During the 89th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Dakar, RFLD worked closely with two of the Commission’s Special Rapporteurs. Honourable Commissioner Janet Ramatoulie Sallah-Njie, Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa, and Honourable Commissioner Rémy Ngoy Lumbu, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Focal Point on Reprisals in Africa, took part in four of the moments RFLD organised or facilitated between 8 and 15 October 2026.
This article looks back at that week. It recalls what was discussed with each Rapporteur, explains why this kind of engagement matters for women and for the people who defend their rights, and sets out what RFLD will do next. For our members across the continent, it is also an account of how the evidence they collect reaches the regional human rights system.
Who the Special Rapporteurs are and why their mandates matter
The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights is the body of the African Union that monitors how States respect the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and its protocols. Among its eleven Commissioners, several hold thematic mandates as Special Rapporteurs. They receive information from civil society, write to governments about specific situations, carry out promotion and fact-finding missions, prepare studies and draft the resolutions and guidelines that later shape national law and practice.
The Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa follows how States apply the Maputo Protocol, which 46 of the 55 African Union member States have ratified. Her mandate covers violence against women, women’s participation in political and public life, sexual and reproductive health and rights, access to land and resources, and much more. She is also one of the two mechanisms charged with leading the continental study on digital violence against women under Resolution 591.
The Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders was created in 2004. In 2014 the mandate was extended to reprisals, so that the Commission has a focal point for people who face retaliation because they cooperate with it. 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.
Between them, these two mandates cover the rights of women and the safety of the women who defend those rights. That is precisely the ground on which RFLD works every day, through its network of 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 African countries. Working with both Rapporteurs in the same week allowed us to connect the two sides of the same problem.
8 October: civic space and women defenders at the NGOs Forum
The week opened at the Forum on the Participation of NGOs, which meets ahead of each ordinary session. On Thursday 8 October, RFLD convened a panel on an Afrofeminist reading of shrinking civic space in Africa. Commissioner Sallah-Njie joined as a speaker, alongside Omolara Balogun of the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI), Naji Moulay Lahsen of CIDH Africa and Bathor Seck, RFLD Country Director for Senegal. John GBENAGNON, RFLD Director of Strategy and Development and Head of the delegation, moderated.
Civic space is usually measured through laws, arrests and registration figures. These indicators matter, and they miss a large part of what women defenders live. A woman who leads a community association can lose her voice long before any law is passed against her. Smear campaigns, sexist threats, pressure from family and community, and the publication of personal information online can push her out of public life without a single court case. The panel started from these experiences.
The speakers then looked at the tools now used to restrict civic space in West Africa and beyond: NGO registration rules, heavy reporting obligations and laws on foreign funding. For small women’s organisations with no full-time staff, these measures can decide whether a group survives at all.
Commissioner Sallah-Njie connected the testimonies in the room to the instruments of the African human rights system. The African Charter protects freedom of expression, association and assembly in its Articles 9, 10 and 11. The Maputo Protocol adds specific obligations on women’s participation in political life and on their right to security. Read together, these texts mean that a State which tolerates the harassment of women defenders falls short of its commitments. For participants, hearing a Commissioner engage directly on these questions showed that their experience can reach the agenda of the Commission when it is documented and brought forward.
The recommendations shared during the session, which will appear in the Forum report, asked States to review registration and foreign funding rules so that they do not block small women-led organisations, to recognise online harassment and doxxing of women defenders as attacks on civic space, and to apply Resolution 522 in national law. They also asked the Commission and its Special Rapporteurs to strengthen their response to reprisals against defenders who cooperate with the Commission.
12 October: a panel on the Commission’s main agenda
Few civil society proposals reach the main agenda of an ordinary session. On Monday 12 October, the African Commission held the panel Defending without being exposed: how can women human rights defenders work in Africa without unnecessary risk? under Item 5 of its agenda. The panel was convened and chaired by Commissioner Ngoy Lumbu. RFLD facilitated the session with the support of the SEA-T programme (Society Equality Africa Transformation), implemented by GIZ on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).
The question came straight from our members’ experience. 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.
Opening the session, Commissioner Ngoy Lumbu placed the discussion within his mandate. Defenders must be able to engage with the Commission and with national authorities without paying a price for it. Protection of women defenders therefore depends on recognition of their work and on remedies that function when reprisals occur.
The panel brought together Konstanze Ricken, Programme Director of SEA-T at GIZ, Omolara Balogun of WACSI, Hannah Forster of the African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies, Aua Baldé of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, and Simbiat Bakare, RFLD Country Representative for Nigeria. The Chairperson of the African Commission, Hon. Idrissa Sow, attended. Interpretation was provided in English, French, Arabic and Portuguese.
The panellists asked when a community worker or the head of a local association is recognised as a defender, in law and in practice. They looked at the forms of reprisal that dominate today, and at how taking part in a session of the Commission can be kept from leading to reprisals at home. They asked what share of funding against sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment reaches organisations led by African women, and whether protection costs can become an eligible budget line.
