89th Ordinary Session of the ACHPR · Dakar · 10 October 2026
On 10 October 2026, during the 89th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, RFLD held a closed session in Dakar on data protection and safeguarding. The session had one practical aim. Organisations that document attacks on women human rights defenders were to leave with a common tool already in use, filled with their own information, and ready to produce evidence the Commission can work with.
By the end of the day, each organisation had built a threat-assessment matrix from its own working context. Together, the room adopted a first quarterly GESI (gender equality and social inclusion) dashboard, already populated with the participants’ data. This article explains why that matters and what happens next.
Why stories are not enough
Organisations that document attacks on women defenders often record cases as stories. A woman is threatened after a radio interview. A coordinator’s photographs are edited and shared in WhatsApp groups. A family is visited and warned. Written as narratives, these cases protect the detail of what happened, and that detail matters to the person who lived it.
A story, however, cannot be counted. It cannot be compared with a case in another country, and it cannot show whether a pattern is growing or fading over time. When the African Commission asks for evidence on violence against women defenders, narrative material is hard to add up and harder to defend. The organisations closest to the harm are often the ones least able to submit it in a usable form.
Two resolutions of the Commission make this an urgent question. Resolution 591 mandates a continental study on digital violence against women’s rights. Resolution 620 sets standards on data collection, transparency and algorithmic accountability. Both call for disaggregated evidence, collected the same way everywhere and broken down by sex, age and type of violence.
What a common method makes possible
RFLD’s continental monitoring already produces evidence of that kind. Because member organisations register cases against the same instrument, their data can be read together:
These figures are useful because they hold together. They come from cases recorded with the same categories, the same definitions and the same safeguards. The Dakar session set out to extend that instrument to organisations that did not yet use it, so that their cases can count in the same way.
A focus on francophone and lusophone organisations
The session gave priority to organisations from francophone and lusophone countries. Many of them hold years of documentation that rarely reaches regional processes in a comparable form. Work in the room was held in French and English, with support in Portuguese, so that participants could build their tools in the language they use every day.
This choice is practical. A tool that an organisation cannot read with ease is a tool it will not keep using after the session. Working in participants’ own languages was the condition for the tool to stay in use once they return home.
The Gender Mainstreaming Tool
RFLD’s Gender Mainstreaming Tool brings together four components that feed each other. Each one answers a simple question an organisation faces when it documents attacks.
What the organisations built
The core of the day was practical work. Each organisation built its own threat-assessment matrix, starting from its real working context rather than from a model case. A gender-responsive matrix asks who is targeted, how, and with what consequences for her life outside work. Online smear campaigns with sexualised content, pressure on families and judicial harassment take very different forms for women defenders, and the matrix is designed to make those forms visible.
For each risk, the matrix records how likely it is, how serious its impact would be, what the organisation will do to reduce it and who is responsible for that step. A general sense of danger becomes a list of risks that a team can name, rank and act on. When the context changes, the matrix is updated, and the change itself becomes information.
The room then adopted a first quarterly GESI dashboard. It was already populated with the participants’ own data when it was adopted, which means it starts from real cases rather than from an empty template. The dashboard brings together a short list of indicators that organisations can collect safely and that the Commission can use. It gives these organisations their first shared baseline.
From now on, participating organisations will follow their cases with one method. Their data can be added up across countries, compared over time and brought to the Commission as evidence that stands on its own.
Safety first. Sensitive items on the registration form are optional and confidential. Data feeds the dashboard only in aggregated and anonymous form. No material that identifies an individual defender, a survivor or the location of an organisation leaves the session. Evidence can only serve women defenders if collecting it does not put them at greater risk.
Data protection as a working rule
Documentation can expose the people it is meant to protect. A spreadsheet left on a shared laptop, a list of names sent by message or a photograph with a visible street sign can put a defender in danger. For this reason RFLD treats data protection as part of the method itself.
The tool rests on a few working rules. Organisations collect only what they need, ask for informed consent before recording a case and keep identifying details separate from the information they share. Survivors decide what is recorded about them and can withdraw their consent. Access to raw records stays with the organisation that holds them, and only aggregated figures move up to the dashboard. These rules are simple, and they are what makes trust possible between survivors, the organisations that support them and the regional bodies that use the evidence.
Why this matters for the Commission
The Commission’s mechanisms depend on the quality of the information they receive. The Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa and the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders both need evidence that can be compared across States. The continental study under Resolution 591 needs data that can inform the harmonisation of national laws.
Organisations working at community level hold much of that information. What they often lack is a format that lets their knowledge travel. The tool built in Dakar gives them that format, while leaving control of sensitive information with the organisations themselves.
What comes next
The dashboard will be updated every quarter and will feed the Digital Safety Compendium within RFLD’s DƆNÙESÈ Data Center. At the end of the first quarterly cycle, RFLD will contact each participating organisation to check that the tool is in use and to help resolve any difficulty.
The evidence produced in Dakar will also inform RFLD’s engagement with the Commission during the rest of the 89th Session, including the panel “Defending without being exposed” on the Commission’s main agenda on 12 October. The aim is simple: the next time the Commission asks for evidence on violence against women defenders, the organisations closest to the harm should be able to provide it.
RFLD thanks every organisation that took part and shared its experience. Organisations that wish to join this work can write to programs@rflgd.org.
RFLD is a pan-African Afrofeminist network of 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 African countries, with observer status before the African Commission. Media enquiries: communications.info@rflgd.org.
Read more: the programme of the working day on the Gender Mainstreaming Tool, RFLD’s programme at the 89th Session and why technology-facilitated violence against women is a human rights issue.
