A non-governmental organisation focused on advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights in Africa, Afya na Haki, has announced its 4th annual Reproductive Justice Litigation Baraza scheduled for August 3 to 7, 2026 in Harare, Zimbabwe. 

The organisation convenes the baraza as a strategic legal forum where lawyers, academics, civil society organisations and advocates gather to share knowledge, challenge discriminatory laws and coordinate legal strategies.

The year’s event, with the theme, “Age as a determinant of Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights,” seeks to examine age as a structural determinant of SRHR across the full life course and develop regionally grounded litigation strategies required to dismantle age-based barriers across the African continent.

In a concept note obtained by the Peoples Gazette on Tuesday, the baraza also aims at building on the resolutions and strategic frameworks adopted at the first, second and third editions, including the African Charter on Decriminalisation of SRHR adopted at the Third Baraza in August 2025.

“The Baraza will create the space to examine age as a structural determinant of SRHR across the full life course, to build the South-to-South coalitions that sustained reproductive justice litigation demands, and to develop the normative and strategic frameworks that African advocates, courts, and policymakers need to ensure that the next generation of legal challenges leaves no age -and no one- behind,” the note stated.

Explaining its choice of the East African country as the host of the event, the organisation added, “Zimbabwe’s experience of navigating the tension between constitutional promise and lived reality, of building age of consent jurisprudence within a contested political environment, makes it not only a host but a compelling site of inquiry for the questions the Baraza must confront.”

The organisation noted that age sat at the centre of a web of unresolved legal questions that African health and legal

systems had yet to confront with clarity, adding the age of consent determined who could seek care and who was turned away.

“The concept of decisional and mental capacity remains inadequately defined in law, leaving courts and clinicians without a coherent framework for recognising the autonomous choices of adolescents and older persons alike.

“Health professionals face contradictory legal obligations: required by professional ethics to act in the patient’s best interests, yet exposed to criminal liability when they do so without agegated consent,” the note added.

The baraza, which will feature panel discussions, research presentations, documentary screenings, keynote addresses, practitioner roundtables and  judicial dialogues among others, aimed at engendering regionally grounded litigation strategies, promoting a life-course framework for SRHR and contributing to regional jurisprudence