NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 1-African women’s rights advocates have warned that growing appeals to “family values”, culture, religion and national sovereignty are being used to undermine hard-won protections for women and…
NAIROBI, Kenya, Sep 1-African women’s rights advocates have warned that growing appeals to “family values”, culture, religion and national sovereignty are being used to undermine hard-won protections for women and girls, calling for stronger public engagement and accountability to prevent a rollback of gender-equality gains.
The warning emerged ahead of the 81st United Nations General Assembly as rights experts and civil society groups examined growing anti-rights mobilisation and its potential impact on gender equality, sexual and reproductive health and human rights accountability.
The latest SHE & Rights session, jointly hosted by the Global Center for Health Diplomacy and Inclusion (CeHDI) and CNS with the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW) and Asia Pacific Media Alliance for Health, Gender and Development Justice (APCAT Media), placed particular focus on the use of family, cultural and religious narratives in political and legal debates.
Dr Robert Eno, Registrar of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, said there was currently no indication that a proposed African Charter on “family sovereignty and values” was scheduled for consideration by the African Union Assembly.
Eno stressed that the draft charter was not proposed by the African Union and would have to pass through a lengthy institutional process before reaching the Assembly.
He also expressed doubt that the proposed instrument would reach the AU Assembly by February 2027.
But Eno cautioned against complacency, saying the concern went beyond the fate of a single proposed legal instrument.
He said the broader contest was about how societies define and understand family, culture, religion, equality and human dignity.
“Discriminatory laws continue to affect women and girls in different parts of the world,” he noted, citing unequal inheritance rights, restrictions on divorce and the failure in some jurisdictions to recognise marital rape.
Rehema Namukose, Senior Regional Programme Officer for sub-Saharan Africa at Musawah, said anti-rights actors were increasingly exploiting the language of family protection to stall reforms affecting women.
She said legislation seeking to advance women’s rights in marriage, divorce and custody was being delayed in some countries while restrictive “family protection” bills gained political traction, sometimes with external far-right funding.
Namukose cited developments in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda, saying political and legislative efforts could restrict bodily autonomy and sexual and reproductive rights while reforms addressing marriage, divorce, custody and women’s equal rights face delays.
She also linked the framing to practices including child marriage and female genital mutilation, as well as women’s economic disadvantage through unpaid care work and unequal property and inheritance rights.
In some Muslim family-law systems, she said, concepts such as “male guardianship” and “male authority” can be codified in ways that make women’s rights conditional on obedience.
Namukose argued that the language of “family values”, “cultural integrity”, “sovereignty” and “national cohesion” can be deployed to preserve patriarchal power rather than protect families.
She called for greater cooperation between legal networks, faith communities, survivors, policymakers and civil society organisations.
Samah Hadid, Global Executive Director of Musawah, similarly warned that the anti-rights movement was becoming more coordinated and better resourced, with religion, culture and tradition increasingly used to justify discrimination.
She said religious language was frequently used to police women and reinforce patriarchal control in both private and public life.
Musawah is seeking to challenge such arguments from within Muslim legal and religious traditions by developing egalitarian Islamic arguments supporting women’s rights and training activists, lawyers and judges to use them.
Hadid called for alliances involving secular, religious, cultural and human-rights actors, arguing that family, religion and tradition can coexist with equality and justice for women and girls.
Calls to pause AU violence-against-women treaty ratification
The discussions also turned to the African Union Convention on Eliminating Violence Against Women and Girls (AU CEVAWG), adopted in February 2025.
Fatou Bantou Salah of the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa (ISLA) said nine AU member states had signed the convention, while The Gambia and Ghana had ratified it.
The treaty requires 15 ratifications to enter into force, leaving 13 additional ratifications needed.
Salah said the period before the treaty becomes binding should be used for a thorough legal review.
ISLA and other civil society actors have raised concerns about limited civil-society consultation during drafting, the absence of published preparatory materials, conceptual and substantive gaps and weaknesses concerning state due-diligence obligations.
Salah also pointed to the lack of express references to issues including female genital mutilation, child marriage and conflict-related sexual violence.
The organisation’s “Pause for Purpose” campaign is not seeking to abandon the convention but wants ratification paused while its provisions are examined article by article and compared with existing African human-rights instruments.
The review would also involve survivors, women’s rights organisations, lawyers, service providers and affected communities.
Salah summarised the campaign’s approach as: “pause, listen, review, strengthen, then ratify.”
Eno said Africa nevertheless has important legal foundations for protecting women and girls, including the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Maputo Protocol, the African Children’s Charter, AU gender-parity commitments and regional human-rights jurisprudence.
But he said the next challenge was implementation and accountability, warning that treaties and court judgments would have little effect unless governments implemented them.
He also urged rights advocates to move beyond conventional human-rights forums and engage people who may disagree with or fear the human-rights agenda.
“Human-rights meetings” risk “preaching to the converted” if they fail to reach homes, schools, places of worship, traditional institutions, communities and social media, he said.
Eswatini highlights gap between services and access
The session also examined the continuing barriers facing adolescent girls, with Eswatini presented as an example of both progress and persistent gaps.
Vimbai Kapurura, Executive Director of Girls Not Brides and Founder Executive Director of Women Unlimited Eswatini, said the country’s adolescent birth rate had fallen from 87 births per 1,000 girls aged 15–19 to 78, while early childbearing before age 18 declined from 17% to 12% between 2022 and 2025.
However, modern contraceptive use among sexually active unmarried girls aged 15–19 stood at about 51%, while unmet need for family planning was 46%.
Kapurura said the existence of health infrastructure did not automatically guarantee quality, dignity or stigma-free care.
“We also have to look at the family, the school, and the community and the systems around her, and ask whether they are creating opportunities or creating barriers for her,” she said.
She said Eswatini’s November 2026 Universal Periodic Review would provide an opportunity to examine whether policy commitments were translating into meaningful change for rural girls, adolescents and underserved communities.
The session further highlighted the need for gender considerations in the emerging international framework on the rights of older persons.
Khalid Hassine, Secretary of the UN Inter-Governmental Working Group on the Human Rights of Older Persons, said civil society participation could be particularly important as governments negotiate a legally binding international instrument.
He cited written submissions, research, litigation, treaty engagement and coalition-building as avenues for participation, noting that more than 200 stakeholder submissions had been received during the July session.
Shobha Shukla, Chairperson of Development Justice for Older Persons, said older people must ensure that their lived experiences are reflected in the proposed framework, particularly those of women, indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities and other marginalised groups.
“Ageism and gender inequality must end with us,” Shukla said.
She added that older people should be recognised as rights holders and contributors to families, communities, economies and public life rather than treated as recipients of charity.
The next meeting of the UN Inter-Governmental Working Group on the proposed treaty is scheduled for October 26–30, 2026, while the International Day of Older Persons on October 1 will provide another opportunity to build political momentum around the process.
