On 21 October 1986, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights entered into force. Forty years later, the continent marks this date as African Human Rights Day. The Réseau des Femmes Leaders pour le Développement (RFLD), a pan-African feminist network of 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 countries with Observer Status N°553 before the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, joins this anniversary with gratitude for what the Charter built and with a clear demand for what remains to be done for African women.
This year the anniversary falls on the closing day of the 89th Ordinary Session of the African Commission, held in Dakar from 8 to 21 October 2026. RFLD has spent these weeks in Dakar with a delegation of 42 people from 15 African countries. What we heard from women defenders, survivors’ organisations, State institutions and the Commission itself shapes this statement.
A Charter that gave Africa its own language of rights
Adopted in Nairobi in 1981 by the Organisation of African Unity, the Charter was the first human rights treaty written by African States for African peoples. It placed civil and political rights alongside economic, social and cultural rights, and it recognised the rights of peoples as well as those of individuals. Every African Union member state except one has ratified it.
For women, two provisions matter most. Article 2 guarantees the rights in the Charter to every individual without distinction based on sex. Article 18 commits States to eliminate every form of discrimination against women and to protect their rights as set out in international declarations and conventions. These words were a starting point. In 2003, African States went further and adopted in Maputo the Protocol to the Charter on the Rights of Women in Africa, one of the most advanced women’s rights instruments in the world.
The Charter also created the African Commission, which has sat since 1987 and has its seat in Banjul. Through its sessions and its special mechanisms, the Commission has given civil society a place to bring the realities of the continent before its States. RFLD is one of the organisations that use that place, and we know its value from experience.
Forty years on, how much of the promise has reached women?
This is the question we ask on this anniversary. To answer it with evidence, RFLD built the Maputo Barometer 2026. It scores 49 countries in West, Central, East and Southern Africa on three indicators taken from the Maputo Protocol: laws against gender-based violence, girls’ education and retention, and women’s political representation.
- Only three countries, Cabo Verde, Namibia and Rwanda, are green on all three indicators.
- Eighteen countries are red on at least one indicator.
- Out of 147 scores, 32 are green, 83 are orange and 32 are red.
- 46 of the 55 African Union member states have ratified the Maputo Protocol. Nine have not.
Orange is the colour of the continent. In most countries the laws exist, yet impunity, missing budgets and social barriers keep them from changing the lives of women and girls. A law on gender-based violence that has no funded shelters and no prosecutors who follow cases does little for the woman who needs it tonight.
Behind the colours are women’s lives. On girls’ education, too many countries still lose girls between primary and secondary school, through early marriage or the cost of schooling. On political representation, women remain a small minority in most parliaments of the region, and quota laws are often weakly applied. Each red score points to girls who leave school too early and to women whose voices are missing where budgets and laws are decided.
The African system has also grown stronger around the Charter. The African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, created by a protocol that entered into force in 2004, can now hear cases on the Charter and the Maputo Protocol from States that accept its jurisdiction. Yet few States allow individuals and NGOs to bring cases directly, which keeps the Court out of reach for most women.
What we saw in Dakar
The 89th Session gave us a close view of both the progress and the gaps. On 12 October, a panel on the protection of women human rights defenders reached the main agenda of the Commission, chaired by Hon. Rémy Ngoy Lumbu, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Focal Point on Reprisals. It showed how women who report sexual exploitation and abuse in their communities are often unrecognised as defenders and exposed to reprisals.
On 13 October, RFLD delivered its oral statement before the Commission. The same day, with Benin’s Institut National de la Femme, we presented a public institution that brings cases of gender-based violence to court alongside survivors. In five years, the INF reports that its work has changed the lives of more than 118,000 women and girls. Senegal’s Minister of Justice, the Ministry of Family, Social Action and Solidarity and the Association des Juristes Sénégalaises received our delegation to learn from that experience and to share their own.
These exchanges confirmed what the Barometer measures. Where an institution follows a woman from her first call to the decision of a judge, rights become real. Where that chain breaks, the Charter remains a text.
We also heard about new threats. Online gender-based violence, which the Commission recognised in Resolution 522 in 2022, now follows women politicians and activists into their homes. Laws on cybercrime, defamation and public order are used in several countries to silence women who speak out. Funding for women’s organisations, especially in francophone Africa, is shrinking at the moment it is most needed.
Our calls on the 40th anniversary
RFLD calls on African States, the African Union and their partners to mark this anniversary with commitments that women can feel.
- Ratify the Maputo Protocol. The nine African Union member states that have not ratified it should do so before July 2028, the 25th anniversary of its adoption.
- Lift reservations. States that ratified with reservations should withdraw them. Our nine country briefs show the path for each of them.
- Report and fund. All States Parties should report to the African Commission on the Protocol as part of their periodic reports, and give the laws they have already adopted the budgets they need.
- Protect women defenders. States should recognise women who defend rights in their communities as human rights defenders, protect them from reprisals and support the adoption of strong continental standards on their protection.
- Invest in access to justice. States should build referral chains between community legal services and public bodies able to act in court, learning from models such as Senegal’s boutiques de droit and Benin’s Institut National de la Femme.
- Fund the movement. Partners and funders should give flexible, multi-year support to the women-led organisations that monitor these commitments at community level, where the Charter is tested every day.
What RFLD commits to
RFLD will keep measuring, country by country, how close the continent comes to the promise of the Charter for women. We will publish the next edition of the Maputo Barometer and share its findings with the African Commission and with national institutions. As a member of the Support Group to the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, we will keep documenting reprisals against women defenders with their consent, and we will continue to bring their voices to each ordinary session.
Resources matter as much as words. Between June and September 2026, RFLD awarded 27 grants worth US$722,100 to 26 organisations working for women’s rights on the continent. We will keep moving resources to the groups closest to women, because that is where the Charter becomes real or stays on paper.
We will also keep building bridges between countries. The dialogue between Benin and Senegal that we facilitated in Dakar will lead to a note of recommendations and a comparative study of national gender institutions in the coming weeks. We invite other States and institutions to join this exchange.
A promise still to keep
Forty years ago, African States wrote that rights belong to everyone, without distinction based on sex. That promise is not yet kept for millions of African women and girls. It can be kept within a generation if States ratify, report, fund and protect. RFLD and its 1,143 member organisations will be there to hold them to it. The next edition of the Maputo Barometer will tell whether this anniversary changed anything.
Happy African Human Rights Day to all who defend rights across the continent.
Explore the Maputo Barometer 2026 and the 49 country profiles
About RFLD: the Réseau des Femmes Leaders pour le Développement is a pan-African feminist network of 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 countries, founded in 2012, with Observer Status N°553 with the ACHPR. Media enquiries: communications.info@rflgd.org
