Draft African 'Family Values' Charter condemned as regressive and dangerous

A treaty that repudiates long-standing international human rights obligations moved closer to becoming policy this week as governments across the continent met in Ghana.

The draft African Charter on the Family, Sovereignty and Values, reviewed by the Guardian, asserts that African values and culture are under attack from 'foreign ideologies' and calls on states to withdraw from any agreements that conflict with its principles, including the landmark 2003 Maputo Protocol, which promotes gender equality and protects women’s and girls’ reproductive health and rights.

This is the first attempt to impose a continent-wide legal framework based on morality rather than human rights. The text declares that reproductive health and sexual rights pose an existential threat to the African family, and falsely claims that policies based on these rights promote abortion on demand.

The draft also rejects comprehensive sexuality education (CSE), saying it sexualises children; asserts that gender is only male or female; and states that parents’ rights override children’s rights, including decisions about sexuality and discipline.

African legal experts, reproductive rights groups and LGBTQ+ advocates have denounced the draft as regressive and dangerous. Gilbert Mitullah, a Kenyan lawyer and board member of the Queer African Network, said: 'It’s a licence to object, regress or refuse to implement existing commitments on sexual and reproductive health and rights, and on the rights of LGBTQ people, and to dismantle the Maputo Protocol from within. That’s its functional effect, even before any signatures are put on it.'

The draft was written by a group of African lawmakers, led by Ugandan government ministers, at the annual inter-parliamentary conference on family values and sovereignty, a controversial meeting known for shaping anti-homosexuality legislation. The aim of the 2026 conference, held in Ghana for the first time this week and attended by representatives from 20 countries, is to advance the charter by gathering enough support to present it to the African Union’s general assembly in February next year, when it will be put to a vote.

Critics argue that the draft’s definition of the family, based on heterosexual marriage, ignores the huge diversity of families across the continent’s 54 countries. In a wide-ranging analysis of the draft, the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa (ISLA), a pan-African feminist organisation, argues that prioritising the family over the individual 'risks legitimising the subordination of women, children and adolescents to the collective interests of the family and insulating private family relations from state accountability, especially in situations involving violence, coercion or discrimination'. Lakshita Kanhiya, a legal officer at ISLA, said: 'Women will no longer be safe; children will not be safe.'

The ISLA report also criticises how legitimate concerns about sovereignty and colonialism are distorted. The terms throughout the draft charter suggest a strong influence from conservative Christian organisations from the US and Europe that oppose abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Progressive policies are dismissed as neo-colonialism or cultural imperialism. Famia Nkansa, head of communications at Purposeful, a Sierra Leone-based organisation focused on girl-led activism, said: 'Anti-rights activities on the continent are simply an extension and development of the same colonial script: Africa serves as a battleground where the West fights its ideological and economic wars.'

According to US-based international reproductive rights organisation Ipas, the annual conferences have been backed by Family Watch International (FWI), an Arizona-based Christian lobby group that opposes abortion and runs campaigns against CSE. Sharon Slater, FWI’s co-founder, has repeatedly claimed that the UN and Western donor states are imposing a 'radical sexual rights agenda'. Gilbert Mitullah added that the Geneva Consensus Declaration, an anti-abortion manifesto drafted by former Trump adviser Valerie Huber, had been cited in the text, describing the document as 'the collaborative product of a transnational network, with African signatories used to create a veneer of indigenous origins'. In a statement, FWI said it was neither involved in nor funded the conference in Ghana. 'The draft charter is African-inspired, African-initiated and African-directed and controlled,' FWI said, but added: 'That said, FWI strongly supports the draft charter’s restrictions on the dissemination of harmful CSE programmes in Africa, due to their tendency to sexualise children. We also strongly support provisions that encourage governments to use a family lens when developing and implementing laws, policies and programmes.'