African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa
Article 4 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights states that “[h]uman beings are inviolable. Every human being shall be entitled to respect for his life and the integrity of his person.”Drafters of the African Charter specifically rejected language protecting a right to life from the moment of conception.
The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Protocol) does not address when life begins, but it implicitly reinforces the understanding that the right to life accrues at birth, providing that States must take measures to “protect the reproductive rights of women by authorizing medical abortion in cases of assault, rape, incest and where the continued pregnancy endangers the mental and physical health of the [pregnant woman] or the life of the [pregnant woman] or the foetus.”