Violence against women and girls in Africa demands urgent action. As of 2023, it is estimated that one in three women and girls between ages 15 and 49, have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime. Last November, South Africa classified violence against women as a national disaster.
When the African Union adopted its Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls in early 2025, UN Women and several governments celebrated it as progress. But across the continent, women’s rights organisations are warning against premature optimism and calling for the treaty to be strengthened.
Indeed, the African Union needs to increase compliance with the existing legal framework, and strengthen the latest one, if it is to lead to tangible improvements for women and girls.
Africa already had one of the world’s most progressive regional frameworks addressing this crisis: the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa, commonly known as the Maputo Protocol, adopted in 2003 (effective 2005). Maputo guarantees comprehensive protections; from generally obligating states to enact and enforce laws to prohibit all forms of violence against women to taking appropriate measures to prevent and eliminate such violence.
However, there have been significant setbacks to enforcing it, such as slow passage of national laws and enforcement, and reservations by some countries on key provisions—reproductive health and safe abortion, equality in marriage. The new convention will face similar obstacles if the AU doesn’t address the warnings that it may be used to water down protections already guaranteed under Maputo, burden governments with duplicate reporting requirements, and create confusion around enforcement because of the competing legal frameworks.
Organisations like the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa (ISLA) and Akina Mama wa Afrika have noted under the initiative #PauseforPurpose, the risk that the convention might lead to backsliding. The African Bar Association has already published model reservations suggesting governments water down the convention’s commitments.
Reports from grassroots organisations and survivor-led groups that they were shut out of consultations in drafting the new convention are troubling. Fos Feminista, the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, and the African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies have all raised red flags. When credible voices across the continent sound the alarm, their warnings warrant careful attention.
The AU Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls includes some provisions that add to the Maputo Protocol: explicit protections against cyberviolence and femicide, stronger workplace harassment provisions, and attention to marginalised groups like women with disabilities and refugees. These are important provisions that align with international treaties including the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Violence and Harassment Convention (C190)on violence in the world of work.
However, the convention, with its narrower operational focus, doesn’t explicitly incorporate the comprehensive rights framework for preventing violence such as Maputo’s provisions for sexual and reproductive health rights, including access to safe abortion (article 14), and on equality in marriage, divorce, and inheritance (articles 6 and 7), and safeguards against child, early, and forced marriages.
The Committee of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the body that interprets the international treaty, affirmed that violence against women is inseparable from structural discrimination, including denial of sexual and reproductive health and rights, and inequality in marriage and family relations.
Any regional framework that addresses violence without confronting the underlying inequality risks treating symptoms rather than root causes. At a minimum, the African Union should ensure that the Convention on Ending Violence is read together with the full scope of Maputo’s obligations to complement and enhance them and not to diminish them.
The document is riddled with vague language, such as “positive masculinity” and “African values and norms,” that could risk loopholes for enforceable rights, by arguing for cultural discretion.
We’ve already seen this play out with Cameroon’s and Uganda’s reservations to the Maputo Protocol, contending that some provisions are inconsistent with African ethical and moral values or principles, though Maputo also recognises “the crucial role of women in the preservation of African values based on the principles of equality, peace, freedom, dignity, justice, solidarity and democracy.” Without clear definitions, the new convention could be used to open the door wider.
The new convention relies on the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights to monitor its implementation—as it already does with the Maputo Protocol—rather than creating a new treaty body. The commission already faces significant challenges, primarily due to severe resource constraints and a heavy existing workload. For it to act as a monitoring body for the convention, and to prevent weakening the existing legal framework, the AU needs to provide clear guidance on the relationship between the two instruments and overlapping obligations, and standards to avoid complications in reporting and an increased strain on an enforcement system that already lacks adequate resources.
At the same time calls to “pause ratification” also require caution. In AU practice, prolonged ratification pauses have often led to political stagnation rather than substantive reform, allowing states to evade both existing and new obligations. Moreover, a pause without a clear AU-mandated review process risks creating uncertainty and fragmented obligations across governments, with some proceeding with ratification and others not, running counter to AU norms of requiring all countries to meet the same standards.
Once the AU has adopted a treaty, it has not traditionally suspended or paused ratification, even when important gaps existed, but instead it has favored progressive development that complements existing requirements.
Consistent with its treaty-making norms, as happened with the Malabo Protocol amending the African Court Statute, a mechanism to close the gaps could take the form of an amendment or interpretive protocol that clarifies the relationship between Maputo and the new convention and reinforces existing obligations, while avoiding creating parallel regimes, or interpretations that lower established standards.
The path to ending violence against women and girls in Africa requires first getting states to ratify the Maputo Protocol without reservations and to push for governments that have reservations to withdraw them. It means the AU should increase funding for robust implementation and monitoring mechanisms, including more resources allocated to the Commission to match the expansion of its mandates.
In the meantime, the AU should commit to addressing gaps in its new Convention on Ending Violence through inclusive consultations with civil society. Meaningful participation is not a courtesy; it is a foundational principle of the African Charter. A convention of this nature without robust consultation risks undermining its own legitimacy. We cannot afford to continue wasting time.
Juliana Nnoko is a senior women’s rights advisor at Human Rights Watch.
Violence against women and girls in Africa demands urgent action. As of 2023, it is estimated that one in three women and girls between ages 15 and 49, have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime. Last November, South Africa classified violence against women as a national disaster. When the African Union adopted its Convention on Ending
