Building a human rights agenda fit for 21st-century realities

In Johannesburg, a 54-year-old Gugu, in an interview with the BBC , carefully counted the antiretroviral pills she had left. The clinic where she received treatment, funded by USAid, has closed due to reduced US aid.

At her last visit, staff gave her a nine-month supply instead of the usual three. Gugu works with pregnant sex workers to help them get treatment and prevent HIV transmission to their children. Now she worries about what will happen when her medication runs out, since no clinic remains to care for her.

Gugu's story is not only about health but also human rights, capturing the quiet crisis at the heart of human rights in Africa. On paper, she has the right to the highest attainable standard of health under South Africa's Constitution, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and many ratified treaties. What she lacks is a system that makes that right meaningful when the pharmacy shelf is empty.

For decades, human rights formed the foundation of a powerful promise to Africans. While many post-independence governments viewed rights language with suspicion as a challenge to state authority, citizens embraced it with hope. Human rights promised dignity instead of humiliation, justice instead of impunity and participation instead of exclusion. Across the continent, people risked imprisonment, exile and even death pursuing these ideals. Journalists exposed abuses, lawyers challenged arbitrary power and activists organised communities demanding accountability. Human rights became a vehicle for imagining a better future.

Yet for many Africans today, that future remains stubbornly out of reach. The continent has made undeniable progress. Constitutional protections have expanded and courts have become stronger in many countries. The African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights established a distinctive framework combining civil and political rights with social, economic, collective and peoples' rights. African institutions have developed an important body of jurisprudence and norms over the past four decades.

And yet millions continue to experience lives defined by poverty, inequality, insecurity, corruption, displacement and exclusion. Democracy has expanded in some places while retreating in others. Civic space is shrinking across many countries. Youth unemployment remains stubbornly high. Climate shocks are rendering entire livelihoods precarious.

The gap between rights guaranteed on paper and dignity experienced in practice remains enormous. It has produced something that human rights advocates have been reluctant to confront directly: disillusionment. For a young graduate unable to find work, discussions about democratic rights can seem disconnected from daily struggles for survival. For communities displaced by extractive industries or climate disasters, legal guarantees often seem distant and ineffective. For citizens confronting growing economic inequality, human rights can appear to protect freedoms without adequately addressing the conditions required to enjoy them.