Doublespeak: Second Vice President, Enock Kamzingeni Chihana. Photo: Mikel Images
On 10 December, 77 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Malawi’s second vice president Enock Kamzingeni Chihana made a familiar declaration about human rights being one of the country’s “everyday essentials”.
But in districts like Mulanje, Mangochi and Machinga, where women walk for hours to reach a health post, girls marry before they understand what marriage means and corruption siphons away public funds meant to keep people alive, the words ring hollow.
In most rural health facilities in Malawi, the first thing that is noticeable is what’s missing.
No staff. No medicines. No electricity.
Sometimes not even running water. Some 87% of births happen in rural communities, yet the health system is built everywhere except where women live.
As a result, the country’s maternal mortality rate is 381 deaths per 100 000 live births, one of the highest in the world.
In Mulanje, one of the poorest districts, pregnant women wake before dawn to begin the walk, two or sometimes three hours on rutted dirt roads, to antenatal clinics. When labour complications occur, the delay in reaching a hospital can be fatal.
The crisis worsened in late 2024 when United States President Donald Trump’s administration abruptly cut a major portion of development funding.
Malawi closed 20 health posts almost overnight. Communities talk about women giving birth in fields, on footpaths, and on motorbikes because there is nowhere else to go.
“Women are giving birth on their way to the district hospital. The distance is killing them,” community leader Massitive Matekenya said.
In 2024, only 20 new health centres were under construction for a population of 20 million.
Corruption further weakens the system, with health-sector procurement audits showing medicines bought at inflated prices, tenders given to political allies and stock disappearing before it reaches clinics.
The failures of the health system are closely tied to deep gender inequality.
A third of Malawian women have experienced physical violence and a fifth have experienced sexual violence. One in five girls is sexually abused before turning 18.
Forty-six percent of girls marry before adulthood. The Constitution’s 2017 ban on marriage under 18, celebrated at the time, remains mostly symbolic.
Between January and December 2018, authorities recorded 4 228 child marriages involving children as young as 12 to 14. Few led to arrests.
Girls pulled out of school quickly fall into cycles of early pregnancy, maternal risk, low education and lifelong economic dependence. The cycle then repeats with their daughters.
Malawi’s legal system for accountability looks strong on paper: An Anti-Corruption Bureau, a National Anti-Corruption Strategy and a Director of Public Prosecutions with wide powers. But these institutions lack budgets and political support to confront powerful networks.
Malawi has a constitution admired across the region, a Gender Equality Act, a Marriage, Divorce and Family Relations Act and a progressive new Disability Act.
But laws alone do not protect people and the Human Rights Commission is chronically underfunded, the Legal Aid Bureau cannot reach most poor Malawians and judicial budgets have shrunk so much that trials simply stall.
Where the state cannot reach, customary justice takes over, often reinforcing discrimination and lacking proper safeguards.
In his 10 December speech in the lakeside district of Nkhata Bay, Chihana admitted to systemic failures. The government promised timely funding for the Human Rights Commission and a stronger Legal Aid Bureau.
But for Malawians, adhering to human rights means taking concrete steps to ensure access to clean water, safe childbirth, school with teachers, functioning courtrooms and communities where girls can grow up without fear.