Activists are beginning to mobilise against a major upcoming anti-LGBTQ+ “family values” conference set to take place in Ghana, with campaigners pressuring the host hotel and highlighting what they describe as foreign influence behind the event.
The 4th African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family, Sovereignty and Values has now been confirmed for 3 to 6 June at the Four Points by Sheraton Accra Airport in Accra.
The conference will bring together parliamentarians to promote what organisers describe as “African values” and oppose what they claim is a foreign agenda threatening cultural norms, traditional family structures, gender roles, and children’s wellbeing across the continent.
Registration for the event, which will take place during International Pride Month, has officially opened. Previous editions were held in Uganda in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
Conference to promote anti-LGBTQ+ agenda
The conference serves as a major platform for promoting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, campaigning against comprehensive sexuality education, and supporting restrictions on sexual and reproductive health and rights.
Activists view the decision to host the 2026 event in Ghana — a country on the verge of passing an extreme anti-LGBTQ+ bill — as part of a broader strategic effort to intensify anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment and expand repressive laws across Africa.
The event is also expected to continue efforts to promote the adoption of the Draft African Charter on Family Sovereignty and Values by African Union member states.
The document frames sexual and gender diversity, as well as LGBTQ+ human rights, as threats to African culture, tradition, families, and children’s safety.
Pressure mounts on conference venue
Calls are growing for Four Points by Sheraton, a Marriott International franchisee, to withdraw from hosting the event, with activists drawing attention to the hotel’s involvement on social media.
“We urge Marriott to act swiftly & responsibly,” said JustRight Ghana on X. “A company with a global commitment to diversity, inclusion, and human rights cannot remain silent while its facilities are used to host a conference associated with anti-women agendas and anti-LGBTQ+ issue.”
Some campaigners have also encouraged people to boycott the venue and leave negative reviews on platforms such as Google.
“If you’re a member of the LGBTIQ community or an ally, boycott it and leave a review,” one one-star reviewer wrote on Google. “Queer West Africans deserve safety, queer West Africans deserve to live without being criminalised. Boycott!”
Another reviewer stated: “Do not patronise this hotel if you believe in the dignity of all peoples and their right to safety and life regardless of who they choose to love as adults.”
Petition highlights foreign far-right influence
Activists are also working to expose what they describe as significant foreign influence behind the conference.
They argue the event does not protect African values, but instead advances Western far-right Christian ideology.
An All Out petition describes the conference as “foreign-financed and foreign-directed”, and part of a decades-long campaign by American and European groups to promote anti-rights ideologies in Africa.
The petition alleges that Sharon Slater, president of Family Watch International — a US-based organisation designated as a hate group — and Henk Jan van Schothorst of Christian Council International in the Netherlands are key figures supporting and financing the conference and its agenda.
It further claims that Van Schothorst’s organisation “publicly claims credit” for drafting the African Charter on Family Sovereignty and Values.
“That draft charter is what this is really about, a document designed to enshrine discrimination and roll back women’s rights across the continent,” the petition states.
The petition calls on Slater, Van Schothorst, and their organisations to “withdraw from the conference and from their financial campaign to import anti-rights legislation and an anti-rights charter across the African continent.”
A critical moment for LGBTQ+ rights in Africa
Ghanaian organisation Rightify Ghana warned that with registration and hotel bookings now officially underway, “the Accra conference has moved decisively from planning to implementation.”
The group cautioned that “the convergence of parliamentary actors, legal institutions, advocacy organisations, and African Union engagement strategies indicates that the conference is intended not merely as a symbolic gathering, but as a strategic consolidation point for a broader movement seeking to reshape governance, family policy, gender rights, and human rights frameworks across Africa.”
For activists, the conference represents more than a single gathering. It is being viewed as a key moment in a wider regional struggle over LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive freedoms, gender equality, and the future of human rights protections across the continent.
