At the start of their careers, women’s rights advocates often do not have the prerequisite human rights knowledge necessary for women’s rights advocacy, including litigation. Furthermore, where human rights training is incorporated into the curriculum of law schools, this training is often not complemented by practical experience in applying human rights standards. To address this, together with Equality Now, we established the African Youth for Maputo Protocol Essay Competition as part of a pilot project on ways of creating awareness amongst the next generation of women’s rights practitioners. We hope to address the scholarly and experiential gaps in women’s rights