Bineta Diop is the Special Envoy on Women, Peace and Security to the African Union (AU). The first woman to hold the position of special envoy, Diop is also the founder of Femmes Africa Solidarite (FAS), a non-governmental organisation that promotes women’s rights and interests in Africa. As the daughter of a feminist mother, she managed to complete school in her home country of Senegal, at a time and place where not many women were able to. She studied business in Paris, where she accompanied her husband, a career diplomat, over various countries and events, including to Ethiopia for three years during Emperor Haile Selassie. Having joined the International Commission of Jurists, human rights NGO in Geneva in 1981, she then started FAS in 1996. Diop was also involved in in the development of the African Charter on Human and People’s rights (also known as the Banjul Charter), as well as the Protocol to African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women In Africa (the Maputo Protocol), alongside a group of African lawyers. In her position as Special Envoy, she was instrumental in the development of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda for the AU, and the subsequent Continental Results Framework. She sat down with EBR’s Menna Asrat on the sidelines of the recent African Union Summit, to discuss the developments in the position of women on the continent in light of International Women’s Day 2019. Diop stressed that the AU will continue working on the grassroots level by putting federations of women’s groups, which she calls them ‘the army without guns’ together all over Africa to amplify women voices.