Equality Now calls on African governments to strengthen laws on sexual violence, FGM, and women’s rights

Banjul, The Gambia, May 20, 2026: Millions of women and girls remain without adequate legal protection due to the failure of African governments to enact and effectively enforce national laws and regional agreements, Equality Now warned at the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights’ (ACHPR) 87th Ordinary Session in Banjul, The Gambia. 

Esther Waweru, Associate Director for Legal Equality at Equality Now, delivered a statement to the ACHPR on May 12, 2026, calling on African Union (AU) Member States to do more to address sexual violence, female genital mutilation (FGM), online safety, sexual and reproductive healthcare access, and discriminatory matrimonial property rights.

“Millions of women and girls across Africa live under laws and systems that don’t uphold their human rights. Countries have made binding commitments to advance gender equality, but gaps in legal protections, weak implementation of laws, and poor accountability are leaving many without equal rights, safeguards, or justice. African governments must move beyond rhetoric to deliver the legal reforms, protections, and accountability mechanisms women and girls urgently need,” Waweru explains. 

Rape laws in Africa continue to fail survivors of sexual violence 

Equality Now’s report Barriers to Justice: Rape in Africa, Law, Practice and Access to Justice analysed rape laws across 47 countries and found significant shortcomings. Sexual violence laws in some countries still require proof that physical force, threats, or violence was used. Such restrictive definitions place undue burdens on survivors to provide evidence, and disregard the varying contexts in which sexual violence occurs, including through intimidation, coercion, fraud, or unequal power dynamics that make it impossible to give genuine consent.

Authorities often fail to properly investigate, prosecute, or convict rape cases, while discriminatory gender stereotypes can influence judicial decisions, leading to reduced charges, lighter sentences, or perpetrators escaping punishment altogether.  

Rape cases are sometimes resolved through out-of-court settlements via informal community mediation, with victim-blaming and social pressure often compelling survivors to withdraw legal complaints or remain silent. 

Kenya, whose State Report was reviewed by the ACHPR during its 87th session, retains a marital rape exemption allowing husbands to avoid prosecution for raping their wives. 

Equality Now called on the Commission to encourage Kenya to remove legal loopholes permitting rape within marriage, and reform sexual offences laws in line with the Niamey Guidelines, which set regional standards for preventing and responding to sexual violence, and the Maputo Protocol, the landmark AU treaty outlining governments’ obligations to end gender-based violence, ensure reproductive rights, and eliminate harmful practices. 

Restrictions on sexual and reproductive health services persist, especially harming rape survivors. Equality Now commended AU Member States that recognise sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) as a constitutional right. For example, in October 2025, Malawi’s High Court ruled that denying a 14-year-old rape survivor access to a safe termination of pregnancy was a SRHR violation, and forcing a child to carry a pregnancy resulting from rape constitutes “harsh and inhumane” treatment. 

Equality Now urged all African governments to prosecute sexual violence, whether perpetrated during peacetime or conflict, and to adopt a survivor-centred approach built upon comprehensive reparations frameworks that provide compensation, medical and psychosocial support, and legal assistance to survivors.

Discrimination in matrimonial property rights laws in Africa

Equality Now’s report, Gender inequality in family laws in Africa, maps how women face significant challenges relating to unpaid work within the family context and discrimination in property distribution during marriage annulment, separation, or divorce. 

Article 7(d) of the Maputo Protocol requires equitable distribution of matrimonial property, yet in practice, this standard is often unmet. In Nigeria, property division is based entirely on direct financial contributions, leaving many women with little or nothing following divorce. In Kenya, Malawi, and South Africa, both direct and indirect contributions should be accounted for, but courts frequently fail to adequately value women’s unpaid labour. 

All Member States should pass and implement legislation recognising the full value of women’s unpaid domestic and caregiving work within the family, and implement General Comment No. 6 on the Maputo Protocol mandating an equitable sharing of joint property based upon both financial and non-financial contributions.

Criminalising FGM in Liberia and upholding The Gambia’s law banning FGM

Equality Now acknowledged ongoing efforts in Liberia to address harmful practices affecting women and girls, and calls on lawmakers to criminalise FGM by fast-tracking passage of the pending Women and Girls Protection Bill. 

In The Gambia, the Supreme Court is considering a case seeking to overturn the ban on FGM under the Women’s (Amendment) Act 2015, with petitioners arguing on constitutional grounds that the current anti-FGM law violates cultural and religious freedoms. Equality Now called on the State to defend and fully implement the Act as repeal would endanger women and girls, undermine years of progress, and set a dangerous precedent by revoking hard-won legal safeguards. 

Online gender-based violence in Africa

Across Africa, weak, outdated, and fragmented digital governance frameworks leave women and girls vulnerable to harm online, including tech-facilitated gender-based violence. Most countries rely on narrow cybercrime laws that lack gender perspectives, resulting in disproportionate censorship, surveillance, or penalisation of those seeking protection, while allowing online harassment, exploitation, misinformation and disinformation, and algorithmic biases to proliferate.

The concentration of digital infrastructure and artificial intelligence systems in the Global North risks reinforcing digital colonialism and embedding racial and gender bias into technologies. 

African states should establish binding due diligence and transparency requirements for transnational technology companies, align digital governance frameworks with the Maputo Protocol, invest in gender-responsive digital capacity building for women and girls, and strengthen access to remedies for survivors of digital harms. 

Domestication and implementation of the Maputo Protocol in South Sudan 

South Sudan ratified the Maputo Protocol in 2023. Three years on, women and girls face conflict-related sexual violence, entrenched harmful practices, and weak legal protections and inadequate enforcement, underpinned by deep-rooted patriarchal norms.

The country’s ongoing constitution-making process offers a time-bound opportunity to embed gender equality at the heart of legal and institutional reform. South Sudan needs to fully domesticate and implement the Protocol and expedite adoption of national laws that strengthen protections for women and girls.

END

Notes to editors

For media enquiries, contact Tara Carey, Associate Director, Media, Equality Now, tcarey@equalitynow.org. 

Esther Waweru is the Associate Director, Legal Equality at Equality Now. A lawyer with nearly two decades of experience, she focuses on advancing the rights of women, girls and marginalised communities across international and regional human rights platforms. Read more about Esther’s work at equalitynow.org.

About Equality Now: Equality Now is a worldwide human rights organisation dedicated to securing the legal and systemic change needed to end discrimination against all women and girls. Since its inception in 1992, it has played a role in reforming 120 discriminatory laws globally, positively impacting the lives of hundreds of millions of women and girls, their communities and nations, both now and for generations to come.

Working with partners at national, regional and global levels, Equality Now draws on deep legal expertise and a diverse range of social, political and cultural perspectives to continue to lead the way in steering, shaping and driving the change needed to achieve enduring gender equality, to the benefit of all.

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