Human rights and legal experts have urged African governments not to buy into a draft charter being incubated by conservatives that will undermine the rights of women and girls.

Conflict, repressive laws and harmful cultural and religious practices conspire to undermine the health and safety of African women, girls and sexual minorities.

Now, one of the few continental treaties that protects women’s rights and promotes gender equality – known as the Maputo Protocol – is under threat from a conservative alliance with its roots in the Christian right-wing in the United States.

This alliance has developed a rival treaty – the draft African Charter on Family Sovereignty and Values – that it wants the African Union to adopt instead.

This draft charter was developed over four annual gatherings of conservatives. The first three in Uganda (2023, 2024 and 2025) were hosted by the Ugandan government and co-sponsored by the far-right US group, Family Watch International (FWI).  FWI has lobbied African governments for over two decades to outlaw abortion and tighten their anti-LGBT laws in the face of evidence that backstreet abortions are killing women and that gay people have always been part of African life.

The Maputo Protocol, which has been ratified by 46 of the continent’s 53 countries, commits countries to eliminating “all forms of discrimination against women”, including “harmful cultural and traditional practices”. It also allows for abortion “in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest, and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the mother or the life of the mother or the foetus”.

The rival draft charter, tabled at the fourth annual meeting of the Inter-parliamentary Conference on Family, Sovereignty and Values hosted by Ghana’s parliament earlier this month, wants “the family” – narrowly defined as a nuclear family headed by a husband – to be the foundation of all rights.

Members of Parliament from approximately 20 countries attended the conference, which has no legal status. They resolved to establish parliamentary caucuses on “family, sovereignty and values” with budgets from their parliaments, and to put their draft forward to heads of governments and the African Union for adoption.

Only the South African and Mozambican MPs declined to endorse the charter. 

‘Patriarchal push to dislodge human rights’

Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, outgoing United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Health, described the draft charter as “yet another assault on sexual and reproductive health rights and justice, as well as bodily autonomy and human rights in general”. 

It is the first continent-wide “patriarchal push to dislodge human rights”, she said, adding that the Maputo Protocol “has been playing a defining role in promoting gender equality, as well as protecting reproductive and health rights of women and girls in Africa”. 

By prioritising “family” over individual rights, the draft charter could legitimise subordination of girls, women, and gender diverse people, “wrongfully firewalling families from accountability in situations such as violence, coercion, or discrimination, making it impossible for vulnerable girls, women, and gender diverse people to seek justice where needed’, said Mofokeng.

She urged governments to “disengage with this draft Charter and instead honour and deliver on the promises they have made on gender equality and human rights to health, where no one is left behind”.

She was addressing a webinar hosted by the Centre for Health Diplomacy and Inclusion (CeHDI), International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW), Asia Pacific Media Alliance for Health, Gender and Development Justice (APCAT Media) and the media network, CNS.

‘Human rights reframed as a foreign ideology’

Sibongile Ndashe, executive director of the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa (ISLA), also described the draft charter as regressive. 

“Sovereignty is used to resist accountability, and family protection is used to justify exclusion,” Ndashe told the webinar. “Culture is invoked to limit equality protections, and human rights is reframed as a foreign ideology. The result is that there is a shift from rights-based governance to values-based regulation.”

Ndashe said that the charter narrowly defines “family” in terms of marriage, potentially excluding unmarried people from a range of services and inheritance.

Echoing Mofokeng, Ndashe said that the charter’s clauses “become especially dangerous where families themselves are sites of violence, coercion, discrimination, or unequal power relations. 

“Family cohesion cannot override women’s rights, children’s rights, bodily autonomy, or protection from abuse,” she stressed.

She also criticised the draft charter for expanding sovereignty to “justify extensive state control over morality, health, education, sexuality, and family life”.  ISLA has produced an extensive legal analysis of the draft charter.

Meanwhile, Famia Nkansa, communications lead at Purposeful in Sierra Leone, described the charter as dangerous “because it frames sovereignty as something that the state is entitled to versus the individual”. 

It is trying to substitute bodily autonomy, equality and dignity with “parental authority, tradition, and cultural preservation”, she added.

‘Weaponising legal instruments’

Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane, a South African legal practitioner who engages in rights-based litigation, said they have “seen up close what happens when legal instruments are weaponised against the vulnerable, and what happens when progressive instruments are dismantled or allowed to atrophy”.

Mokgoroane, who is non-binary, said the draft charter’s narrow definition of the family “excludes same-sex families, single-parent families, and chosen families from any legal recognition or protection” and its definition of gender “erases the existence of intersex and gender diverse persons”.

“The Maputo Protocol is a legally binding instrument that has been ratified by 46 of the 55 African Union member states. This is not a marginal document. This is a continental consensus on women’s rights, and the draft charter would have African governments repudiate it.”