The follow-up agreed in the room includes recommendations to funders on the eligibility of protection costs, so that security, legal support and psychosocial care can appear in standard grant budgets. It also includes 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, and wider awareness of referral routes, including RFLD’s French and Portuguese support desks.
13 October: a national institution and RFLD’s oral statement
The next day, Commissioner Ngoy Lumbu took part in the joint side event of Benin’s Institut National de la Femme (INF) and RFLD. The event looked at how a single public institution can receive a woman who has suffered violence, guide her and, when needed, stand beside her in court.
Commissioner Ngoy Lumbu brought the perspective of the Commission and of its mechanism on defenders. His point was simple and important for the INF’s work: women who take up cases of violence, whether as lawyers, community workers or staff of a public institution, are themselves exposed to pressure and reprisals. A national institution that protects survivors also needs to protect those who accompany them. His presence linked the side event to the panel he had chaired the day before, and RFLD facilitated both conversations.
During the session, RFLD also delivered its oral statement to the Commission under its Observer Status N°553. The statement drew on the Maputo Barometer and on reports from our focal points, and it addressed each Rapporteur directly.
- To the Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Women in Africa, RFLD asked for a State-by-State account in her next report that separates ratification, legislative domestication and identifiable budget allocation. RFLD placed its country data at her disposal for this purpose.
- To the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders and Focal Point on Reprisals, RFLD asked that monitoring be extended explicitly to digital reprisals against women defenders, building on Resolutions 522 and 591, and that the absence of evidence in these cases be treated as a feature of the method, since digital attacks are often hard to document.
15 October: towards a regional framework on digital violence
The week closed on Thursday 15 October with the side event of the Cyrus R. Vance Center for International Justice and RFLD, Towards an African regional framework against technology-facilitated gender-based violence. Commissioner Sallah-Njie opened the discussion. Commissioner Ngoy Lumbu, Adaobi Egboka of the Vance Center and Dr Sandrine Chikou of RFLD formed the panel.
The two mandates represented at the high table 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. It includes online harassment and threats, cyberstalking, doxxing, surveillance, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images and coordinated smear campaigns. It falls hardest on women who are visible in public life: journalists, elected officials and activists.
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 its gendered nature in mind. Some laws on false information have even been used against the women they should protect. A survivor’s chances of protection depend largely on the country she lives in.
The Commission has already adopted Resolution 522 in 2022 on the protection of women against digital violence, and Resolution 591 calls for a continental study. None of the existing instruments yet gives States detailed, gender-responsive guidance on prevention, investigation, accountability and repair. A regional framework developed within the African human rights system could offer shared definitions, minimum standards for remedies and a basis for the Commission to assess progress through State reporting.
Why this engagement matters
For a woman leading a small association in a rural district, the African Commission can seem very far away. The Special Rapporteurs are one of the shortest routes between her experience and the decisions that shape regional standards. When a Rapporteur hears directly from women’s organisations, that evidence can travel into letters to governments, promotion missions, resolutions, studies and the questions put to States during their periodic reports.
Engagement also offers protection. A defender whose work is known to the Commission, and whose organisation is part of a recognised network, is harder to silence. The Focal Point on Reprisals exists for this reason. RFLD is a member of the Support Group to the Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders, and we document reprisals against women defenders, always with their consent.
Finally, the week showed the value of evidence. Commissioners need information they can compare across States. RFLD brings it through the Maputo Barometer, the reports of our focal points and our resource centre on technology-facilitated violence. This is what allowed RFLD to address precise requests to each Rapporteur and to offer data in support of them.
What comes next
RFLD will share the outcomes of each panel with both Special Rapporteurs in writing. We will prepare the country data offered in our oral statement, separating ratification, domestication and budget for each State, and the 2027 edition of the Maputo Barometer will build on this work.
With our members, we will gather anonymised and securely stored cases of digital violence and digital reprisals as input to the continental study under Resolution 591. With the Vance Center and our partners, we will explore how the idea of a regional framework on technology-facilitated violence can move forward within the African human rights system. We will also follow up the recommendations to funders on protection costs agreed at the 12 October panel.
Our members can take part. If your organisation documents violations of women’s rights or reprisals against defenders, our guide on alternative reports to the African Commission explains how to contribute before the next ordinary session.
Thanks
RFLD thanks Commissioner Janet Ramatoulie Sallah-Njie and Commissioner Rémy Ngoy Lumbu for their time and openness in Dakar. We thank Hon. Idrissa Sow, Chairperson of the African Commission, the Secretariat of the Commission, the interpreters, our panellists and partners, and the SEA-T programme, implemented by GIZ on behalf of BMZ, for its support to RFLD’s participation in the session.
Media enquiries: communications.info@rflgd.org.
