Rencontre afroféministe sur les Défenseuses des Droits Humains en Afrique de l'Ouest

A regional roundtable on protection, lineage and the political register of women's resistance.

Across West Africa, women human rights defenders carry the long lineage of African women's resistance — to colonial dispossession, to patriarchal violence, to authoritarian power, and to the many silencings imposed on women who claim their full place in public life. The shrinking of civic space across the region, particularly in the Sahelian contexts of Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Guinea, has further exposed WHRDs at the precise moment when their work has never been more urgent.

This closed-door regional roundtable, hosted at the RFLD Office Hall in Dakar, gathers approximately twenty senior actors whose articulated engagement shapes the protection environment for WHRDs in West Africa. The convening listens first to defenders themselves, examines the operational functioning of the continental and regional protection architecture — the ACHPR system, the ECOWAS framework and Gender Office, and the African Peace and Security Architecture — and adopts a set of concrete recommendations and a follow-up mechanism for the 2026–2028 period.

The convening is anchored in RFLD's BRAVE Programme, which holds bodily autonomy, the Maputo Protocol, sexual and reproductive health and rights, and the protection of women human rights defenders as inseparable struggles within the long Afro-feminist tradition.

The voices who will open the room.

• Ms Bathor Seck

  RFLD Country Focal Point for Senegal — welcome and framing of the consultation, on behalf of Mme Dossi Sêkonnou Gloria AGUEH, Africa Director, RFLD
• H.E. the Minister of Family and Solidarities

  Republic of Senegal — address on behalf of the host government (or her representative)
• H.E. the Minister of Justice

  Republic of Senegal — address on behalf of the host government (or his representative)
• H.E. the Ambassador of the Kingdom of Sweden to Senegal

  Address on behalf of Sida and the Embassy of Sweden
• Ms Katja Roeckel

  Country Director, GIZ Senegal — Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit
• Mr Mathias Muehlhans

  Programme Director, GIZ Senegal — Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit
• Hon. Remy Ngoy Lumbu

  Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Focal Point on Reprisals in Africa, ACHPR · former President of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights — substantive opening intervention, framing the convening from the heart of his continental mandate

The voices who will anchor the analysis.

• Hon. Remy Ngoy Lumbu

  ACHPR Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Focal Point on Reprisals in Africa — leading intervention on the continental protection architecture and the under-utilised levers of the ACHPR system
• Pr Mabassa Fall

  Jurist and senior expert on the African human rights system — analytical perspective on documentation gaps and the legal vulnerabilities affecting WHRDs across the continent
• Ms Hannah Forster

  Director, African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies (ACDHRS), Banjul — historical and regional perspective on the evolution of threats against defenders, and the women's movements that have always pushed them back
• Women Human Rights Defenders from the RFLD network

  Including invited defenders from Sahelian and transition contexts — testimony from the field. They speak first and structure the conversation from their own analysis.

The room.

Approximately twenty senior participants from the institutional ecosystem within which RFLD operates regionally — a composition reflecting the actors whose engagement shapes the protection environment for women human rights defenders in West Africa.

The position from which RFLD convenes this room.

How to attend.