Africa Adopts Its First Common Position on Ending Violence Against Children
The Common Africa Position on Ending Violence Against Children (CAP-EVAC), shaped by more than 500 children and validated by governments representing over half the continent, was adopted by African Union Ministers on 28 July 2026 in Windhoek
On 28 July 2026, during the Sixth Ordinary Session of the African Union Specialized Technical Committee on Social Development, Labour and Employment (STC-SDLE 6) in Windhoek, Namibia, African Union Member States adopted the Common Africa Position on Ending Violence Against Children (CAP-EVAC), together with the AU Model Law on Child Safety Online. The African Union, through its Department of Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development (HHSD), led, coordinated and held decision-making authority over every stage of this process – from drafting, through technical review and Member State validation, to the text adopted in Windhoek. This is what the adoption means, how it came about, and what it asks of the continent next.
This is what adoption means, how it came about, and what it asks of the continent next.
Why this matters
Africa has never had a Member State-validated continental position dedicated specifically to ending violence against children. The African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child sets binding legal obligations. Agenda 2040 sets a long-term aspiration. National action plans set country-level commitments. None of these gave governments a shared reference point across the continent for financing, governance, prevention, humanitarian resilience and data on this specific issue. CAP-EVAC fills that gap
The gap was not abstract. Cross-border trafficking and online exploitation networks operate precisely where national protection systems stop and start. When legal definitions of child marriage, female genital mutilation or online exploitation diverge sharply between neighbouring countries, perpetrators and harmful practices move across borders with relative ease. A common position gives fifty-five Member States a basis to close those gaps together and gives Africa a coordinated voice ahead of the next Second Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children, expected in Manila, rather than the position African delegations found themselves in in Bogotá in November 2024: implementing an agenda that had, in substance, already been set before they arrived.
Adoption also matters for accountability. CAP-EVAC establishes a shared framework through which Member States, Regional Economic Communities, African Union organs, civil society and partners can measure progress against common commitments, rather than each tracking its own. That coherence is itself a form of protection for children, because it closes the space in which fragmented systems allow risk to go unaddressed.
What CAP-EVAC is
CAP-EVAC is a continental governance and accountability instrument, not a declaration of intent. It sets out Africa’s vision of a continent where every child lives free from violence, exploitation, abuse, neglect and harmful practices, and grows up safe, protected, respected and able to reach their full potential. Around that vision, it organises six strategic pillars: sustainable financing and investment; child, victim and survivor participation; governance, leadership, legal and policy systems; integrated prevention and response systems; resilient systems for humanitarian and crisis contexts; and data, evidence, learning and innovation.
Member States are not asked to adopt a new template from outside the continent. They are asked to use CAP-EVAC as a shared frame for what many are already doing: costing and financing child protection within national budgets, strengthening laws and institutions, building services that function across sectors, and preparing systems for risks – including AI-enabled harms – that no single country can regulate alone. What CAP-EVAC adds is coherence across fifty-five different starting points, and a continental basis for holding that collective effort to account.
Children’s leadership
ne part of this process deserves particular attention, because it shaped the substance of the document rather than its optics.
In June 2026, as part of the CAP-EVAC development process, HHSD issued a continent-wide call inviting partners to facilitate consultations with children so that their voices could directly inform the Common Africa Position. Six partners answered that call, and between June and July 2026, consultations were held directly with children in six countries: Ethiopia, Niger,
Sierra Leone, South Africa, The Gambia and Uganda, with two separate consultations conducted in both South Africa and The Gambia. More than 500 children took part, reached through methods suited to their context – focus groups in Sierra Leone and Niger, a school-based reflection process in Uganda, a digital U-Report survey and a structured poll through the Children’s National Assembly in The Gambia, community sessions in Addis Ababa and Soweto, and a national government-led consultation drawing children from all nine South African provinces. The full findings are set out in Children’s Voices on Ending Violence against Children: Findings from Six Consultations [Children’s Voices on Ending Violence against Children: Findings from Six Consultations].
What children described was specific, not generic. In Addis Ababa, girls named “Lekafa,” a pattern of public sexual harassment that begins with comments and escalates into physical harassment, shaping where they feel able to walk. In Soweto, children spoke of “mabahambe,” naming an anti-migrant sentiment in their own community and the fear it produces. In Sierra Leone, children named the Bondo, Poro and Kolon societies and the practice of teachers exchanging marks for sex. In Niger, children raised, unprompted and independently, the exclusion of children with disabilities from school. Across all six countries, children were consistent on one point that runs through the final text: safety comes first from relationships – parents who are present, teachers who listen, adults who correct without shaming – and only then from laws and services.
The consultation report deliberately preserved disagreement rather than resolving it. In Sierra Leone, some children called for stronger laws against child marriage while others placed responsibility on girls to avoid early sex; both views are recorded as they were expressed. In Soweto, children’s descriptions of police conduct divided the group itself. That discipline matters, because it is what makes children’s testimony usable for policy rather than convenient for it.
This participation was not limited to the consultation phase. Four children, representing those who took part across the six countries, stood before Member State delegations at the validation meeting in Addis Ababa and presented the findings themselves, in their own words, to more than 120 participants including representatives of 20 Member States. Their language, and the specific harms they named, are reflected in CAP-EVAC’s commitments, including the requirement that national laws and community bylaws name and address harmful practices as they are actually experienced locally, rather than relying on broad legal categories alone.
