defensible. This paper addresses that gap by interrogating the conceptual architecture that sustains the accusation of children as witches. It asks how evil is conceived within the indigenous ontology of Cross River communities, how that conception assigns moral responsibility, and how it collides with a rights-based ethical framework that treats children as bearers of inviolable dignity. Drawing on conceptual analysis and engagement with African metaphysics of personhood, the paper argues that the problem is not reducible to superstition or ignorance, nor to simple criminality. It is a clash of moral ontologies, in which the accused child is positioned simultaneously as victim and as threat. The paper further contends that philosophical analysis can clarify what is at stake in this conflict and can inform responses that neither dismiss indigenous worldviews as irrational nor permit them to shield grave violations of children's rights. It concludes by proposing a framework of moral responsibility that preserves the reality of spiritual belief while holding human agents accountable for the harm they inflict.]]>
