On Thursday 8 October 2026, the Forum on the Participation of NGOs in the 89th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights opened in Dakar. RFLD, a partner of this edition convened by the African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies (ACDHRS), took the floor at the opening ceremony.
John GBENAGNON, Director of Strategy and Development and Head of the RFLD delegation, delivered the statement on behalf of Dossi Sêkonnou Gloria AGUEH, Africa Director of RFLD, and of the network’s 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 African countries.
The statement linked the African Union’s 2026 theme on water and sanitation to Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol and to the safety of women human rights defenders. It closed with two requests: that the African Commission examine women’s access to water and sanitation in every State report, and that the nine AU Member States that have not yet ratified the Maputo Protocol do so before the Charter’s next anniversary.
After the opening, John GBENAGNON moderated the session on the state of human rights and democracy in Africa, where the sub-regional focal points presented their reports. Read more about the sub-regional reports and RFLD’s full programme in Dakar.
Full statement
Statement by John GBENAGNON on behalf of the Women Leaders Network for Development (RFLD), opening ceremony of the Forum on the Participation of NGOs in the 89th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Dakar, 8 October 2026.
Madam Chair, Mrs Hannah Forster, Executive Director of ACDHRS,
Honourable Commissioner Idrissa Sow, Chairperson of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights,
Honourable Commissioners,
Dear sisters and brothers of the African continent,
Good morning.
I bring you warm greetings from Mrs Dossi Sêkonnou Gloria AGUEH, Africa Director of RFLD, who asked me to stand here on her behalf, and from our 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 African countries.
We thank the Government and people of Senegal for their teranga. Jërëjëf Senegaal.
Madam Chair,
Allow me to reintroduce myself, because this Forum is familiar ground for me.
In January 2017, I was in Addis Ababa as a consultant for the African Union Commission. That is where I met Mrs Hannah Forster. She offered me a job, and two weeks later Banjul had become home.
For three years I served as Africa Communications Officer on the ACDHRS PANAF project. My task was to help young people and women’s organisations reach this Forum and the sessions of the Commission. I sat at the back of these rooms, taking notes, watching civil society speak to power in the language of the African Charter.
I was born in Kokoumolou, with origins from Daagbé in Ifangni, Bénin. I learned English as a child in Nigeria and French when my family returned to Cotonou. Banjul taught me another language, the language of the African human rights system. I stand before you as a son of this Forum. Much of what I bring to RFLD today, I learned in the corridors of the African Union and in my work alongside civil society organisations.
The African Charter was adopted 45 years ago, and on 21 October it marks forty years in force. Its promise is that every African belongs to it, whoever she is and wherever she lives. That promise is tested far from this room, by the woman who walks before dawn to fetch water.
The African Union has made water and sanitation its theme for 2026. Women and girls spend an estimated 250 million hours every day collecting water, hours taken from school and from paid work. When a school has no latrine, a girl stays home during her period. When a well dries up, a mother walks further, often alone and exposed to violence. Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol already commits States to give women access to clean drinking water. Our task is to make that article real.
The women’s groups closest to the water point are usually the furthest from the money and from the table where decisions are made. Yet when they hold the resources, they know exactly what to do with them. In West Africa, RFLD funded a rural women’s group. The women used their grant to repair the village pump, and water flows there again. They decided how the money would be spent, because they knew the problem better than anyone.
This is why RFLD has built the West African Feminist Fund, covering fifteen countries, to bring resources directly to grassroots women’s organisations.
Madam Chair,
We also meet as civic space keeps shrinking. Restrictive laws multiply and defenders are watched. Women who speak online face harassment designed to silence them. These pressures fall on the very organisations that monitor water budgets and public services. A community cannot claim its right to water if it cannot organise and speak freely.
Madam Chair, Honourable Commissioners,
Allow me two requests. We ask the Commission to examine women’s access to water and sanitation in every State report, under Article 15 of the Maputo Protocol. And we ask the nine Member States of the African Union that have not yet ratified the Maputo Protocol to do so before the Charter’s next anniversary.
For our part, RFLD will keep investing in the funding and the safety, offline and online, of women human rights defenders, so they can hold States accountable between sessions as well as during them.
Let me close where I began.
The woman who fetches water belongs.
The girl who misses school for lack of a latrine belongs.
The women of West Africa who repaired their pump belong.
The defender forced into exile belongs.
The rural women’s group waiting for its first grant belongs.
They belong to the African Charter, and this Forum belongs to them.
May our deliberations bear fruit. May God bless Africa and its peoples. Jërëjëf.
I thank you.
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