On Tuesday 13 October 2026, on the sidelines of the 89th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in Dakar, Expertise France brought together institutions, civil society organisations and United Nations partners for a morning dialogue on technology-facilitated gender-based violence. The side event, titled Technology-facilitated gender-based violence and human rights: strengthening prevention and support for survivors, was held in Almadies from 08:30 to 12:00. RFLD moderated the panel.
The event took place within the Team Europe Initiative Women Leadership in the Public ICT Sector (WLICT), funded in particular by the European Union and the French Development Agency (AFD) and implemented by Expertise France. It was organised under the WLICT component on digital safety and the fight against technology-facilitated gender-based violence in Benin, Nigeria and Senegal. Its purpose was practical: to strengthen dialogue between public institutions and civil society on how to protect the rights of women and girls online, and to leave the room with commitments that can be followed up.
Why this conversation matters now
Digital tools have opened new space for women’s leadership in Africa. Women run businesses on their phones, organise campaigns online and speak to audiences that no newspaper would have given them a decade ago. The same tools have also become a channel for harassment, threats, the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, doxxing and coordinated smear campaigns. These attacks are often aimed at women who are visible: journalists, activists, elected officials, public servants and professionals in the technology sector.
The African Commission recognised the problem in 2022, when it adopted Resolution 522 on the protection of women against digital violence in Africa. The resolution calls on States to review their laws, train law enforcement and work with technology companies so that women can use digital spaces safely. Four years later, implementation remains uneven. Many survivors do not know where to report, many reports go unanswered, and many women decide that silence is safer than speaking.
Holding this dialogue during the 89th Session placed the issue where it belongs, inside the African human rights system, and gave participants a chance to connect national experience in Benin, Nigeria and Senegal with regional standards.
The panel
Six speakers shared the floor, each bringing a different vantage point on the same problem:
- Astou Diouf, ARTICLE 19, on freedom of expression and women’s participation in public life;
- Moussa Waly Sène, Paradigm Initiative, on digital rights and access to remedies;
- Hannah Van Der Berghe, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), on the continuum between online and offline violence and the needs of survivors;
- Odile Barry, Association des Femmes Sénégalaises dans les TIC (FESTIC), on women’s leadership in the digital sector and their safety online;
- Aymar Prigent, French Representation in Senegal, on advocacy priorities and the role of French cooperation;
- John Gbenagnon, RFLD, as moderator.
As moderator, RFLD’s role was to keep the exchange anchored in the experience of survivors and to steer each speaker towards proposals that can be acted on. The format left room for the audience, which included representatives of public institutions, women’s organisations and digital rights groups.
The discussion was structured around seven questions, moving from the nature of the harm to the responses that institutions, platforms and partners can offer, and ending with a round of concrete commitments.
Digital violence as a human rights issue
The opening question went to the whole panel: in what ways does technology-facilitated violence undermine the fundamental rights of women and girls? The answers framed the rest of the morning. Online abuse is not a separate category of harm that sits apart from the rights guaranteed by the African Charter and the Maputo Protocol. It affects women’s security, their privacy, their dignity and their ability to take part in public life. When a woman receives threats after speaking on the radio, or finds her photographs circulated without her consent, the damage is felt offline as much as online.
This framing has a direct consequence for policy. If digital violence is a human rights violation, States have a duty to prevent it and to provide effective remedies when it occurs. It cannot be left to individual women to manage with privacy settings and blocked accounts.
Freedom of expression and the risk of silence
ARTICLE 19 was invited to address one of the most visible effects of digital violence: women withdrawing from public debate. When journalists, activists and public officials face sustained attacks online, many reduce their presence, censor themselves or leave platforms altogether. The loss is personal, and it is also collective, because public debate becomes poorer when women’s voices are pushed out.
The question put to the panel was how to protect women’s expression without opening the door to measures that restrict freedom of expression more broadly. Across the region, laws on cybercrime and false information have sometimes been used against the very activists and journalists they were meant to protect. Prevention and protection therefore need to rest on clear definitions, proportionate responses and independent oversight, so that the fight against digital violence strengthens freedoms rather than eroding them.
