Project report

Continental Commitments and the Way Forward By Dr Daniel Bekele

sysadmin@africanchildforum.org · 15 Oct 2026

Abstract

48th Ordinary Session of the ACERWC – Day of General Discussion Violence Against Children and Harmful Practices: Navigating the Digital Frontier 14 October 2026 | Maseru, Kingdom of Lesotho Session V: Continental Commitments and the Way Forward Statement by: Dr Daniel Bekele Executive Director, African Child Policy Forum Chair of African Partnership to End Violence against Children Honourable Chairperson, Distinguished representatives of the African Union and Member States, Colleagues, and, most importantly, the children whose rights bring us together. The Common Africa Position on Ending Violence Against Children, CAP-EVAC, represents an important step forward in Africa’s collective effort to ensure that every child grows up free from violence, exploitation, abuse and harm. As we have heard from the African Union Commission, CAP-EVAC provides a common continental framework for advancing Africa’s efforts to end violence against children. Its significance lies not only in the priorities it brings together, but also in the opportunity it creates for AU Member States and partners to work towards a shared ambition while responding to their different national context and realities. The question before us now is how we translate this shared direction into sustained action and measurable progress for children. As the CAP moves through the relevant AU processes towards anticipated consideration by the AU Assembly in February 2027, our focus must increasingly turn to implementation: what it will require, how countries can learn from experience, and how we can ensure that this continental commitment makes a real difference in children’s lives. What would that require in practice? First, we must turn continental priorities into specific, nationally owned change. CAP-EVAC provides a common framework, but countries face different risks, institutional challenges and resource constraints. They will not all follow the same path, nor should they. Each country should use its existing national strategies and coordination processes to identify where practical action can make the greatest contribution to preventing violence and strengthening protection. For one country, this may mean strengthening prevention in families, schools and communities. For another, it may mean addressing gaps in financing, improving responses to reports of abuse, or ensuring that institutions work together more effectively. Elsewhere, it may mean making sure that children experiencing violence online can access safe and appropriate support. The essential question is not simply whether a policy, law or service exists. It is whether it works, reaches the children who need it, and helps prevent violence before more children are harmed. Implementation will also require sustainable domestic financing. Continental commitments can only deliver results when they are reflected in national budgets and supported through adequately resourced child protection systems. Second, we must make implementation a process of action and learning. Across Africa, governments and partners have developed policies and programs to address violence against children. We now need to learn more systematically from implementation, understanding what works, what does not, and what can be adapted elsewhere. I believe we can make this learning practical and focused. Start with one country-owned priority. Identify what is holding progress back. Agree on a specific change, take action, gather evidence, and share the lessons with others facing similar challenges. For example, referral pathways may exist on paper, yet children may still struggle to access help. The task is to identify where barriers exist, address them, and assess whether access to support improves. This is not about producing more plans or creating additional reporting systems. It is about making better use of existing commitments, institutions and investments. And learning must be honest. We need to understand what is working, where progress remains difficult, and what further action or support may be required. Evidence should help countries make better decisions, adapt their approaches and identify where additional investment is needed. Third, we must make African experience more useful across countries and regions. No country has all the answers. Yet across our continent, governments and their partners are developing approaches and overcoming challenges from which others can learn. Regional Economic Communities can help countries exchange experience and adapt promising approaches. At continental level, the African Union can bring these lessons together, identify recurring barriers, and highlight the decisions needed to accelerate progress. This is an opportunity to make African cooperation more practical, not by imposing one model on every country, but by ensuring that lessons learned in one context can help advance progress in another. CAP-EVAC can therefore become more than a framework for common direction. It can become the shared platform through which Africa strengthens prevention, improves protection, and learns whether commitments are translating into meaningful change for children. On the digital frontier: The digital environment is now an integral part of children’s lives, and violence in that space cannot be addressed in isolation. Online sexual exploitation and abuse, harassment and other digital harms often intersect with risks children face in their homes, schools and communities. Effective responses therefore require safe digital ecosystems, capable institutions, informed families, accessible support services and meaningful participation by children. Governments, regulators, service providers and technology companies all have responsibilities to ensure that digital environments are designed and governed with children’s safety and rights in mind. But children are not only users of digital technologies. They are increasingly creators, learners and advocates in digital spaces. Efforts to strengthen online safety must therefore protect children while also enabling them to participate, learn and thrive online. The legislative and accountability discussions taking place today are therefore essential. The next step is to connect commitments to practice: clarify responsibilities, support institutions to carry them out, address barriers, and assess whether children are better protected. And children themselves must help shape this work. Their experiences and perspectives should inform our priorities and help us judge whether responses are safe, accessible and effective. Participation must not end when a consultation closes; it must influence the decisions that follow. Fourth, we must connect implementation learning to African accountability. Lessons from country action should not remain in individual project reports or be lost when activities end. They should inform national decisions and contribute to a clearer continental understanding of what implementing CAP-EVAC requires. The CAP envisages continental progress reporting and a knowledge platform. Evidence from implementation can make these instruments more useful by showing what is changing, which barriers persist, and where further support is needed. The African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child has an important role through its child rights monitoring and accountability mandate. The AU Commission, particularly the Department of Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development, together with Member States, must remain central to CAP-EVAC’s leadership and follow-through. An implementation, learning and accountability approach is being explored to connect country action, peer learning and evidence with existing continental processes. It should strengthen existing systems, not create parallel structures or reporting requirements. ACPF, through the African Partnership to End Violence against Children, together with UNICEF and WHO AFRO through ARISE Africa, stands ready to contribute technical expertise, convening and support for African-led learning, in alignment with AU leadership. Let me conclude with three priorities. First, make CAP-EVAC actionable by helping countries translate continental priorities into focused, nationally owned changes that strengthen prevention, protection and response. Second, make implementation a source of shared African knowledge by learning from action, exchanging experience across countries, and adapting lessons to national contexts. Third, make that learning count by connecting credible evidence to national decision-making and existing African Union monitoring and accountability processes. As we look towards February 2027 and the next stage of CAP-EVAC, our ambition must extend beyond securing approval for a continental framework. It must be to build the capacity, partnerships, financing and accountability needed to translate that framework into sustained action and measurable progress towards ending violence against children. Ultimately, we should judge progress not by the number of commitments made, meetings held or documents produced, but by whether prevention is stronger, protection systems work better, and children are safer in their homes, schools, communities and digital lives. Africa has established a common direction. Our responsibility now is to build a common capacity to act, learn and improve so that every child can experience the difference. Thank you. The post Continental Commitments and the Way Forward By Dr Daniel Bekele appeared first on African Child Forum ACPF.