27 June 2026
Only 54 months are left to deliver on
the promise of gender equality (SDG-5), and health and
wellbeing (SDG-3) by 2030. But the sense of urgency and
purpose is acutely missing and instead of going forward, in
many instances we are slipping backwards. Growing
anti-rights and anti-gender pushbacks are trying to reverse
whatever progress has been made on gender and health rights,
especially for girls and women and gender diverse
communities.
The latest attack on the gender rights
come in the form of a draft ‘African Charter on Family,
Sovereignty and Values’ that was endorsed by 20 African
countries at the 4th African Inter-Parliamentary Conference
on Family, Sovereignty and Values held in Ghana in early
June 2026.
This controversial draft emphasises upon
the so-called ‘African values’, ‘traditional family
structures’ (marriage defined as between a man and a woman),
‘sovereignty’ against ‘foreign ideologies’, and calls
for withdrawing from international agreements like the
legally binding Maputo Protocol on women’s rights. It is
intended for eventual consideration by the African Union in
February 2027.
In the words of Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng,
United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Right To
Health, “This regressive draft Charter is the first African
continent-wide patriarchal push to dislodge human rights and
replace them with so-called ‘moralistic’ viewpoints.
More importantly, it urges African governments to withdraw
from progressive and rights- and evidence-based agreements,
including the historic and legally binding Maputo Protocol
of 2003, which has been playing a defining role in promoting
gender equality, as well as protecting reproductive and
health rights of women and girls in Africa. Such a
regressive attempt will also wrongfully firewall 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.”
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Dr Mofokeng was delivering her opening
remarks at a SHE & Rights session hosted by the Global
Center 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 CNS.
UN Special
Rapporteur on Right To Health Dr Mofokeng 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.
An analysis of this draft Charter done by ISLA
(Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa) shows that
the draft Charter is not merely conservative but it
constitutes a restructuring of rights through legal
distortion. Sovereignty is used to resist accountability and
family protection is used to justify exclusion. Culture is
invoked to limit equality protections and human rights is
reframed as a ‘foreign ideology.’ A family is defined as
marriage through the lens of a marriage between a man and
woman. There is a shift from rights-based governance to
‘values’-based regulation.
Distorted definition of
family
The draft Charter defines family through the
lens of a marriage between a man and woman. “This directly
conflicts with established international and regional human
rights laws and jurisprudence. The draft Charter frames the
family as a primary unit for policy design, governance and
service delivery. It prioritises family welfare, family
cohesion and family authority above individual
consideration. This becomes especially dangerous when
families themselves are sites of violence, coercion,
discrimination or unequal power relations. The draft Charter
provides no safeguards to ensure that prioritising family
cohesion cannot override women’s rights, children’s
rights, bodily autonomy, or protection from abuse,” said
Sibongile Ndashe, Executive Director, Initiative for
Strategic Litigation in Africa (ISLA).
Sovereignty
versus the individual
Sibongile Ndashe rightly points
out that the draft Charter expands sovereignty to justify
extensive government control over morality, health,
education, sexuality and family life.
Agrees Famia
Nkansa, Communications Lead, at Purposeful – a feminist hub
rooted in Sierra Leone. “According to the draft Charter the
woman is not the primary political actor. She is not even
the survivor. The family and the government runs everything.
And particularly in African continent where the family is
very rarely a site of safety or a sight of protection or a
site of nurturing and growth, but often times for women it
is a site of violence, and a sight of shame.”
For
Nkansa, the draft Charter wants to reframe human rights
protections as ‘foreign impositions’ rather than African
aspirations. It is an attempt to substitute a frame from
autonomy, equality, dignity, and bodily integrity to
‘sovereignty’, ‘parental authority’, ‘tradition’, and
‘cultural preservation.’
Is the draft Charter a wolf
in sheep’s clothing?
Letlhogonolo Mokgoroane, South
African legal practitioner, calls it a draft Charter in
sheep’s clothing, as it “…uses rights language to strip
rights. It speaks of ‘protecting the family’ while removing
protections from families that do not conform to its narrow
definition. It speaks of African values while promoting
values that were designed in Arizona and incubated in
Washington DC.”
