Today, 11 July 2026, marks 23 years since African governments made a promise to the women and girls of this continent. On this day in 2003, the African Union adopted the Maputo Protocol, the most comprehensive and progressive legal instrument for women’s human rights in the world. Twenty-three years on, the SOAWR Coalition and its 77 member organisations are here to say: the flame is still burning, and we intend to keep it that way.  The Maputo Protocol was born from African women’s recognition that existing international frameworks, including CEDAW, did not fully speak to their lived realities. It was