Catholic bishops are mounting pressure on African governments not to ratify a continental treaty whose provisions include guaranteeing women the right to abortion.

In Nairobi this week, the Catholic Church in Kenya repeated its appeal to the government to reject the "Maputo Protocol" which came into force in 2005, saying its implementation would have serous negative implications on the lives of Kenyans.

Speaking during the closing of the Kenya Catholic HIV/Aids Conference on Thursday, the chairman of the Kenya Episcopal Conference, Archbishop John Njue, said Kenyan bishops had met with President Mwai Kibaki and expressed their opposition to the Protocol.

Archbishop Njue expressed dismay at reports that the country's Vice President Moody Awori, a Catholic, supported the Protocol. Media reports here on Wednesday quoted Awori as saying, "ratification of the Protocol is high on Kenya's agenda." The government has not disputed the reports.

The Protocol to the African Charter in Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa was adopted by the African Union in Maputo, Mozambique, in July 2003, and provides for safe abortion. The practice is illegal in Kenya except in certain very exceptional circumstances.

Meanwhile, the Catholic bishops of Central Africa (representing Rwanda, Burundi and DR Congo) said the "Protocol of Maputo constitutes a slow but relentless destruction of fundamental African values: respect for life, importance of the family, maternity, fecundity, marriage - all these values are ignored by the Protocol."

The bishops said earlier this month that the treaty's aim is "to align Africa and African women to a concept foreign to African culture: rejection of maternity, qualified as a form of slavery, the right to abort and violate the unborn child's right to life, hedonism and sexual freedom - the right to enjoy sexual life whatever one's sexual orientation."

In January, Pope Benedict XVI lamented that even regions "with a traditional culture of respecting life, such as Africa," had "trivialized abortion surreptitiously, both through the Maputo Protocol and through the Plan of Action adopted by the Health Ministers of the African Union."

Acknowledgements
This article originally appeared in the 29 June 2007 edition of Africa News.