‘The children are not safe here’: the Nigerian couple fighting infanticide

A report from Theguardian profiles Olusola and Chinwe Stevens, a Christian couple who have been confronting practices of infanticide since 1996 and who founded the Vine Heritage Home Foundation in 2004. After discovering infants being poisoned, abandoned or buried alive, they built a refuge that now provides a home for more than 200 children.

The report describes how, in isolated pockets of Nigeria, traditional beliefs label some babies—twins, children born after a mother’s death, those with disabilities or albinism—as bringers of misfortune. Many of the nearby communities are poor and poorly served by health facilities, and Olusola says about 75% of Vine Heritage’s children are there because their mothers died in childbirth.

The Stevenses and fellow missionaries began pleading with families to hand over at-risk newborns rather than kill them, and increasingly communities now bring babies directly to the home; many arrivals have required urgent medical care after poisoning or severe malnutrition.

Nigeria