On Thursday 15 October 2026, on the sidelines of the 89th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Dakar, RFLD and the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice held a joint side event titled Towards an African regional framework against technology-facilitated gender-based violence. For two hours, from 13:00 to 15:00, Commissioners, lawyers, women’s rights and digital rights practitioners, defenders and representatives of partner organisations examined one question: what would it take for the African human rights system to give women a coherent standard of protection online?
Hon. Commissioner Janet Ramatoulie Sallah-Njie, Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa, opened the discussion. She was joined on the panel by Hon. Commissioner Rémy Ngoy Lumbu, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Focal Point on Reprisals in Africa, Adaobi Egboka, Director, Africa Initiatives at the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice, and Dr Sandrine Chikou of RFLD. The two mandates represented on the panel frame the issue well. Technology-facilitated violence is a violation of women’s rights, and it is also one of the main tools now used to intimidate women who defend those rights.
Why a regional framework, and why now
Technology-facilitated gender-based violence, often shortened to TFGBV, covers acts of violence committed, assisted, aggravated or amplified through information and communication technologies or digital media against a person because of their gender. In practice, it includes online harassment and threats, cyberstalking, doxxing, surveillance, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images and coordinated smear campaigns. It reaches women journalists, elected officials, activists, students and ordinary users alike, and it falls hardest on women who are visible in public life.
Digital technologies have expanded women’s participation in education, business, politics and civic action across Africa. The same tools have opened new routes for abuse. The harm is real and documented: women reduce their presence online, withdraw from public debate, change jobs or move house after attacks that began on a screen. The rights at stake are protected by the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and by the Maputo Protocol, including equality, dignity, privacy, security of the person, freedom of expression and the right to take part in public affairs.
The legal response has not kept pace. Most African States still deal with online violence against women through general cybercrime or criminal laws that were not written with the gendered nature of this violence in mind. Definitions vary from one country to the next, some conduct is not covered at all, and some laws on false information or cybercrime have been used against the very women they should protect. The result is a patchwork in which a survivor’s chances of protection depend largely on the country she lives in.
The African Commission has already taken an important step. In 2022 it adopted Resolution 522 on the protection of women against digital violence in Africa, calling on States to review their laws, train law enforcement and work with technology companies. The African Union adopted its Convention on Ending Violence against Women and Girls in 2025, and many States have signed or ratified the Malabo Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection. These instruments matter, but none of them gives States detailed, gender-responsive guidance on how to prevent online violence against women, investigate it, hold perpetrators and platforms to account, and repair the harm.
This is the gap the side event set out to examine. A regional normative or guiding framework, developed within the African human rights system, could give States a common reference: shared definitions, clear obligations, minimum standards for remedies and a basis for the Commission to assess progress through State reporting.
What the side event set out to do
The concept note prepared by the Vance Center and RFLD set five objectives for the afternoon:
- bring members of the African Commission together with women’s rights and digital rights practitioners, civil society organisations and other stakeholders to examine how TFGBV manifests across African jurisdictions;
- raise awareness of TFGBV as an emerging human rights issue affecting women, girls and human rights defenders across the continent;
- show the different forms the violence takes and the harm it causes to rights protected under the African Charter and the Maputo Protocol;
- discuss the legal and policy gaps in current responses;
- explore how the African Union, and the African Commission in particular, could develop a regional framework to help States prevent, respond to and remedy TFGBV through a gender-responsive approach.
The format was a moderated panel followed by an open exchange with the room, so that experience from the floor could feed directly into the discussion on standards.
The panel
- Hon. Commissioner Janet Ramatoulie Sallah-Njie, Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa, African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, who gave the opening remarks;
- Hon. Commissioner Rémy Ngoy Lumbu, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Focal Point on Reprisals in Africa;
- Adaobi Egboka, Director, Africa Initiatives, Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice;
- Dr Sandrine Chikou, RFLD.
Each speaker brought a different vantage point: the regional standards on women’s rights, the protection of defenders against reprisals, the legal and accountability work of the Vance Center across Africa, and the experience of RFLD’s member organisations working with survivors.
The harm as women experience it
Any regional standard has to start from what survivors live through. RFLD’s 2026 report on online violence against women in West and Central Africa documents patterns that were familiar to many participants. Attacks often intensify at the moment a woman becomes visible: when she is elected, appointed, quoted in the press or leads a campaign. Abuse moves easily between online and offline life. A former partner threatens to publish images, an aggressor uses messaging applications to keep pressure on a survivor, a smear campaign online is followed by threats in the street.
Survivors also face a second layer of harm when they seek help. Reporting channels are hard to find, police officers are rarely trained to handle digital evidence, and some survivors are blamed or exposed further when they come forward. Many decide that silence is safer. For women human rights defenders, the attacks are frequently designed to discredit their work and isolate them from their communities, which is why the issue sits squarely within the mandate on defenders and on reprisals.
