Statement by Equality Now on the Rights and Welfare of the Child

Honorable Chairperson of the ACERWC, ACERWC Committee members, State-Party Representatives, and Fellow Civil Society Representatives.

1. Introduction  

Equality Now, an international Human rights organization (with observer status No. OBS/029/2018), commends and congratulates the Honourable Chairperson and the Honourable Expert Members for the successful convening of this 45^th Ordinary Session of The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child. The year 2025 marks the 35th Anniversary of the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and 30 Years of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action.  While member states and stakeholders have made commendable progress in advancing the rights of children in Africa, the pace of progress remains disturbingly slow, affected by resource limitations, climate change-related and conflict emergencies, inadequate participation of children in planning and budgeting for programs, and essential services affecting them increasing online risks and harms, legal protection gaps, and inadequacies leading to impunity and lack of sustained protection of children against harmful practices, sexual exploitation, violence, and abuse.

In view of the foregoing, we submit our statement as follows;

2. Call for accelerated efforts to end Female Genital Mutilation

Female Genital Mutilation continues to be an urgent critical area of concern, with significantly limited prevalence data, legal protection, and support mechanisms for survivors. Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali, and Somalia remain some of the few countries in the continent with high FGM prevalence which have yet to pass laws banning the practice. While the Committee, in its urgent appeal to Sierra Leone in October 2024, expressed concerns over legislative debates calling for the removal of the anti-FGM provision in the Child Rights Bill 2024 and called on the Republic of Sierra Leone to uphold its human rights obligations; unfortunately, the Bill remains stalled in Parliament and is yet to pass. Similarly, in Liberia, bills that would prohibit FGM have remained pending in Parliament since 2023. The three-year temporary moratorium on FGM issued by the Liberian Government in 2022 expired in February 2025.  Hence, women and girls are now without any legal protections from FGM. Meanwhile, in Mali, disappointingly, provisions to ban FGM and child marriage were removed at the last minute from the amendments to the Penal Code which were adopted in late 2024. In addition, unfortunate efforts to claw back on legal protections against FGM are still ongoing in the Gambia with the failed attempt at repealing the anti-FGM legislation in the national assembly giving way to litigation in court still seeking the removal of this legal protection.

We call for the committee to implore Member states to defend existing laws and to enact and enforce comprehensive laws and national policies to prohibit FGM; and put in place comprehensive multi-sectoral measures in accordance with the recommendations of the ACHPR-ACERWC Joint General Comment on FGM.

3. Call for Strengthened Interventions to End Child Marriage 

Child Marriage remains an urgent human rights issue requiring the strengthening of political commitment, enforcement of laws, and prioritizing survivor-focused policies to end harmful practices in Africa. The urgency of the issue is demonstrated by recent cases such as in Somalia, where an adult man was found to have married an 8 year-old child last month. Many African States are making strides towards amending their laws on child marriage in compliance with international and regional human rights obligations. For instance, the pending Marriage Bill in Uganda would set the minimum age of marriage at 18 for all persons, removing exceptions under current law for religious and customary marriages, as will a similar bill in South Africa (the Marriage Bill 2023). We call upon member states to swiftly pass legislative reforms to align child marriage laws with the Children’s Charter and the Maputo Protocol. We are hopeful that these two Bills are swiftly passed and adopted by the Ugandan and South African Parliaments. 

4. Call for Signature and Ratification  of the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights Relating to the Specific Aspects of the Right to a Nationality and the Eradication of Statelessness in Africa (the Nationality Protocol) 

Honourable Committee of Experts, We commend the African Union Heads of State Assembly for adopting the Nationality Protocol during its 37th Ordinary Session in February 2024. The Protocol entrenches protecting the right to nationality of children and women in Africa. We are concerned that the Protocol has zero signatures and zero ratifications one year after adoption. According to UNICEF data, more than half of the world’s unregistered children (90 million) are in Sub-Saharan Africa, putting them at risk of statelessness and lack of access to basic services. Therefore, we call upon the Committee to urge all Member States to sign and ratify the Nationality  Protocol so that it can enter into force as soon as possible to reinforce the protection of children’s right to nationality and registration at birth and women’s equal right with men to transfer nationality to their children. 

5. Call for Accelerated Measures to Protect Children from Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in Digital and Offline Spaces

The sexual exploitation and abuse of children in Africa are on a troubling upward trajectory, with sex trafficking becoming increasingly prevalent. This crisis is exacerbated by inequalities stemming from the climate crisis, economic decline, and ongoing conflicts. The UNODC’s Global Report on Trafficking in Persons (2024) highlights a rise in detected cases of trafficked children in Sub-Saharan Africa, emphasizing that many are trafficked beyond the continent primarily for sexual exploitation. In West and East Africa, boys are more frequently trafficked for forced labor, whereas girls are disproportionately trafficked for sexual exploitation.

We urge the Committee to encourage all Member States to implement human trafficking and child protection laws fully and to ensure that designated national institutions are adequately resourced to combat this growing crisis effectively.

Simultaneously, the online sexual exploitation of children (OCSEA) is escalating across Africa, driven by increasing internet connectivity yet hindered by weak legal frameworks and limited cross-border cooperation. A 2024 report by ChildFund International and the African Child Policy Forum revealed a disturbing surge in OCSEA cases across the continent. Alarmingly, over 60% of unidentified victims were very young children, with 65% being girls.

We commend the Committee’s General Comment No. 7 on Article 27 of the Charter, underscoring the urgent need for Member States to implement comprehensive, child-centered digital protections. Additionally, we acknowledge the efforts of many Member States in enacting national laws to combat OCSEA. In the spirit of the Charter and the recently adopted UN Global Digital Compact, we urge the Committee to call upon governments to ensure the effective implementation of these laws and other protective measures. This includes strengthening accountability mechanisms for technology platforms and companies to safeguard children’s rights in digital spaces effectively.

