State reports to the African Commission are often long lists of laws and action plans. The real question for women is whether any of it has made a difference. Module 4 of RFLD’s manual, Reporting on the Maputo Protocol: a manual for shadow reports, gives shadow reporters a method to answer that question with evidence.
The indicator framework
The manual builds on a framework published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2012, Human Rights Indicators: A Guide to Measurement and Implementation. It sorts evidence into types that follow a right from commitment to result.
Structure indicators ask whether a law or policy exists. Has the State adopted a law against domestic violence? Does the law set a minimum age of marriage?
Process indicators ask whether that law or policy is applied and funded. How many cases reached court last year? Was the budget line for the action plan spent?
Outcome indicators ask whether women’s situation has actually changed. Have rates of child marriage fallen? Do more women now own land in their own names?
The manual asks learners to test each State claim at each of these levels. A State report that stops at structure, describing new laws without data on their use or effect, leaves the most important questions open. That gap is where a shadow report adds value.
From claim to indicator: the exercise
The manual’s workshop agenda includes an exercise called “From claim to indicator.” Participants take a sentence from a real State report and ask what evidence would show whether it is true in practice.
Suppose a State report says that a new law protects women from violence. The structure question is easy: the law exists. The shadow reporter then looks for process evidence, such as police and court data or the budget allocated. Finally, she looks for outcome evidence, such as survey data on prevalence or documented cases showing whether survivors obtained protection.
Each level produces a different kind of finding. The law may be strong while enforcement is weak. Enforcement may be improving in the capital and absent in rural areas. Each of these findings leads to a precise question for the Commission and a precise recommendation.
The money test
Article 26(2) of the Maputo Protocol commits States to provide “budgetary and other resources” for the rights it guarantees. The manual treats budget data as a core process indicator. A national action plan with no funding is a weak commitment, whatever the State report says about it.
The Commission has strengthened this approach. In 2024, it adopted Resolution 585 on an addendum on data to the Tunis Reporting Guidelines, which govern State reporting on economic, social and cultural rights. This gives shadow reporters a basis to ask for disaggregated data and to point out when it is missing.
Collecting data the right way
Numbers can hide as much as they reveal. The manual draws on OHCHR’s 2018 guidance on a human rights-based approach to data, which sets out six principles:
- participation of the people concerned in data collection
- disaggregation, so that differences between groups of women are visible
- self-identification, so that people define their own identity
- transparency about how data is collected and used
- privacy and protection of personal information
- accountability of those who collect and use data
For shadow reports, disaggregation is often the key. National averages can hide the situation of rural women, older women, women with disabilities or displaced women. The Maputo Protocol reporting guidelines include a cluster on specially protected groups of women. Disaggregated evidence is what makes that cluster meaningful.
Using the State’s own figures
One of the strongest techniques is to use the State’s own data. Official statistics, budget documents, court records and reports from national institutions carry weight because the government cannot easily dismiss them. Equality Now describes shadow reporting as a way to “hold states to their own word.” When the State’s own figures contradict its narrative, the shadow report only needs to place the two side by side.
Mapping indicators to the clusters
The Maputo Protocol reporting guidelines ask States to cover each of the eight thematic clusters through legislation, institutions, policies, education, remedies, challenges and accessibility. That list already contains structure and process elements. The manual suggests that shadow reporters build an evidence matrix with the clusters in rows and the indicator types in columns. Empty cells show where the State report is silent, and where the coalition needs more evidence.
What indicators cannot do
Indicators are tools, and the manual is careful about their limits. A figure without context can mislead. Data from a single source can be wrong. That is why indicators sit alongside documented cases and testimony in the manual’s method, and why every major claim should rest on at least two types of source.
The goal is a shadow report that Commissioners can trust and use. For examples of how laws compare across countries at the structure level, RFLD’s country law profiles offer a starting point.
About the report
This article draws on RFLD’s report Reporting on the Maputo Protocol: a manual for shadow reports, published on 4 October 2026. Read the summary, download the English edition or the French edition.
