SOLIDARITY STATEMENT BY EQUALITY NOW FOR THE 8TH SOUTHERN AFRICA YOUTH FORUM (SAYoF) Delivered by Sally Ncube, Regional Representative for Southern Africa, 21 July 2026, Birchwood Hotel OR Tambo Conference Centre, South Africa.

Allow me to stand on Established protocol

Good morning. On behalf of Equality Now, I bring you warm greetings and solidarity.

Equality Now is a worldwide human rights organization dedicated to securing the legal and systemic change needed to end discrimination against all women and girls to achieve a Just world for women and girls, A just world for  Us All

Since 1992, we’ve helped reform 130 discriminatory laws globally, impacting the lives of hundreds of millions of women and girls, now and for generations to come, working with partners nationally, regionally, and globally, we draw on deep legal expertise to drive lasting gender equality

As a proud partner of SAYOF since the 6th Forum, and as a co-founder of the Alliance for Universal Digital Rights (AUDRi), it is our honor and privilege to stand with you again and to congratulate SAYOF on convening this 8th Forum under the theme:

Nourishing Futures: Enhancing Food Security and Water Resilience through Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Action for Youth Empowerment.

This theme reminds us that Southern Africa’s sustenance, wellbeing and future depend on young people’s ability to innovate and lead. Climate resilience, food security and youth entrepreneurship are now inseparable from digital transformation.

Early-warning systems, precision agriculture, digital extension services and AI-driven forecasting all run on digital infrastructure. A young farmer or climate advocate cannot fully participate in this shared agenda for sustainable development and securing sustainable futures if she is excluded from digital spaces, unsafe within them, or shut out of the governance decisions that shape them.

This is why Equality Now’s message to this Forum, as in the 6th and 7th SAYOF, remains clear:

Strengthening Youth Leadership on Digital Rights, Digital safety, and technology governance, with particular urgency to end technology-facilitated gender-based violence, is essential to achieving Sustainable Development and Prosperity in Southern Africa.

Across the SADC region, digital tools offer real opportunity, but they have also given rise to an unevenly regulated digital ecosystem with serious risks. Young women, girls and marginalised youth still face a wide digital divide, and remain disproportionately targeted and affected by TFGBV, including online harassment, image-based abuse and algorithmic discrimination. These harms silence voices and shut young women out of both the digital economy and the very policy spaces now shaping agriculture and climate response.

Since 2024, Equality Now has partnered with SAYOF to advance digital rights and youth leadership, grounded in the Feminist Principles for the Digital Realm co-developed by AUDRi and the UN Global Digital Compact. Most recently, in June 2026, we produced a policy brief on how the SADC Model Law on GBV can strengthen national legal, policy, and institutional responses to online abuse, exploitation, and violence and co-convened a webinar with the SADC Parliamentary Forum and SAYOF, which resulted in a parliamentary pledge.

SADC and the continent already offer real commitments to build on: the SADC Model Law on GBV, which recognizes online violence as a form of gender-based violence; the African Youth Charter; the Maputo Protocol; and the AU’s Child Online Safety and Empowerment Policy. The task before us now is implementation.

Equality Now therefore calls on this 8th SAYOF to urge SADC Member States to:

• Enact,  enforce and strengthen implementation  laws addressing TFGBV in line with the SADC Model Law on GBV;
• Invest in adequate resourcing of digital access and literacy equitably, especially for young women, youth living in rural areas and youth with disabilities;
• Institutionalize youth participation in every digital governance process, including those shaping agricultural and climate technology;
• Protect safety, privacy, freedom of expression, access to information and other human rights online, while holding platforms accountable; ensuring safety by design across all digital platforms and,
• Integrate gender-responsive digital governance into national climate, agriculture and youth empowerment and development strategies.

Young people themselves have a critical role to play.

To the youth of SADC: you are best placed to Lead a digital ecosystem that is safe, inclusive and accountable. Organize, innovate, become digital rights champions, stand against TFGBV, and ensure that no innovation agenda agricultural, climatic, or digital proceeds without your rights fully protected within it.

As Equality Now and SAYOF convene tomorrow’s side event on Strengthening Youth Leadership on Digital Rights, Safety and Technology Governance, we look forward to concrete outcomes: recommendations for the 8th SAYoF Declaration, youth-led policy proposals, and a regional AUDRi Youth Digital Governance Working Group to sustain this leadership beyond this Forum.

Together, let us build a Southern Africa where digital technologies expand opportunity rather than inequality, and where every young woman and girl can shape our shared digital future safely, freely and equally.

Equality Now remains committed to walking this journey with SAYOF, in partnership, solidarity and shared purpose.

Hon. Chair, Ladies and Gentlemen, we wish you a successful and impactful 8th Southern Africa Youth Forum. I thank you.