Breaking the Silence: Advancing Legislative Protections and Community-Led Advocacy for Child Safety in Benin

Presented By:

Women Empowered-Benin

This session explores how Women Empowered-Benin bridges the gap between national child protection policies and community-level enforcement in Benin. While legislative frameworks like the "Code de l’Enfant" exist, rural implementation remains a challenge. We present a "Bottom-Up" advocacy model that transforms local women into frontline policy advocates and child protectors.

Participants will analyze how integrating women’s economic empowerment with human rights training creates a sustainable shield against child abuse, trafficking, and early marriage. By shifting the narrative from passive beneficiaries to active policy stakeholders, our model demonstrates how grassroots mobilization can drive systemic accountability.

The session offers a roadmap for international practitioners to engage local female leadership in policy reform, ensuring that child protection is not just a legal mandate but a community-owned priority. We will conclude with a practical discussion on scaling these community-led interventions to other low-to-middle-income countries (LMICs).

Rise Up Session Date and Time:

August 27, 2026 5:00 pm

Country or Region Focus:

Africa

Type of Session:

Dynamic Strategy Lab format

Public Health Pillar Focus:

Child, Survivor, and Community Participation in Solutions

Speakers

Session Aims

To demonstrate a scalable "Bottom-Up" governance model that bridges the implementation gap between Benin’s national child protection laws and their practical enforcement in rural, decentralized communities.
To provide an evidence-based framework for integrating women’s economic empowerment with child safety, proving that financial autonomy for caregivers is a primary preventative measure against child labor and forced marriage.
To equip international practitioners with a Community-Led Monitoring (CLM) toolkit that transforms local women into active policy stakeholders capable of collecting real-time data to inform and adjust national protection strategies.

Session Format

The session follows a Dynamic Strategy Lab format, moving quickly from a situational briefing to hands-on problem-solving.

It is designed to be highly interactive through Scenario-Based 'Strategy Circles,' where participants are tasked with resolving real-world policy enforcement dilemmas using the Women Empowered-Benin toolkit. We will utilize Live Barrier Mapping to compare West African protection challenges with participants' local contexts, fostering a cross-pollination of ideas.

The session bypasses traditional lecturing in favor of an Expert 'Hot Seat' exchange, encouraging participants to critically analyze the scalability of community-led monitoring. This ensures every attendee leaves not just with information, but with a practical framework for engaging local female leadership in their own policy advocacy efforts.