6. Call for Strengthening Legal Protection Mechanisms  to Protect Children from Sexual Violence 

The UNICEF 2024 Report reveals that more than 79 million girls and women (over 1 in 5) across sub-Saharan Africa have experienced rape or sexual assault before turning 18. When online or verbal abuse is included, the number of girls and women affected rises to 650 million globally (1 in 5), underscoring the urgent need for comprehensive prevention and support strategies to address all forms of violence and abuse against girls effectively. According to the same report, Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of child victims of sexual violence globally. In Conflict settings with weak institutions girls face an even greater risk, with the prevalence of rape and sexual assault in childhood slightly more than 1 in 4. Equality Now 2024 report dubbed Barriers to Justice: RAPE IN AFRICA, LAW, PRACTICE AND ACCESS TO JUSTICE, also revealed key gaps in rape laws in 45 African Countries that result in routine denial of justice to survivors of sexual violence including children. The gaps include laws allowing the perpetrator to walk free on reaching some form of “settlement,” including marrying the victim; laws framed in terms of morality rather than bodily integrity, thereby perpetuating a cycle of violence and discrimination; laws that explicitly permit rape in marriage, even of children; laws permitting judicial discretion to reduce charges or define evidence based on a stereotyped assessment of the complainant’s behavior; laws that fail to recognize true consent is impossible in situations of dependency or extreme vulnerability; laws or practices inhibiting investigation or prosecution of sexual assault; and laws requiring witness corroboration and other overly burdensome evidence. We urge the Committee to encourage all Member States to:

• Repeal discriminatory laws, address gaps in legal definitions of rape, and failures in implementation that deny survivors access to justice. Strengthening laws and regulations to protect children from all forms of sexual violence, and invest in the people, resources, and systems needed to implement them.
• Create public awareness on sexual violence as a human rights issue to challenge and change social and cultural norms that allow sexual violence to occur and discourage children from seeking help.
• Equipping every child with accurate, accessible, and age-appropriate information that empowers them to recognize and report sexual violence.
• Ensuring that every child victim and survivor has access to services that support justice and healing and reduce the risk of further harm.
• Building better national data systems to monitor progress and ensure accountability for perpetrators of sexual violence.

7. Strengthening Access to Education 

Honorable Committee members, the importance of education both as a human right and as a tool to promote economic and social well-being has long been accepted.1 This esteemed Committee has pronounced itself on this right, providing that education must be available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable to ensure every child’s right to education is realized. This means education should be free from discrimination, physically  and financially accessible, culturally relevant and adaptable to individual needs.2

Adolescence is a crucial and defining stage in a girl’s life. However, girls around the world too often face unique threats of gender discrimination and disproportionate rates of gender-based violence (GBV) – including sexual violence, forced marriage, and sexual exploitation – which often creates barriers to educational opportunities, impacts their social and emotional development, and has many other downstream effects that ultimately prevent girls from reaching their full potential. This isn’t just bad for girls but for the entire society.  A World Bank study has estimated that limited educational opportunities for girls and barriers to completing 12 years of education cost countries between $15 trillion and $30 trillion in lost lifetime productivity and earnings. Inequities in education in Africa remain wide, with an estimated 244 million children and young people aged between six and 18 excluded from their countries’ education systems in 2021.3 Both boys and girls suffer this exclusion, but girls are disproportionately affected. It is, therefore, imperative for member states to repeal discriminatory laws that undermine girls’ access to education as well as address social and cultural attitudes and practices that perpetuate this violation. Equality Now has been working in Sierra Leone and Tanzania to repeal laws that ban pregnant girls from attending school. In the course of this work, we have established that sexual violence is a major driver of teenage pregnancy and, ultimately, girls’ denial of their right to education. We additionally work in Zambia to safeguard the corridor in and around schools as here, too, through research, we have established that girls along this continuum are disproportionately sexually violated and exploited.

We therefore urge the ACERWC committee to recommend for member states to:

• Develop, adopt, and enforce re-entry to school policies in line with the human rights standards on access to education, and also guided by the recommendations and general comments of the ACERWC to enable girls to return to school in the event of pregnancy.
• Improve budgetary allocations and planning for the education sector with a key focus on adequate support systems and services for vulnerable children, such as children from poor economic backgrounds, children with disabilities, pregnant school girls, and child mothers. This would be in line with the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child  on education being accessible and affordable
• Provide comprehensive sexuality education and SRH information and services to address the problem of teenage pregnancy in Africa. This should be part of the curriculum and should be disseminated in both school and non-school settings so that the lack of information is mitigated.4 This education should be age-appropriate and child-sensitive information about the dangers of teenage pregnancy.5 Furthermore, accessibility by pregnant teenagers and young mothers to safe and legal abortion and post-abortion care services, emergency contraception, and quality maternal health care and psychosocial support is important.

8. Conclusion 

Equality Now remains committed to supporting the Committee in contributing to initiatives and efforts to implement The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACRWC) to promote and protect children’s rights in Africa.

1 C Chürr ‘Realisation of a child’s right to basic education in the South African school system: Some lessons from Germany’ (2015) 18 Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal 2405.
2 https://www.right-to-education.org/sites/right-to-education.org/files/resource-attachments/Tomasevski_Primer%203.pdf
3 Global Education Monitoring Report Team & UNESCO Institute for Statistics ‘New estimation confirms out-of-school population is growing in sub-Saharan Africa’ Policy Paper 48, ED/GEMR/MRT/2022/PP/48 https://unesdoc.unesco. org/ark:/48223/pf0000382577.
4 Joint General Comment of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) and the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) on Ending Child Marriage, para 36.
5 African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, General Comment No