EDITORIAL: Human rights in Africa: Are our 'everyday essentials' still optional?

This year’s Human Rights Day theme – Human Rights: Our Everyday Essentials – lands awkwardly on a continent where rights are often treated as privileges. African governments routinely affirm their commitment to dignity, equality and justice, yet many citizens still experience these not as essentials, but as distant aspirations. Across the continent, freedom of expression is curtailed through arrests and intimidation. Elections promise renewal but deliver recycled tensions.

Women and children remain disproportionately exposed to violence, exploitation and poverty. Refugees wander borders that offer neither protection nor compassion. These are not abstract failures; they are daily realities that contradict the language of human rights.

So, does Africa need a new set of human rights? Perhaps not. The existing frameworks – the African Charter, national constitutions and global treaties – are clear, comprehensive and rooted in universal dignity. What Africa needs is not reinvention but recommitment: political will that transcends rhetoric, institutions that protect rather than persecute and societies prepared to hold leaders accountable. Human rights cannot remain ceremonial slogans. They must become lived essentials – in our courts, our communities, our homes and our politics. Only then can Africa speak honestly of progress.