Survivors from Kenya, Benin, and Rwanda spoke not in policy jargon, but in lived experience. Their testimonies laid bare a familiar contradiction. Forty-six African countries have ratified the Maputo Protocol, a landmark treaty that explicitly recognizes reproductive rights, including safe abortion under certain conditions. Yet in too many places, constitutional protections sit uneasily beside penal codes that criminalize the very services women need. The result is a system where women encounter clinics not as places of care, but as sites of humiliation, neglect, and exclusion.
This is not a problem of ignorance alone. It is a problem of political will. Nine states maintain reservations to the Maputo Protocol, five of them directly against Article 14. Laws remain unharmonized. Services like contraception, post-rape care, and safe abortion remain inaccessible for millions. And silence—cultural, political, and institutional—continues to shield these failures from scrutiny.
Courage is not the absence of fear; it is survivors speaking despite it. But courage alone cannot fix broken systems. What’s needed now is accountability.
Governments must align domestic laws with the obligations they signed onto under the Maputo Protocol and General Comment No. 2. That means removing legal and practical barriers, ensuring health systems treat women with dignity, and creating mechanisms that allow survivors to seek redress without fear.
The forum’s call to “center survivors” is more than rhetoric. Survivors are not passive recipients of policy. They are experts in what failure looks like on the ground. If Africa is serious about meeting the Sustainable Development Goals and the Maputo Plan of Action, their voices must shape the laws and services that follow.
Progress in Benin and Rwanda shows change is possible. But selective reform is not enough. Reproductive rights are not negotiable add-ons to development. They are fundamental to women’s health, autonomy, and participation in society.
The silence around these issues has lasted too long. The testimonies in Banjul made clear that the cost of that silence is measured in lives, dignity, and lost potential. It’s time for African governments to close the gap between the rights they proclaim and the realities women endure.