The Maputo Protocol was originally adopted by the “Assembly of the African Union” in Maputo, Mozambique on July 11, 2003. The official document is titled “Protocol to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa.”
The Maputo Protocol is a treaty instrument that is binding on all countries that ratify it. It went into effect in November 2005, after the minimum 15 of the 53 African Union member countries ratified it. As of June 2007, according to the African Union, 43 nations had signed it and 21 had formally ratified it: (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Comoros, Djibouti, Gambia, Libya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Mauritania, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Senegal, Seychelles, Tanzania, Togo and Zambia). Those who ratify the treaty are called “States Parties.”
Proponents of the Maputo Protocol present it as a method of combating female genital mutilation in Africa, where it is more common than elsewhere. It is estimated that this harmful practice is performed on approximately two million women a year worldwide. Pro-Protocol forces often try to portray opponents of the Protocol as callous towards women’s rights, even though the Maputo Protocol is not principally aimed at eradicating female genital mutilation.
Is this protocol an international conspiracy being waged by Western population controllers against African mothers?
Then, the Maputo Protocol calls for the free use and distribution of abortifacient contraceptives, while emphasizing that African countries should provide “new educational methods to modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of women and men.”
“This is a radical attempt to reshape and refocus the minds and lives of millions of people, with a propaganda of death that destroys the very foundation of a society and brings into question its future existence,” writes Fr. Boquet. “Such policies result in the breakdown of the family, illegitimacy, growth in the number of orphans, fatherless families and promiscuity. The contraceptive mentality and legalized abortion endorsed by the Maputo Protocol, will not lead to fewer abortions, as its supporters would have us believe, but many more abortions,” warned the Catholic Fr. Boquet. In fact, organizations such as Planned Parenthood which promote population control note that the number of abortions actually grew in Africa between 2003 and 2008.
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