On Monday 12 October 2026, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights held a panel on the main agenda of its 89th Ordinary Session in Dakar under the title Defending without being exposed: how can women human rights defenders work in Africa without unnecessary risk? The panel was convened and chaired by Honourable Commissioner Rémy Ngoy Lumbu, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Focal Point on Reprisals in Africa. RFLD facilitated the session with the support of the SEA-T programme (Society. Equality. Africa), implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
Few civil society proposals reach the Commission’s main agenda. This one did because the question it asks is now urgent across the continent. Women who prevent and respond to sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment often work in rural and peri-urban areas, with little legal standing and no institutional backing. The people they report can be close to them, from a local notable to an employer or a public official. When they speak out, they are exposed. The panel set out to look at that exposure from five angles, and to agree on what the Commission, States and funders can do about it.
Why this panel, and why now
The mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders was created in 2004 and extended to reprisals in 2014. Session after session, the Commission still receives reports of arbitrary arrests, judicial harassment, smear campaigns and physical attacks against those who document violations and support survivors. Defamation complaints cost the accuser little and can ruin a frontline organisation. Online gender-based violence, which the Commission recognised in Resolution 522 in 2022, has become a common tool of intimidation.
The panel was built around four questions. When is a community worker or the head of a local association recognised as a defender, in law and in practice? Which forms of reprisal dominate, and how can taking part in a session of the Commission be kept from leading to reprisals at home? What share of funding against sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment reaches organisations led by African women, and can protection costs become an eligible budget line? And which guarantees should be written into the draft African instruments under preparation?
The format was tight. After the introduction by the Special Rapporteur, each panellist had five minutes, followed by an exchange with the plenary and short closing remarks. Interpretation was provided in English, French, Arabic and Portuguese.
Hon. Rémy Ngoy Lumbu: the mandate and the cost of speaking up
Opening the session, Hon. Rémy Ngoy Lumbu placed the discussion within his mandate as Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Focal Point on Reprisals. He framed the panel around a simple concern: defenders must be able to engage with the Commission and with national authorities without paying a price for it.
His mandate gives the discussion its weight. The Focal Point on Reprisals exists because defenders who engage with the Commission can face retaliation at home. Protection of women defenders therefore depends on two things the Commission can push for: recognition of their work, and remedies that function when reprisals occur.
Konstanze Ricken (SEA-T, GIZ): intersectionality, Afrofeminism and gender equality
Konstanze Ricken, Programme Director of SEA-T (Society. Equality. Africa) at GIZ, focused her intervention on the link between intersectionality, Afrofeminism and gender equality, and on what this link means for partnerships that aim at gender transformation.
Women defenders are not all exposed in the same way. A woman’s age, a disability, the place where she lives or her social status shape the risks she faces and the protection she can reach. An intersectional reading makes these differences visible, so that the women most exposed are not left out of the response. Afrofeminism adds a further dimension. It starts from the experience and leadership of African women themselves, and sees them as the authors of change in their communities.
For RFLD, this perspective is central to its work. SEA-T supports a regional initiative in which RFLD works with women defenders and partner organisations across West Africa from an Afrofeminist standpoint. The panel was an occasion to discuss how partners can build gender equality programmes that start from the realities of the women most exposed, and that place their safety and their leadership at the centre.
Omolara Balogun (WACSI): civic space and an enabling environment
Omolara Balogun, Head of Policy Influencing and Advocacy at the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) in Accra, addressed the wider environment in which women’s organisations operate in West Africa. Her intervention focused on shrinking civic space and on the conditions civil society needs to work freely.
Restrictions on civil society rarely arrive in one piece. They come through registration rules, reporting obligations, limits on foreign funding and laws on cybercrime or public order that can be used against activists. Each measure may look technical on its own. Together, they shape whether a women’s organisation can register, receive funds, meet in public and speak about what it sees. WACSI’s work across the sub-region gives it a clear view of how these measures build on each other.
This angle links the protection of individual defenders to the health of civil society as a whole. A defender is safer when the organisation behind her is legally secure and adequately funded. An enabling environment is therefore part of protection.
Simbiat Bakare (RFLD Nigeria): a view from the field
Simbiat Bakare, RFLD Country Representative for Nigeria, based in Lagos, brought the discussion back to community level. Her intervention focused on how civic space restrictions are felt by women organising in their own neighbourhoods and towns.
