A series of conferences held in Entebbe, Uganda, between 2023 and 2025 have resulted in a draft African Charter on Family, Sovereignty and Values. The meetings were organised by the Inter-parliamentary Network on African Sovereignty and Values, which organises continental conferences for African legislators and faith-based advocates. Supported by international conservative groups like Family Watch International and heavily promoted by Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni, the aim of the drafters of the charter is to convince African governments to sign on to it.
The draft charter is situated within the current global movement to the right, which prioritises nationalism, tougher immigration policies and an erosion of social values like gender equity. Framed as an effort to “protect” the family, it urges governments to adopt a series of regressive measures.
These include:
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opposing comprehensive sexuality education
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rejecting the sexual and reproductive health and rights agenda, especially abortion (under any circumstance)
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establishing African “sovereignty” over health, food, education and economic development
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preserving African cultural values, traditions and the role of elders.
Several legal responses have been set out by African rights institutions, such as Afya Na Haki. These show the clash of many of the draft charter’s proposals with continental legal provisions.
We are researchers with extensive experience in sexual and reproductive health and rights. Here, we address the inaccuracies contained in the charter. We are particularly concerned about the implications if it is adopted.
Decades of scientific evidence produced on the African continent and elsewhere suggest that the measures, if adopted, will cause significant harm.
Reproductive health and rights
The draft charter declares, among other things, that African countries shouldn’t ratify any agreements that reference sexual and reproductive health and rights. It also calls for eliminating comprehensive sexuality education and any form of abortion service provision.
At a very basic level, disregarding sexual and reproductive health undermines obstetric and gynaecological care, childbirth and fertility treatments. It also affects the prevention and treatment of HIV and sexually transmitted infections. It harms access to contraceptive services and family planning, as well as reproductive cancer care. No African country would sensibly contemplate this.
Additionally, the draft falsely claims that the sexual and reproductive health rights “agenda” promotes abortion on demand. Yet, the UN’s definition of “reproductive health” encompasses comprehensive abortion care within countries’ legal frameworks.
The draft charter encourages states to define all related terms to clearly exclude any rights to abortion. No exceptions are specified. This would include cases where the pregnant person’s life is at risk, as well as pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.
This stance contradicts understandings of abortion within African countries. A 2025 survey conducted across 38 African countries found that nearly two-thirds (63%) of citizens say abortion is justified if the woman’s health or life is at risk. Nearly half (48%) justified abortion in the case of rape or incest.
The draft also flies in the face of recent changes in African law. Globally, Africa, compared with other regions, has had the largest number of countries liberalising abortion laws since 1994.
Implementing the draft charter would additionally lead to a significant increase in maternal mortality from unsafe abortions. It’s important to note that the proportion of unwanted and unsupportable pregnancies that end in abortion is consistently similar across countries with liberal or restrictive abortion laws. This means that restrictive laws don’t reduce abortion rates. They merely drive abortion underground, rendering it unsafe.
Already, sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 29% of the global unsafe abortions and 62% of abortion-related deaths. Further restrictions on comprehensive abortion care (including post-abortion care) would drive up maternal morbidity and mortality.
Comprehensive sexuality education
The draft charter argues for abstinence-focused sexuality education. It falsely claims that comprehensive education would sexualise African children, undermine their innocence and violate parental rights.
Comprehensive sexuality education is a curriculum-based, scientifically accurate process of teaching and learning about the cognitive, emotional, physical and social aspects of sexuality. It encourages abstinence but also provides teaching, in an age-appropriate manner, on contraception and ways to avoid sexual risks. These risks include infections and unplanned pregnancies.
Research conducted over three decades indicates that comprehensive sexuality education provides more positive outcomes than abstinence-based sexuality education. These outcomes include reducing early and unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV). It also helps delay early initiation of sexual activity and reduces intimate partner violence.
In claiming that comprehensive sexuality education undermines children’s innocence, the draft charter conflates “innocence” with ignorance. Children have a natural curiosity regarding sexual issues once they reach puberty. They will seek out information where they can (including social media). One of the ways of protecting them from sex-related harms is to empower them with age-appropriate knowledge about sexual issues. And the skills to avoid sexual risks.
Comprehensive sexuality education also recognises that parents often struggle with talking to their children about sexual matters. It therefore offers an important source of trustworthy information for children and adolescents. Further, while the family is of pre-eminent importance in society, it can also be the site of child abuse, child neglect and intimate partner violence.
Definition of family
Finally, the draft charter defines the family as based on marriage between a man and a woman. This definition of family as nuclear and heterosexual is not an originally African one.
In precolonial Africa, the practice of polygyny/polyandry was prevalent. This presented a clear contrast to the nuclear, monogamous model. In reality, family structures are highly diverse in Africa. They include many multigenerational, single-parent, re-constituted and same-sex parent families.
The draft charter dresses up its provisions in the language of ubuntu. This is a relational, inclusive and dynamic ethical philosophy. In doing so, it distorts the essence of ubuntu by converting this philosophy into a rigid, exclusionary and state-focused ideology.
What next
The draft charter threatens to undermine the rule of law and the shared legal principles that underpin the international treaty system. It claims to defend African sovereignty.
But true sovereignty means honouring the treaties governments have freely adopted. These include the Maputo Protocol, which guarantees women extensive rights, including reproductive health choices and protection from violence. The African Children’s Charter similarly enshrines children’s rights to protection, development and well-being.
The draft charter is not defence of African values. It’s a legal coup against them. It should be dismissed outright by all African governments.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