Mokgoroane, who is a non-binary
person, is distraught because “the draft charter defines
gender as limited to male and female, erasing the existence
of intersex and gender diverse persons. It defines family
exclusively through heterosexual marriage and biological
parenthood, excluding same-sex families, single parent
families, gender diverse parents or gender diverse children.
In the ‘world’ of the draft Charter, these people do not
exist, and when the law says you do not exist, the
consequences are not abstract.”
“The draft Charter
also rejects comprehensive sexuality education – the very
education that evidence has shown leads to better sexual and
reproductive health outcomes, lower rates of HIV
transmission, lower rates of unintended pregnancies, and
lower rates of gender-based violence. The draft Charter
replaces evidence with ideology. It replaces public health
with moralism and invokes sovereignty as a basis for
non-compliance with international human rights
obligation.”
Mokgoroane contends that the African
Inter-Parliamentary Conferences on Family, Sovereignty and
Values that have developed this draft charter are supported,
funded and shaped by US-based conservative organisations,
like Family Watch International, which is an anti-LGBTI
organisation that has been channelling resources into Africa
to change laws and shift policies. Not surprisingly, “This
is legislative capture dressed as deliberation. The draft
Charter was incubated in conferences funded by US-based
organisations whose presence has no mandate for many African
people. It has deployed the language of African authenticity
while importing an agenda that serves American conservative
Christianity. It speaks of protecting the African family
while removing protections from families that do not conform
to its narrow definition. It speaks of African values but
its ideologies originate in an American evangelist
movement.”
Global repercussions
Dr Pam Rajput,
former Chairperson of Government of India’s High-Level
Committee on the Status of Women, warns that this
anti-rights pushback is not only regressive, but also
contagious. It is not an issue for Africa alone. “The
question is what it means for the future of women’s rights
everywhere. Rollback of rights in one region can become a
precedent elsewhere.”
How do we counter the
anti-rights pushes and advance gender equality and right to
health?
Human rights and gender justice activists
unanimously call for fighting tooth and nail to defeat the
draft Charter and to uphold the Maputo Protocol of 2003,
which is a legally binding human rights treaty that commits
to ending gender-based discrimination across Africa and was
ratified by 46 of the 55 African Union member countries. It
is one of the most widely accepted and most progressive
human rights instruments on the African continent. It
prohibits discrimination against women and gender diverse
peoples; guarantees rights to health, including sexual and
reproductive health; guarantees the right to dignity, and
protection from all forms of violence; and calls for
elimination of harmful practices, including female genital
mutilation and forced marriages.
Nkansa argues that
“Maputo Protocol is significant not only because of its
legal protections, but because it demonstrates that gender
equality and women’s rights are not external concepts that
were imposed on Africa, but they are principles that African
governments themselves negotiated and adopted. African women
activists, policymakers, legal experts, governments played a
central role in shaping the Protocol.”
For Mokgoroane,
“We must insist with every tool available to us – legal,
political, moral – that gender equality and the right to
health are not negotiable and not reversible. They are
constitutional. They are human rights and they are
ours.”
Rajput calls for adding all global voices in
favour of the Maputo Protocol and against the proposed draft
African Charter. “We must resist collectively and the
feminist solidarity must be global. Human dignity and human
rights are not divisible by geography. They cannot be
selectively applied or culturally withdrawn at the will of
some people. We need to challenge anti-rights narratives and
build cross-regional alliances to reaffirm universality of
rights.”
Shobha Shukla – CNS
(Citizen News Service)
(Shobha Shukla is a
feminist, health and development justice advocate, and an
award-winning founding Managing Editor and Executive
Director of CNS (Citizen News Service). She serves as
Chairperson of Global AMR Media Alliance (GAMA), Host and
Coordinator of SHE & Rights (Sexual Health with Equity
& Rights), President of Asia Pacific Media Alliance for
Health, Gender and Development Justice (APCAT Media), and
founder leader of DJOP (Development Justice for Older
Persons) initiative. She was also the Lead Discussant for
SDG-3 at United Nations inter-governmental High Level
Political Forum 2025. GAMA , led by her, received the AMR
One Health Emerging Leaders and Outstanding Talents Award at
UN High Level Ministerial Conference on AMR 2024. Follow her
on X @shobha1shukla or read her writings here www.bit.ly/ShobhaShukla)