Reporting, documentation and access to remedies
Paradigm Initiative was asked about the obstacles women and girls face when they try to report digital violence and obtain an effective remedy. These obstacles are familiar to anyone who has accompanied a survivor: reporting channels that are hard to find, police officers who are not trained to handle digital evidence, legal frameworks that do not clearly cover the conduct in question, and procedures that expose the survivor to further harm.
Digital rights organisations can play a central role here. They can help survivors document what happened in a way that will stand up later, guide them through reporting systems and connect them with legal aid, while protecting their privacy and safety throughout. The panel also considered what should change on the side of digital platforms, whose reporting tools and response times largely determine whether a survivor feels heard or abandoned.
Visibility, leadership and digital safety
FESTIC brought the perspective of women working in the technology sector itself. Through FESTIC Boost Numérique and the BIDDEW Tech platform, the association trains women, including in remote areas, and makes women’s talent in the digital economy more visible. The question put to FESTIC captured a real tension: the more visible these women become, the more exposed they are to abuse online.
The discussion focused on how digital safety can become part of training and leadership programmes from the start, so that women entering the digital sector learn to protect their accounts, their data and their reputation as a basic professional skill. Protecting women leaders should never become a reason to ask them to be less visible.
From online abuse to survivor support
UNFPA was invited to speak about the continuum between online and offline violence. Field experience shows that digital abuse often extends or worsens violence experienced at home, at school or at work. A partner who controls a woman’s phone, a former partner who threatens to publish images, an aggressor who uses messaging apps to keep pressure on a survivor: the line between online and offline harm is rarely clean.
This has practical implications for services. Shelters, one-stop centres, health workers and psychosocial counsellors need to be able to recognise digital violence and respond to it. The question before the panel was how to integrate digital safety into existing prevention and response systems, so that support remains confidential, adapted to each situation and centred on what survivors themselves need.
Advocacy and cooperation
The French Representation in Senegal, with contributions from ARTICLE 19, addressed the advocacy dimension. The 89th Session offered an opportunity to identify shared priorities that institutions, civil society and cooperation partners can carry together. The panel looked at how French cooperation can support these priorities over time and strengthen local initiatives, so that progress does not depend on short projects that end before change takes root.
Several directions emerged from the framing of the discussion: making full use of Resolution 522 and the African Charter in national dialogue, supporting the documentation work of civil society, investing in the training of justice and security actors, and keeping a constructive dialogue open with technology companies operating in the region.
Commitments for the next twelve months
The final round asked each speaker the same question: what concrete commitment is your institution or organisation ready to make to strengthen prevention or survivor support over the next twelve months? Ending with commitments rather than conclusions was a deliberate choice. It turns a morning of discussion into a set of follow-up points that participants can be held to, and that the WLICT partners can track.
RFLD’s perspective and next steps
For RFLD, moderating this panel continued work that runs through its programme at the 89th Session. Earlier in October, RFLD took part in the WLICT workshop on technology-facilitated gender-based violence in Abuja. On 15 October, RFLD and the Vance Center will co-host a side event on a regional framework to address technology-facilitated gender-based violence. RFLD is also the author of the African Digital Safety Compendium, a practical resource for women human rights defenders and their organisations.
Across RFLD’s network of 1,143 member organisations in more than 35 countries, women’s organisations report the same pattern: digital attacks rise when women become visible, and support services are rarely equipped to respond. RFLD will carry the following work forward from this dialogue:
- integrating digital safety into the support RFLD provides to women human rights defenders and partner organisations, including through its support desks;
- documenting cases, with the consent of the women concerned, so that national and regional advocacy can rely on evidence from the field;
- contributing to the dialogue with the African Commission on the implementation of Resolution 522, building on RFLD’s Observer Status N°553.
Thanks
RFLD thanks Expertise France for organising this dialogue and for inviting RFLD to moderate it, and the European Union and AFD for their support to the Team Europe WLICT initiative. We thank the panellists for their time and their contributions: Astou Diouf of ARTICLE 19, Moussa Waly Sène of Paradigm Initiative, Hannah Van Der Berghe of UNFPA, Odile Barry of FESTIC and Aymar Prigent of the French Representation in Senegal. We also thank every participant who joined the conversation from the floor.
Read more
- Defending without being exposed: the panel on women human rights defenders at the 89th Session
- RFLD at the 89th Session: our full programme in Dakar
- The African Digital Safety Compendium
Media enquiries: communications.info@rflgd.org.
