Ghana’s parliament invited a vociferously anti-vaccine Kenyan and a conservative Dutch activist campaigning to curtail the World Health Organization (WHO) to address visiting MPs on “health sovereignty” last week.

Ghanaian President John Mahama – who is championing African “health sovereignty” via an initiative called the Accra Reset – was a keynote speaker at the WHO’s World Health Assembly last month, and is drumming up international support for the initiative.

Yet Ghanaian Speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin, a leader in Mahama’s National Democratic Congress, hosted Dr Wahome Ngare and Wilmer Hak, from ultra-conservative Christian Council International (CCI), and sat back as they made inflammatory and wild claims about the WHO, the Gates Foundation and other health initiatives during their speeches.

Describing COVID-19 vaccines as an “assault”, Ngare accused the Gates Foundation and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) of “genocide” for “gain-of-function” research – erroneously claiming that they are manufacturing viruses to infect humans so they can develop and profit from vaccines.

Ngare also claimed that the WHO was trying to use pandemics to grab power through the International Health Regulations, which set out rules to contain epidemics. He heads a largely dormant group called the African Sovereignty Coalition, and also chairs the Kenya Christian Professionals Forum. 

He also denounced the WHO definition of health as being “godless”, said people with “same-sex attraction” had been sexually abused as children and suffered from “a very serious mental illness called post-traumatic stress disorder”, and called for “single parents” to be referred to as “absent spouse families”.

Meanwhile, Hak said that the WHO is financed largely by private companies and the pharmaceutical industry, which is why it was focused on fundraising for pandemics – as this would ensure that these groups profited.

Hak also claimed that the WHO Pandemic Agreement aims to centralise power during global health emergencies. Hak also said that the WHO should work towards “progressive redundancy, as national capacities mature”.

He also claimed that the WHO and various international human rights mechanisms have “intensified their calls for universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) without any limitations”.

Hak also referred MPs to the right-wing think-tank, the Brownstone Institute’s International Health Reform Project – an explicitly anti-WHO initiative.

‘Family values’ charter

The pair’s speeches were part of the fourth annual meeting of the Inter-parliamentary Conference on Family, Sovereignty and Values, a conservative initiative that has been campaigning against sexual and reproductive health rights for several years – with the backing of US and European conservative Christian groups, including Hak’s CCI and Family Watch International.

The conference is developing a draft “Charter on Family, Sovereignty and Values” that it aims to present to the African Union for adoption. 

However, the draft treaty already contradicts several continental human rights-based treaties – including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), the Maputo Protocol, and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC).

Felix Kwakye Ofosu, Ghana’s Minister of State in Charge of Government Communications, failed to respond to Health Policy Watch’s queries about why Ngare and Hak were invited and whether their views on health sovereignty reflect those of the Ghanaian government.

However, Health Policy Watch first reported on an alliance between anti-rights groups opposing sexual and reproductive health rights and anti-vaxxers in 2024, at the second meeting of the Inter-parliamentary Conference on Family, Sovereignty and Values in Entebbe, Uganda.

Ngare also addressed that conference, where he claimed that several vaccines caused infertility, and also attacked the WHO. He was supported by Shabnam Mohamed, executive director of the Africa Chapter of Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group started by current US Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.

This alliance mirrors developments in the United States, where conservative Christians opposed to abortion and LGBTQ rights have united with Kennedy’s ‘Make America Healthy Again’, which is led by several anti-vaccine activists, to maximise their power in the Republican Party.

Lastweek’s cconference was held shortly after the Ghanaian parliament passed one of the most repressive anti-LGBTQ laws in the world, following a similar pattern to Uganda, which also tightened up its anti-LGBTQ law before hosting the conference in 2024.

Burkina Faso is due to host the next conference in 2027, and MPs attending last week’s meeting were urged to drum up support for the Charter in the next year.

However, South Africa’s delegate told the conference that her country would not adopt such a charter as it “contradicts our Constitution and … does not align with the regional and international laws that we believe in”.