Legal needs and accountability pathways
The theme of the event placed legal needs and accountability at the centre. Several gaps recur across the region. Laws rarely define the main forms of online violence against women in clear terms. Procedures for preserving digital evidence are weak or absent. Protection orders, where they exist, were designed for offline violence and are seldom adapted to online threats. Survivors who want to have content removed must deal with platforms whose reporting tools and response times vary widely, and which may have no meaningful presence in the country.
Accountability also has several layers. Individual perpetrators must face consequences. States must meet their obligation of due diligence to prevent, investigate and punish violence, including when it happens online. Technology companies operating in Africa have responsibilities of their own, in particular to provide accessible reporting, timely responses and transparency on how they handle cases involving African users and African languages. A regional framework would help clarify these respective responsibilities and give survivors and their lawyers a reference they can invoke before national courts and before the Commission.
Protecting women defenders online
For RFLD, the link between technology-facilitated violence and the protection of defenders is direct. On 12 October, three days earlier, RFLD facilitated the panel Defending without being exposed on the main agenda of the 89th Session, chaired by Hon. Commissioner Rémy Ngoy Lumbu. That discussion showed how digital violence, together with judicial harassment and stigmatisation, is used to silence women who document abuses and accompany survivors.
A regional framework on TFGBV should therefore include specific guarantees for women human rights defenders: recognition that online attacks against them are a form of reprisal, rapid protection measures, safe documentation and reporting channels, and protection for those who engage with the African human rights system. Without these guarantees, women risk being targeted precisely because they took part in sessions such as this one.
Questions from the floor
The open exchange gave space to participants from different countries and backgrounds. The issues raised in the room reflected the realities organisations face every day: how to document cases without putting survivors at further risk, how to obtain a response from platforms, how to train police and judicial officers, how to reach women in rural areas and women who do not use the dominant languages of the internet, and how to fund support services that are already stretched.
These questions are a useful test for any future framework. Standards that cannot answer them in practice will not change much for the women concerned. They also show why a regional process should involve women’s organisations and survivors from the start, so that the framework reflects their experience and their priorities.
What RFLD proposes
Drawing on its research and on the experience of its 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 countries, RFLD brought the following proposals to the discussion:
- that the African Commission consider developing guidelines or a general comment on technology-facilitated gender-based violence, building on Resolution 522 and on the Maputo Protocol;
- that any regional framework adopt clear, gender-responsive definitions of the main forms of online violence, while protecting freedom of expression and preventing the misuse of cybercrime laws against journalists and activists;
- that States be asked to report on TFGBV in their periodic reports to the Commission, with data disaggregated by sex and by form of violence;
- that the framework set out what States can expect from technology companies, including accessible reporting in African languages, timely responses and cooperation with justice systems that respects privacy;
- that support services for survivors, including legal aid and psychosocial support, integrate digital safety as a standard part of their work;
- that women human rights defenders targeted online benefit from specific protection measures, including against reprisals for cooperating with the African human rights system.
Next steps
The side event is a starting point. RFLD and the Vance Center will share the main points of the discussion with the Special Rapporteurs and with the partners who took part, and will explore with them how to take the idea of a regional framework forward within the African human rights system. RFLD will continue to document cases with the consent of the women concerned, so that advocacy at national and regional level rests on evidence from the field.
The discussion in Dakar also builds on a week of related work. On 13 October, RFLD moderated the Expertise France dialogue on technology-facilitated gender-based violence under the Team Europe WLICT initiative. Earlier in October, RFLD took part in the WLICT national consultation on TFGBV in Abuja. Practical resources for organisations, including the African Digital Safety Compendium, remain available on the RFLD website.
Thanks
RFLD thanks the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice for this partnership and for its commitment to women’s rights in Africa. We thank Hon. Commissioner Janet Ramatoulie Sallah-Njie and Hon. Commissioner Rémy Ngoy Lumbu for their engagement on this issue, Adaobi Egboka, Director, Africa Initiatives at the Vance Center, and Dr Sandrine Chikou of RFLD for their contributions, and every participant who joined the conversation from the floor. We also thank the RFLD delegation and our member organisations, whose work with survivors gives this advocacy its substance.
Read more
- Why technology-facilitated violence against women is a human rights issue
- Technology-facilitated gender-based violence and human rights: the Expertise France dialogue in Dakar
- Defending without being exposed: the panel on women human rights defenders at the 89th Session
- Online violence against women in West and Central Africa: questions on RFLD’s 2026 report
- The African Digital Safety Compendium
Media enquiries: communications.info@rflgd.org.
