89th Ordinary Session of the ACHPR · Dakar · 10 October 2026
On Saturday 10 October 2026, during the 89th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Dakar, RFLD brings its delegation of women and human rights defenders together for a full working day. The day has one practical goal: to put a common tool for documenting attacks on women defenders into the hands of the organisations that will use it, and to make sure each of them leaves with that tool already filled with its own information.
The session is closed and by invitation. It gathers the defenders and organisations RFLD has brought to Dakar, together with organisations selected through an open call. It is held in French and English, with support in Portuguese, so that francophone and lusophone organisations can take full part.
The session is held under NAFASI, a programme on digital rights and civic space funded by Sweden through Sida and implemented by Magamba Network, DefendDefenders and RFLD.
Why a common tool matters
Organisations that document attacks on women defenders usually hold what they know in narrative form. A case written as a story protects the detail of what happened. It also loses everything that would allow it to be counted. When the African Commission asks for evidence, narrative material cannot be added up, compared across countries or followed over time. The organisations closest to the harm are often the ones least able to submit it.
Two resolutions of the Commission turn this into an urgent practical question. Resolution 591 mandates a continental study on digital violence against women’s rights, intended to inform the harmonisation of national laws. Resolution 620 sets standards on data collection, transparency and algorithmic accountability. Both depend on evidence gathered the same way in different places, and broken down by sex, age and type of violence.
RFLD’s continental monitoring already produces evidence of that kind:
These figures hold together because member organisations register cases against a common instrument. The working day in Dakar extends that instrument to organisations that do not yet use it.
Four components, one chain
The Gender Mainstreaming Tool brings together four components that feed each other. Participants work through each of them during the day.
A day built around practice
The day is built around doing. Participants complete the registration instrument on arrival, and their answers form a baseline that is read back to the room in the afternoon, in aggregated form. The morning opens with a walk-through of the tool by Bathor Seck, RFLD Country Director for Senegal.
From 10:30 to 12:00, Adaobi Egboka, Director, Africa Initiatives at the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice, leads a session on the legal needs of survivors of technology-facilitated gender-based violence and on the pathways to accountability open to them. The session connects documentation to remedy: evidence collected well is also what legal action depends on.
At midday, participants build gender-responsive threat-assessment matrices from their own operating contexts, in groups by country and sector, with Paul Osei-Kuffour of CDD-Ghana and the West Africa Democracy Solidarity Network. 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 appear in very different forms for women defenders, and the matrix is built to show them.
The afternoon turns data into tools. Abigail Oluwatoyin Olaleye, GESI Lead for the day, presents the baseline and guides the room through the first quarterly GESI dashboard, with a short list of indicators that organisations can collect safely and the Commission can use. Omolara Balogun, Head of Policy Influencing and Advocacy at the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI), then helps each organisation embed the tool in its own workplan, with a focal person, a calendar and resources. Bathor Seck closes the practical part of the day with protection planning and safe referral to the helpline desks, tested on scenarios in pairs.
From the room to the Commission
The last session of the day, led by Omolara Balogun, drafts recommendations toward the Commission’s mechanisms and toward the continental study on digital violence. They are addressed to named actors, among them the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa and the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, and they rest on the evidence produced during the day.
These recommendations travel with the delegation. They will be carried into the public panels RFLD holds and joins from 12 October, including the panel “Defending without being exposed” on the main agenda of the Commission, and into bilateral meetings with the special mechanisms. The day closes at 17:30 with the adoption of the first quarterly GESI dashboard.
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 or the location of an organisation leaves the session. This is also why RFLD does not publish the names of participants or photographs from the room.
What the day will leave behind
Every participating organisation should leave Dakar with a completed threat-assessment matrix, a protection and referral plan, concrete commitments in its workplan and access to the first quarterly GESI dashboard. Collectively, the room produces one baseline dataset and a set of recommendations for the Commission.
The dashboard will be maintained 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 confirm that the instrument is in use and to help resolve any difficulty. The aim is simple: that the next time the Commission asks for evidence on violence against women defenders, the organisations closest to the harm are able to provide it.
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. Follow our work during the 89th Session on Facebook, LinkedIn and X. Media enquiries: communications.info@rflgd.org.
Read more: ACHPR Resolution 522 explained, why technology-facilitated violence against women is a human rights issue and the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa joins our panel at the NGOs Forum.
