CHRR reports Malawi to African Commission on health budget

Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) has asked the African Commission to urge Malawi fulfil its health financing to fulfil the Abuja Declaration.

Executive director Michael Kaiyatsa said this on Friday in Dakar, Senegal during the 89th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights.

The Abuja Declaration, adopted by the African Union (AU) in April 2001, pledges that governments will allocate at least 15 percent of their annual national budget to improve the health sector.

In his presentation to the commission, the executive director said Malawi hasn’t fulfilled its commitment of 15 percent health budget. He said in the 2025/25 financial year, government only allocated about 12.2 percent, 9.2 percent in 2025/26 and 8.5 percent in the 2026/27 national budget which, he noted, is below the Abuja Declaration.

“We call upon the African Commission to urge Malawi to fulfil its health financing commitments by progressively increasing domestic budgetary allocations to health in line with the Abuja Declaration and prioritising adequate funding for sexual and reproductive health rights [SRHR] programmes and services,” he said.

Health activist Maziko Matemba said there are a number of factors that has resulted into Malawi’s underfunding to health. These include the devaluation of the kwacha, heavy donor dependency and inelastic fiscal space.

“Malawi has shown policy willingness, but willingness without meeting the 15 percent budget threshold means our progress toward achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2030 remains fragile. Government must transition from rhetorical commitment to aggressive domestic health financing and implement the newly introduced National Health Fund as a platform for generating more additional resources for the health sector,” he said.

Other issues Kaiyatsa presented are the draft family values charter which he said could create a parallel frameworks that dilutes or reverses achievements on human rights, increasing civic space restrictions in Malawi and the threat by Non-Governmental Organisation Regulatory Authority (Ngora) to deregister some organisations.

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