Speaker of Ghana’s Parliament, Alban Bagbin, has criticised the practice of tying foreign aid to changes in the domestic laws of recipient countries, describing it as a violation of the principle of sovereign equality enshrined in the United Nations Charter.
Speaking at the 4th Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family, Sovereignty and Values, Mr. Bagbin argued that development assistance should not be made conditional on beneficiary countries adopting legal or cultural frameworks that conflict with their values, traditions and national priorities.
He called on international development partners to respect the sovereignty of African nations and refrain from using aid as a means of influencing domestic legal systems.
“I want to emphasize that conditioning aid on the alteration of domestic laws to the disadvantage of beneficiary countries violates the principle of sovereign equality enshrined in the United Nations Charter,” he stated.
According to the Speaker, African countries do not seek to interfere in the internal legal affairs of other nations and therefore expect the same level of respect for their sovereignty.
“We in Africa do not seek to dictate the internal legal frameworks of other continents, and we expect, in turn, the same respect for our sovereignty,” he said.
Mr. Bagbin further cautioned against attempts to promote legal and cultural models that he said are inconsistent with Africa’s social and cultural foundations.
He warned that such efforts could undermine the continent’s identity, traditions and long-standing institutions.
The Speaker urged Africans to reject the notion that modernisation and development require abandoning cultural values that have shaped societies across the continent for generations.
Speaking on family structures, Mr. Bagbin argued that prevailing Western definitions of family do not accurately reflect the realities of African societies.
He maintained that African family systems are broader, more interconnected and more resilient than the nuclear family model commonly associated with Western societies.
“The Western concept of the nuclear family, isolated, individualistic and strictly bounded, fails to capture the expansive, resilient and self-sustaining genius of the African family,” he said.
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