The African family is threatened. This is the conclusion of the fourth Inter-Parliamentary Conference on African Family Values which was held in Ghana from June 3 to 6. This continental meeting “a réuni plus de 300 prizesâ€, notes Actualité CD, from around twenty African countries. Political decision-makers, representatives of civil society and religious leaders discussed the issues linked to “preservation of African family values†.
Their objective: to move forward on the project of a charter defining African family values and to assert their sovereignty. This would then be submitted to a vote by the African Union at its next general assembly scheduled for February 2027. “Twenty countries have adopted it†, notices the Ghanaian Times, while South Africa and Mozambique officially opposed it.
This charter is already widely criticized by African human rights organizations, explains The Guardian. These describe it as an attempt to impose a continent-wide legal framework based on a “moralizing vision†and curator of “African family values†.
On May 29, a week before the start of the conference, Ghana adopted an anti-LGBTQI law providing, among other things, for a sentence of three to ten years in prison for “promoting LGBTQI activities and identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer†, details it Guardian in this other article. Around a hundred demonstrators gathered in Accra during the conference – “high place of conservative Christianity in Africa†, underlined the German wave – to denounce the homophobic law and “attempt [des délégués] to restrict the definition of the African family…
Attack on human rights
This project “dangerous†charter on “family values†was born in 2023 during a similar conference organized in Uganda, reported The Conversation. Presented as a collective response by African governments to attacks by“foreign ideologies†– implied “Western†–, it provides for the rejection of international obligations adopted by the continent in terms of human rights “which do not respect the principles of the charter†.
African Feminist Media, independent media committed to the rights of women and girls in Africa, located in Senegal, denounces “a document that protects the patriarchy, not the family†, adding: “The same logics that block women’s equality in family law are those that push legislation against LGBTQI people.â€
According to the charter, the only definition of family thus recognized would be “the union of a man and a woman, and their biological or adopted children†. “‘Gender ideology’ defined as any theory separating gender from biological sex… would be rejected, as would LGBTQI rights, “to exclude from any agreement or policy†. The rights to abortion and sex education in schools would also be banned.
Gilbert Mitullah, Kenyan lawyer and board member of the Queer African Network interviewed by the Guardiandenounces rhetoric with double effect on the part of parliamentarians, who “legitimizes an increased intrusion of the state into private life†.
The family to the detriment of the individual
An opinion echoed by the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa (Isla), a pan-African feminist initiative based in South Africa and made up of jurists. In a report published in March 2026, cited by the Guardian, she denounces the valorization of the family to the detriment of the individual, at the risk of “legitimize the subordination of women, children and adolescents to collective family interests and isolate private family relationships from state responsibility†.
“Women will no longer be safe; children will no longer be safe.â€
Moreover, “the terminology used in the charter reveals the strong influence of American and European conservative Christian organizations opposed to abortion and the rights of LGBTQI people†, she emphasizes. Including Family Watch International (FWI), a Christian pressure group based in Arizona, known for its opposition to abortion.
According to Gilbert Mitullah, the Geneva Consensus Declaration, an anti-abortion manifesto written by former Donald Trump advisor Valerie Huber, would also be included in the treaty as a “collaborative product of a transnational network, with African signatories used to give it the appearance of indigenous origin†.
In the name of this “family†Africa and the protection of its “values†, many countries have adopted homophobic legislation in recent years. In April 2026, Senegal, a predominantly Muslim West African country, enacted a law against homosexuality stating that “any person who has committed an unnatural act [terme qui désigne les pratiques homosexuelles dans le Code pénal sénégalais] will be punished by imprisonment of five to ten years and a fine, then detailed the BBC Africa. In February, the military regime in place in Niger promulgated a new Penal Code criminalizing homosexuality for the first time.
Such legislation has also been adopted in Burkina Faso, Mauritania, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Somalia… In October 2025, the Observatory of Inequalities counted up to 31 African countries which prohibit and punish homosexuality.