At this level, the distance between the law and daily life is short. A women’s group that supports a survivor may face pressure from the family of the accused, from local leaders or from officials who prefer the case to stay quiet. Online abuse adds another layer, and it follows activists into their homes. RFLD’s work in Nigeria, including its recent participation in the national consultation on technology-facilitated gender-based violence in Abuja, has documented how quickly online threats can become offline danger.
The practical lesson from the field is clear. Women who organise locally need to know where to turn when they are threatened, and referral routes need to work in their own language and within hours.
Hannah Forster (ACDHRS): recognition in the African human rights system
Hannah Forster, Executive Director of the African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies (ACDHRS) in Banjul, spoke on the recognition and protection of women defenders within the African human rights system. Few people know the Commission’s procedures and its relationship with civil society as well as she does, after many years organising the Forum on the Participation of NGOs ahead of each ordinary session.
Her intervention addressed a question at the heart of the panel. Recognition decides whether protection applies. A woman who accompanies survivors to the police station or to court is doing the work of a defender, yet she is often described as a volunteer, a relative or a troublemaker. The African system offers tools for recognition, from the Guidelines on Freedom of Association and Assembly to the mandates of the Special Rapporteurs. The challenge is to make those tools known and usable for women far from the capitals and far from Banjul.
NGOs with observer status have a particular role here. They can submit shadow reports and speak at sessions, and they can help less visible groups reach the Commission safely.
Aua Baldé (UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances): what survivors’ organisations expect
Aua Baldé, member of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances and a human rights defender, brought the perspective of organisations that work directly with survivors and families. Her intervention focused on field experience and on what these organisations expect from regional and international mechanisms.
Her presence connected the African system with the United Nations special procedures. Organisations that work with survivors expect mechanisms to respond quickly and to follow up after the session is over. They also expect cases to be handled in a way that does not expose the people who come forward.
The exchange with the plenary
The second part of the hour opened the floor to the plenary. Members of RFLD’s delegation of women human rights defenders, who had taken part in the NGOs Forum and in RFLD’s closed working session on 10 October, followed the panel from the hall. Their experience shaped the questions the panel set out to answer, from recognition at community level to the risk of reprisals after engagement with the Commission.
The presence of Hon. Idrissa Sow, Chairperson of the African Commission, at the panel table underlined the weight the Commission gives to the protection of defenders at this session.
What RFLD takes forward
For RFLD, the panel is a starting point. RFLD is a member of the Support Group to the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, under Resolution 602, and holds Observer Status N°553 with the Commission. The follow-up will run through both channels.
- A documented account of recognition and reprisal patterns, drawn from cases registered with consent across RFLD’s network, for the Support Group.
- Recommendations on the eligibility of protection costs, addressed to funders, so that security, legal support and psychosocial care can appear in standard grant budgets.
- A contribution to the study under Resolution 571 on how far national legislation complies with the Guidelines on Freedom of Association and Assembly in Africa.
- Referral routes made known to defenders, including RFLD’s French and Portuguese support desks, so that women who face threats know where to turn.
RFLD will also carry the conclusions into its public panels later this week, including its regional work on technology-facilitated gender-based violence with partners from Benin, Nigeria and Senegal.
Thanks
RFLD thanks Hon. Rémy Ngoy Lumbu for convening and chairing the panel, and Hon. Idrissa Sow, Chairperson of the African Commission, for his presence. We thank the Secretariat of the Commission for including the panel on the main agenda of the 89th Ordinary Session, and the interpreters who made the exchange possible in four languages.
We thank the panellists, Konstanze Ricken, Omolara Balogun, Simbiat Bakare, Hannah Forster and Aua Baldé, for their time and their contributions. We also thank the SEA-T programme, implemented by GIZ on behalf of BMZ, for its support to RFLD’s participation in the session.
Read more
- The concept of the panel: Defending without being exposed
- RFLD at the 89th Session: our full programme in Dakar
- What RFLD’s Gender Mainstreaming Tool session in Dakar produced
- Governance, civic space and human rights protection at RFLD
- The African Digital Safety Compendium
Media enquiries: communications.info@rflgd.org.