An inclusive, AU-led process
HHSD built a drafting and validation process wider than is typical for a continental policy instrument of this kind. Before the text reached Member States, the zero draft was circulated for technical review across the continental and global EVAC ecosystem: the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC), the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Sale, Sexual Exploitation and Sexual Abuse of Children reviewed the text directly, alongside a wide field of specialised organisations working across prevention, response, humanitarian action, justice, health, education and digital safety – among them the CSO Forum on the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, Coalition for Good Schools, Raising Voices, Together for Girls, Brave Movement, Girls Not Brides, Boabab Research Consortium, the Consortium for Street Children, the INSPIRE Technical Working Group, the Global CSO Forum on Ending Violence Against Children, the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action and the International Rescue Committee. These examples illustrate the breadth of the exercise; they do not represent its full extent, and HHSD’s review drew on the wider expertise of many other institutions, researchers and practitioners across the sector.
Each of these institutions holds a different vantage point on violence against children – legal,
humanitarian, digital, community-based – and no single one of them could have tested the document against the full field on its own. By the time CAP-EVAC reached Member States for validation, it had already been assessed against the global evidence base and against the mandates most likely, later, to be asked whether the document holds up technically. That is what gives the text its technical credibility, separate from and prior to its political credibility.
The subsequent validation exercise, held at ARISE Africa II in Addis Ababa on 16 and 17 July 2026, was itself unusually broad: more than 120 participants in person, representatives of 20
Member States in the room, a further 10 engaged virtually for 30 Member States overall, and 122 additional participants in the wider virtual validation process. The document that emerged was validated with amendments, not simply endorsed – Member States argued over parts of it and changed what they did not accept.
ACERWC’s contribution
The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC) played a distinct and sustained role in this process, separate from its technical review of the zero draft. Since the First Global Ministerial Conference in Bogotá, ACERWC kept violence against children as a standing agenda item across its Ordinary Sessions, maintaining continental attention on the issue between conferences rather than only around them. Its consultations with Regional Economic Communities helped surface regional priorities that fed into how the Common Africa Position took shape, and its child rights monitoring mandate gave the technical review a level of legal scrutiny that few continental instruments receive before reaching governments.
APEVAC’s role
The African Partnership to End Violence against Children (APEVAC), the continental platform hosted by the African Child Policy Forum, supported this process without directing it. Following the Bogotá conference, APEVAC first worked with its ARISE Africa partners – UNICEF and WHO AFRO – to sustain momentum on accelerating implementation and delivery of the EVAC commitments African governments had already made. Alongside that work, the partners also began to consider how Africa might arrive at the next global conference with a stronger, more genuinely African position. ARISE Africa became the platform through which both ambitions were pursued in practice.
Within HHSD’s process, APEVAC’s contribution was one of coordination: convening partners, mobilising technical drafting support, facilitating the country-level children’s consultations, coordinating the technical review process, and supporting Member State engagement in the lead-up to Windhoek. CAP-EVAC is and remains an African Union instrument, led by Member States through the AU’s own policy process. What APEVAC can reasonably claim is having helped hold that process together.
Strategic partnership
That coordination depended on a wider set of organisations, each contributing a distinct piece of the work. UNICEF and WHO AFRO, in collaboration with APEVAC, established the ARISE Africa Partnership. Since the Bogotá conference, these three partners have been working together to ensure accountability for Ending Violence Against Children (EVAC) across the continent. They have maintained focus, coordination, and ongoing efforts in the time between global conferences, leading up to the Comprehensive Action Plan for Ending Violence Against Children (CAP-EVAC). Their combined institutional reach shaped how far the process could travel, from national consultations to global technical review.
Beyond the three ARISE Africa partners, a wider group of organisations joined the effort as it moved toward ARISE Africa II. The Coalition for Good Schools Africa Hub helped coordinate the children’s consultations across the six countries, and Raising Voices grounded the Ugandan consultation in the daily realities of school life. Together for Girls, Girls Not Brides, Raising Voices, Baobab Research Consortium and the Brave Movement each contributed specialised knowledge of the forms of violence CAP-EVAC has to answer for, and lent their support to convening the validation meeting itself. Together with APEVAC, UNICEF and WHO AFRO, they helped make ARISE Africa II – where CAP-EVAC and the AU Model Law on Child Safety Online were validated – possible.
HHSD’s leadership
Throughout this process, HHSD held the pen on the decisions only the African Union Commission could make: carrying the text from a zero draft through expert review, Member State validation and now, adoption. That stewardship – building consensus across governments with different starting points, keeping children’s voices embedded rather than symbolically referenced, and holding a four-month timeline against a fixed AU decision-making moment – is the reason CAP-EVAC reached Windhoek as a text government had tested, not merely seen. Particular appreciation is owed to Dr Akinola Olubusayo Akinola, Head of Social Welfare, Drug Control and Crime Prevention Division, HHS, whose leadership guided the document through drafting, consensus-building and validation to adoption by Member States.
Implementation and the road ahead
Adoption closes one chapter and opens a harder one. CAP-EVAC’s value will not be measured by the ceremony in Windhoek but by whether the commitments it contains are financed, staffed and monitored well enough to produce fewer children experiencing violence, better-protected children in schools, homes, streets and online spaces, and functioning systems that reach children in humanitarian and crisis settings as well as stable ones.
That work now moves to Member States, Regional Economic Communities and the accountability architecture CAP-EVAC establishes, with HHSD and ACERWC coordinating continental follow-through. For the fifty-two children who spoke in South Africa’s national consultation but whose words are not yet part of the public record, and for the more than 500 who are, the measure of this document is simple: whether the specific harms they named – Lekafa, mabahambe, the Bondo society, the exclusion of children with disabilities – are still there to be named by the next generation of children consulted, or whether they are not.
The video Arise Africa II (highlight); Arise Africa Day1 (July16,2026); Arise Africa Day2 (July17,2026) and photographs Arise Africa II (updated photo folder) accompanying this article capture ARISE Africa II itself: Member State delegations at work in the validation room in Addis Ababa, and the four children who stood before them to present the consultation findings in their own words.