Event Focus: Protecting Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) in Conflict and Fragile Contexts. Find concept note  → here

Convened by the Institute for Peace and Security Studies (IPSS), this dialogue addresses the critical gap between legal commitments and the lived realities of women and girls in African conflict zones. While frameworks like the Maputo Protocol are widely ratified, structural failures, destroyed healthcare infrastructure, and escalating Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (CRSV) severely undermine these rights in fragile settings. The event aims to move beyond mere ratification to enforce tangible protections, recognizing SRHR as a critical early warning indicator for conflict prevention and an integral component of sustainable post-conflict recovery.

Key Objectives

• Identify Bottlenecks: Clarify the barriers preventing the implementation of the Maputo Protocol and Maputo Plan of Action (MPOA), such as financing constraints, security challenges, and weak accountability mechanisms.
• Actionable Protection: Pinpoint short- and medium-term actions to safeguard women and girls from Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and secure SRHR service continuity, emphasizing essential clinical response within a 72-hour window.
• Strengthen Partnerships: Institutionalize collaborations with women-, adolescent-, and youth-led civil society organizations (CSOs) to ensure lived, grassroots experiences inform monitoring and survivor referral pathways.
• Institutional Cooperation: Leverage African Union (AU) and UN compliance mechanisms to protect SRHR across the humanitarian-development-peace continuum.

Expected Outcomes

• A Protocol-to-Practice Matrix designed to define roles for maintaining SRH services during active hostilities.
• A Technical Communique to the AU Peace and Security Council recommending the inclusion of SRHR and GBV indicators within the peace architecture, as well as mandatory SRHR/CRSV specialists in Peace Support Operations.
• Standardized Clinical Referral Pathways tailored for conflict zones utilizing mobile and community networks.
• A practical mechanism to gather real-time demographic intelligence and data on SRHR violations directly from CSOs.
• A Nexus Funding framework to secure sustainable investments for the Minimum Initial Service Package for SRH in high-burden crisis areas.