Organisations such as CitizenGo, Family Watch International, Family Policy Institute and Christian Council International promote opposition to abortion, LGBTI rights, reproductive healthcare and comprehensive sexuality education.
A poster featuring an all-white male panel of speakers from Europe, the US and other regions circulated online, promoting a pan-African conference on African Family Values.
The line-up was a tell-tale sign of yet another event underwritten by Global North actors with a clear anti-rights agenda. The organisers were forced to add African panellists after a backlash but, despite outrage from women’s groups and human rights organisations about its harmful content, the conference went ahead.
The main speakers were from organisations such as CitizenGo, Family Watch International, Family Policy Institute and Christian Council International, as well as churches and parliamentarians. These were also among the supporters and sponsors for the event. These organisations are known for conservative family and societal values advocating for what they call “traditional family values”.
The event organisers, African Christian Professionals Forum, has deep ties with these organisations including some of its board members associated with various US-based anti-rights groups.
At its core the conference promoted opposition to abortion, LGBTI rights, reproductive healthcare and comprehensive sexuality education. Among the organisers’ key issues of concern is that “African nations face pressure to enact policies, sign agreements and treaties that contradict their cultural and religious beliefs”. The conference was aimed to “promote and protect sanctity of life, family values, religious freedoms and values-based education and good governance”. These aims are similar to US-based anti-rights groups.
Event participants not only advocate in their countries on these topics but also at regional forums, including the African Union, and at the international level. Civil society has warned of the potential for increasingly coordinated attacks against the AU by these groups.
The 2025 Convention on Eliminating Violence against Women and Girls is thought to be their next advocacy target. They will probably argue that this treaty promotes gender ideology, a similar strategy adopted by anti-rights groups in Europe against the Istanbul Convention, which is also aimed at preventing and combatting violence against women.
This conference comes at a time of increasing authoritarianism where opportunistic populists, seeking to score cheap political points, often tout the idea that LGBTI identities are “un-African” and against “African values”.
The conference was attended by MPs from Uganda and Malawi and Kenyan lawyers. This is unsurprising since there have long been reports that US groups have financed propaganda about sexual and gender diversity, and have helped shape some of the harshest anti-LGBTI laws in Africa.
The language of ‘African values’ emerged at the regional level in 2018 when the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR), the continent’s highest human rights body, at the instruction of the African Union, stripped the Coalition of African Lesbians’ observer status.
In 2022 the ACHPR, this time on its own accord, then denied observer status to three human rights groups, claiming that LGBTI identities are “contrary to the virtues of African values”. These decisions ran counter to the historic Resolution passed by the ACHPR in 2014 which was clear that LGBTI identities enjoy full protection under the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
But what does it mean to be African? What are African values?
The African Charter empowers the ACHPR to undertake studies and research to address such questions. The ACHPR then uses these studies as a basis for principles and rules to guide African governments. In this vein, in 2023 the African Commission considered and adopted “a paper on African Values”. This paper is not public, so its contents are unknown, but it is probably aimed at explaining what the ACHPR means by “African values”, to guide African governments in their human rights legislation.
In answering this question, there are three key areas the ACHPR should consider.
First is a recognition that African families are incredibly diverse. The drafters of the African Charter acknowledged that African society is far too complex to be neatly compartmentalised. It was for this reason that the charter deliberately fails to define the notion of “peoples”, in clear recognition of the diversity of African families, societies and communities. The ACHPR must likewise not confine African identities to cis-gender and heterosexual, nor restrict the concept of the African family to a nuclear model.
Second is that the principle of non-discrimination permeates the charter and provides the touchstone of the African concept of human rights. The charter affirms that “every individual shall respect and consider his fellow beings without discrimination and to maintain relations aimed at promoting, safeguarding and reinforcing mutual respect and tolerance”.
The charter’s drafters entrenched the idea of non-discrimination because, at the time, African leaders were focused on liberation from colonialism and racism. Indeed, the document broke new ground by prohibiting ethnic discrimination, a prohibition not found in other international agreements at the time. Non-discrimination against LGBTI people is firmly within both the letter and spirit of the African Charter’s values.
And finally that LGBTI identities are firmly ensconced in African values historically. Same-sex sexualities and gender diversity were present in pre-colonial Africa. It was not until colonisation that Africa’s European subjugators imposed anti-LGBTI laws as part of their “civilising mission”. After independence, many African countries — Angola, Botswana, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, to name a few — dismissed those colonial-era laws and now recognise LGBTI people’s rights. Simply put, LGBTI people are as African as anyone else, and deserve the same protection by the African Charter.
With anti-rights actors co-opting African values using neo-colonial tactics, there is greater urgency for the ACHPR to reclaim African values and redefine them in accordance with the African Charter. Drawing on the wisdom of our forebears, the ACHPR must affirm that discrimination has no place in African societies. It should root its approach in both our pre-colonial histories and the present reality of millions of LGBTI Africans who are entitled to the same human rights as anyone else, no matter what opportunistic western anti-rights actors might say. African values must be used to advance inclusion, non-discrimination and equality, not exclusion and discrimination.
Khanyo Faris is a senior researcher on civic space at Amnesty International, East and Southern Africa.