By Habmo Birwe
While global attention increasingly focuses on displacement crises in Ukraine, Sudan or Gaza, some of Africa’s longest-running displacement emergencies continue to receive comparatively limited visibility in discussions on gender-based violence (GBV) and protection.
From eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to the Lake Chad Basin and the Central African Republic (CAR), women and girls displaced by conflict continue to face multiple forms of violence, including sexual violence, exploitation, trafficking and forced marriage. Yet these experiences often remain insufficiently visible in global policy debates, research agendas and protection frameworks.
This is not to suggest that GBV responses are absent from Central Africa. Humanitarian organisations, local women-led groups and regional actors have long worked to support survivors across the region. However, compared to the scale and protracted nature of displacement crises in Central Africa, discussions on GBV in forced migration settings remain relatively fragmented, under-documented and politically marginal within global protection agendas.
This invisibility is not simply about limited data. It is also about protection politics: whose crises attract sustained international attention, whose suffering becomes documented, and which emergencies shape humanitarian priorities and funding decisions.
A region at the margins of global GBV debates
Over the past decade, global conversations on GBV and forced displacement have increasingly focused on high-profile crises such as Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Meanwhile, many displacement crises in Central Africa continue to receive comparatively limited international attention despite their scale and duration.
According to the UNHCR and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), countries such as the DRC, Chad and CAR continue to experience large-scale displacement linked to armed conflict, political instability and insecurity. In eastern DRC in particular, decades of violence have exposed displaced women and girls to recurring risks of sexual violence, exploitation and abuse, including within displacement settings and along routes of movement. A 2025 UNFPA regional update on the DRC crisis warned that renewed conflict and displacement were further increasing protection risks for women and girls while overwhelming already fragile support services.
Yet compared to other regions, research and data on GBV in forced displacement contexts in Central Africa remain uneven and fragmented. Available information is often produced through humanitarian emergency responses rather than long-term, locally grounded research or state-led monitoring systems. Underreporting also remains widespread due to insecurity, stigma, fear of retaliation and limited access to reporting mechanisms. As a result, many forms of violence remain statistically and politically invisible.
Strong legal frameworks, limited implementation
This relative invisibility is striking given the strength of Africa’s regional legal frameworks on displacement and women’s rights. The African Union’s Kampala Convention remains the world’s first legally binding regional treaty dedicated specifically to internally displaced persons (IDPs). It recognises the responsibility of states to prevent displacement, protect displaced populations and support durable solutions. Similarly, the Maputo Protocol provides one of Africa’s most progressive frameworks for the protection of women’s rights, including protection from violence during armed conflict.
At the international level, frameworks such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Global Compact on Refugees also reinforce protections for displaced women and girls. On paper, therefore, the normative architecture exists.
The challenge lies more in implementation, coordination and visibility. In many countries across Central Africa, national GBV policies still insufficiently engage with displacement dynamics, while displacement policies themselves may inadequately integrate gender-sensitive protection measures. Responses frequently remain fragmented between humanitarian, migration, gender and development actors operating under separate institutional frameworks.
In addition, displaced women often face significant barriers to meaningful participation in protection responses and policy discussions. These barriers include insecurity, limited access to decision-making spaces, unequal power relations within humanitarian systems, and chronic underfunding of local women-led organisations. As a result, displaced women frequently appear in protection frameworks primarily as categories of vulnerability rather than as actors shaping responses and policy priorities.
The consequences of invisibility
This invisibility has concrete consequences for displaced women and girls. What remains insufficiently documented is often inadequately prioritised in funding, policymaking and protection responses. Humanitarian interventions frequently focus on immediate emergency needs, while structural drivers of violence — including poverty, militarisation, housing insecurity and weak access to justice — receive less sustained attention. The consequences are particularly visible in discussions around durable solutions. For many displaced women, returning home or rebuilding livelihoods remains extremely difficult without secure access to land, housing, and healthcare and justice systems.
At the same time, local women-led organisations and community protection networks across Central Africa continue to play a critical role in supporting survivors, documenting abuses and facilitating access to services. Yet these actors often remain underfunded and underrepresented in regional and international policy discussions despite their frontline role in protection responses.
Seeing displaced women differently
Addressing GBV in forced displacement contexts in Central Africa does not necessarily require new legal instruments. The region already possesses important regional and international protection frameworks. What is urgently needed instead is greater political and institutional visibility.
This includes investing in stronger evidence production on GBV in displacement settings, supporting locally grounded and survivor-centred research, and improving coordination between humanitarian, gender and displacement actors. It also requires greater support for local feminist and community-based organisations that are often at the frontline of protection responses.
Most importantly, it requires recognising displaced women not only as vulnerable populations within humanitarian crises, but as central actors whose experiences and priorities must shape protection policies themselves. This means moving beyond consultation as a procedural requirement and creating meaningful opportunities for displaced women to influence programme design, policy discussions and decision-making processes. Their lived experience provides critical insights into protection risks, service gaps and community-based coping strategies that may otherwise remain overlooked. Recognising and valuing this expertise alongside professional and technical knowledge is essential to building more effective, inclusive and accountable protection responses. The challenge in Central Africa is therefore not only to protect displaced women, but also to ensure that their experiences become more visible within the systems that shape humanitarian priorities, research agendas and regional protection politics.
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