Trojan Horse of Gender Ideology Threatens African Treaty on Protecting Women, Girls From Violence

Member states at an African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, are poised to adopt an “African Union Convention on Ending Violence Against Women and Girls.”

Its goal is laudable, but as the African Bar Association has revealed, a number of the provisions of the draft treaty reflect an entirely different purpose: radical gender ideology.

To protect women from violence and from this toxic imperialism of “queer” activism, the African Union should postpone adoption of the treaty until these provisions can be worked out.

The worst provisions bear the fingerprints of Western gender ideologues and abortion activists so common in international documents, agencies, and nongovernmental organizations.

The draft treaty avoids obvious “LGBTQ” terms that might alarm conservative African states, but the language opens the door to “transformative” sexual concepts and interpretations.

For instance, the treaty does not define “girl” and “woman” as biological females. It defines “gender” amorphously in terms of cultural roles. “Family” is defined with an unusual new definition determined by the state, rather than as the “natural unit and basis of society” as described in the African Charter (Article 18.1).

The definition of “violence” is broad enough to include almost any “harm.” Based on precedents, the gender zealots would almost surely define “harm” to include any law that prohibits or restricts any desired cross-sex treatment or that fails to offer abortions.

It would also surely include the “emotional harm” of what gender ideologues call “misgendering”—as when one refers to a man as “he” even if he “identifies as” a woman.

These promiscuous interpretations are not a stretch,  because the draft treaty refers to other documents, such as “global, continental, and regional instruments” and the lengthy “AU Strategy for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment,” produced in collaboration with U.N. bodies and Western groups. That document includes a heavy emphasis on “sex education,” which in United Nations parlance means early indoctrination in a wide range of sexual “identities” and activities.

It also includes teaching children they might be born in the wrong body. All of this is justified by the dubious and unproven claim that early sexual knowledge prevents violence.

This is a long-standing tactic of sexual ideologues. They slip radical concepts into broadly supported initiatives—like combating HIV or violence. Then they treat these incidental references as established facts or “rights.”

Take, for instance, the repeated repurposing of “gender” in U.N. documents to mean “gender identity,” even though the official U.N. definition of “gender” treats it as a synonym for “sex.”

Over time, these word games create a sort of “soft law” eliding sex-based rights into the transgressive fetishism of gender ideology.

A particularly egregious example of this tactic occurred in the World Health Organization’s establishment last year of a “guideline group” on transgender health to promote worldwide, government-funded access to cross-sex hormones.

The WHO claimed this initiative was based on a decade of evidence. In fact, as laid out in a scathing U.S. congressional letter to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus last fall, the “work” consisted of three small ancillary opinion surveys during HIV studies of individuals who identify as transgender.

As highlighted in the letter, powerful entities stand to profit from opening African markets to the multibillion-dollar gender industry. The same groups are pressing hard for sexual “transformation” on the African continent.

The international influence of radical activists was magnified over the past four years by the forceful efforts of the Biden administration. From the first day of his administration, Biden sought to enforce the most radical views of sexuality not only in the U.S., but also abroad, to the tune of billions of dollars.

Aid was conditioned on acceptance of this ideology. Residents in the slums of South Africa needed water,  but were offered free gender transition services instead.

This particular devil’s bargain is no longer being foisted on the Global South, but the efforts of activists in international bodies continue to taint progress for women and children.

The African Union has a unique opportunity to implement a treaty that combats violence and discrimination against girls and women while also protecting their rights as women and girls. But to do so, it will need to rework the language of the convention to ensure it does not bring new harm to women and girls through the Trojan horse of gender ideology.

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