Despite hosting the African Union (AU) Summit where the Convention to End Violence Against Women and Girls was adopted in February 2025, Ethiopia has not ratified the treaty, leaving one of the continent’s most affected populations without the legal protections envisioned under the instrument.
The contrast was noted during the two-day African Women in Media (AWiM25) Conference held at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa this week.
Giving a keynote speech, Yemisi Akinbobola (PhD), head of AWiM, said that although the Convention was celebrated as Africa’s first legally binding continental treaty dedicated solely to preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls, no African country has ratified it.
“Zero have ratified it. Not a single African country has ratified that important document,” she said.
Adopted by the heads of state at the AU Summit, the Convention requires 15 member states to ratify before it can enter into force. Without ratification, it remains political symbolism rather than a binding legal commitment.
“Without ratification, the Convention exists politically, symbolically, but not as an enforceable legal obligation of member states,” said Akinbobola.
Ethiopia is not among the seven countries that have signed the Convention. Those that have signed in principle are Angola, Burundi, Djibouti, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, The Gambia, and Ghana.
Conference participants who spoke to The Reporter stated that Ethiopia’s absence highlights a widening gap between the country’s public rhetoric on women’s rights and the continent’s efforts to create uniform, enforceable standards against gender-based violence.
According to the AWiM keynote, the Convention fills major gaps left unaddressed by older instruments such as the Maputo Protocol, a human rights instrument adopted by the AU in 2003 to guarantee a comprehensive set of rights for women in Africa.
However, the eighth Convention to End Violence Against Women and Girls introduces recognition of intersecting vulnerabilities including disability, displacement, age, health and mandates accountability for perpetrators.
Its provisions also include prohibitions on workplace violence and harmful labour practices involving girls, obligations to prevent, investigate and prosecute femicide and enforcement of fair, non-discriminatory judiciary processes, fast-track mechanisms and victim/witness protection.
The Convention also addresses online and digital violence, a growing threat identified in recent research on the barriers facing Ethiopian women journalists.
The AWiM presentation also linked the Convention to the Kigali Declaration on the Elimination of Gender Violence, co-designed during AWiM 2023, which outlines minimum standards for addressing harassment, intimidation, unsafe work environments and online abuse faced by women in the media.
The AU official urged the people of the countries which did not sign the convention to galvanize public pressure on the government to sign and ratify the Convention.
“If your country is not on that list, then I call on you to play your part in changing that,” she said, emphasizing the role of media and citizens in pushing leaders to act on an issue affecting half of the population.
Akinbobola warned that without immediate action, Africa risks reversing decades of progress on women’s rights, adding that activism should focus on converting political commitments into legal obligations.
