Growing efforts to use family, culture, religion and sovereignty narratives to restrict women’s and girls’ rights are threatening hard-won gains on gender equality and health, speakers at a recent SHE & Rights session have warned.
The virtual session, held under the theme “Countering anti-rights pushes and upholding human right to health and gender equality,” brought together human rights, legal and gender experts who called for stronger implementation of existing protections and greater community engagement.
Dr Robert Eno, Registrar of the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, said the broader anti-rights challenge should not be reduced to one political or religious group.
“The anti-rights challenge is not necessarily confined to a particular political group, religious community or ideology,” Eno said.
He said advocates needed to understand the beliefs behind opposition to gender equality without legitimising harmful practices.
“Understanding these reasons does not mean accepting or legitimising them. Rather, it helps us to understand where change must begin,” he said.
Eno also warned that legal commitments would have little impact without implementation.
“Policy commitments and jurisprudence alone are not enough,” he said. “A regional treaty does not change lives unless governments implement it.”
Rehema Namukose, Senior Regional Programme Officer for sub-Saharan Africa at Musawah, said legislation had become a key battleground.
“Legislation has been under attack, and anti-rights movements have been trying to use legislation to circumvent gender equality,” she said.
Namukose argued that appeals to family values were sometimes being used to preserve patriarchal power.
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“The goal is not to protect the family but it is protecting patriarchal interests and power interests,” she said.
Musawah Global Executive Director Samah Hadid said anti-rights actors were increasingly coordinated and better resourced.
“State and non-state actors within the anti-rights movement are weaponizing and misusing religion, culture, and tradition to justify the gender discrimination and injustice that we are seeing,” Hadid said.
She called for wider alliances involving religious, cultural, secular and human rights actors.
“We cannot just do this as human rights advocates alone. We need a broad alliance of secular, religious, cultural actors coming together more strategically to counter the anti-rights groups,” she said.
Vimbai Kapurura, Executive Director of Girls Not Brides, urged policymakers to look beyond statistics and focus on the girls behind them.
“When I look at that at 12 percent, I don’t only see a percentage, I see girls,” she said.
She added that responsibility for adolescent pregnancy should not be placed solely on girls.
“We cannot place the responsibility only on the girl child,” Kapurura said.
The speakers also stressed the importance of civil society participation in shaping laws and policies, including regional and international treaties.
Fatou Bintou Sallah of the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa called for a review of the African Union Convention on Eliminating Violence Against Women and Girls before ratification.
“Pause, listen, review, strengthen, then ratify,” she said.
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