Benin has a water law that recognises a citizen’s right to water. Yet only a small share of its rural population has a safely managed supply, and its water law says nothing about women. RFLD’s policy brief, Women, Water and Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol, examines Benin as one of six country case studies. This article sets out the main findings.
Benin and the Maputo Protocol
Benin signed the Maputo Protocol on 11 February 2004. It ratified the treaty on 30 September 2005 and deposited its instrument on 13 October 2005. Benin made no reservation. Article 15, which obliges States to “provide women with access to clean drinking water”, applies in full.
Two ways of measuring access
Benin’s figures show why it matters which measure is used. According to the UN Statistical Yearbook, based on WHO and UNICEF data, 17.7% of Benin’s population used safely managed drinking water in 2024. In towns the figure was 28.4%. In rural areas it was 6.7%.
Benin’s national rural water agency uses a different measure, the service coverage rate (taux de desserte). By this measure, rural coverage reached 82.1% on 31 December 2024. The two figures are not comparable. The national rate counts infrastructure in place. The international measure asks whether water is safely managed for the people who use it.
The agency’s report counts 1,101 rural water systems, with a failure rate of 26.8%. A water point that has broken down does not serve anyone, and when a pump fails, women walk further. The report gives no sex-disaggregated data.
Sanitation figures are also low. Safely managed sanitation reached 16.4% in 2024, with 21.8% in urban areas and 10.7% in rural areas.
The legal framework
Benin’s main water law is Law No. 2010-44 of 24 November 2010 on water management. Its Article 6 provides that every Beninese citizen has the right to have water for their needs (“Chaque citoyen béninois a le droit de disposer de l’eau pour ses besoins”). This is a clear recognition of a right to water in national law.
The law, however, contains no provision on women or gender. It is silent on the time women spend collecting water and on their safety at water points. The brief found no explicit right to water in the Constitution either.
This is the gap that Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol, read with the African Commission’s Guidelines on the Right to Water, can help fill. Those Guidelines ask States to reduce “the disproportionate burden and amount of time women bear in water collection” and to “guarantee safe access to water for women and girls at any time of the day”.
A pilot for gender and climate investment
Benin is one of five pilot countries of the “Water, Climate, Development and Gender Investments” programme (WACDEP-G), part of the Continental Africa Water Investment Programme. The other pilots are Cameroon, Tunisia, Uganda and Zambia.
WACDEP-G has a budget of €25.6 million over six years. It aims to influence USD 1 billion in “gender equal and climate resilient investments”. For Benin, this is an opportunity to show how water investment can be designed with women from the start.
Water and the coast
Benin’s water challenges are also environmental. A World Bank study published in March 2019 estimated that coastal degradation, including erosion and pollution, cost Benin USD 229 million in 2017, or 2.5% of GDP. Pollution of water affects the sources that coastal households, and the women who manage them, depend on.
What RFLD recommends for Benin
Applied to Benin, the brief’s recommendations point to four steps:
- add a gender chapter to the 2010 water law, with a duty to reduce women’s time burden and to guarantee safe access at any time of day;
- collect and publish sex-disaggregated data on rural water services, including breakdowns and time spent collecting water;
- set binding quotas of at least 40% women in water user associations and municipal water committees;
- report on Article 15 in the next periodic report to the African Commission, using the brief’s reporting checklist.
Benin has the legal foundation. Article 6 of its water law already recognises the right. The next step is to make that right work for the women who carry most of the water. For more on Benin’s legal commitments to women, see RFLD’s country law profiles.
About the report
This article draws on RFLD’s report Women, Water and Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol, published on 4 October 2026. Read the summary, download the English edition or the French edition.
