Challenging anti-rights movements in West Africa

This project will investigate anti-rights movements in West Africa, a region underexplored in anti-rights research due to language barriers, funding shortages and the distinct socio-religious dynamics shaping how these movements operate. Unlike countries such as Uganda, where Christian evangelical networks are well-documented as key drivers of rights rollbacks, West African contexts are shaped more prominently by Islamic actors  and anti-West discourse, producing a different landscape of opposition to sexual, gender, and bodily rights that requires dedicated analysis. The research will situate anti-rights movements in West Africa within the broader international human rights architecture, examining how anti-rights actors engage with and seek to undermine regional and international mechanisms, including by instrumentalising anti-colonial and sovereignty narratives to delegitimise international human rights standards as foreign impositions – a tactic particularly prevalent in Francophone contexts.