How do you bring justice closer to home?
That question shaped 2025 for the Gender and Justice Unit (GJU). In our eighth year of operation, we worked across courts, radio, and digital platforms to make legal support more accessible to women and girls in Malawi.
Global recognition for citizen-led democracy
Chisankho Watch, the citizen-led election-monitoring consortium to which GJU belongs, received the 2025 Madeleine K. Albright Democracy Award. The award recognised the consortium’s citizen monitoring, civic education, and Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT) methodology, which helped safeguard the integrity of Malawi’s 2025 elections.
Our Executive Director, Sarai Chisala-Tempelhoff, was also named an African Visionary Fellow by the Segal Family Foundation. In March, she represented GJU at the 69th Commission on the Status of Women in New York, contributing Malawian feminist perspectives to the Beijing+30 review.
A new strategic direction and a new platform
In 2025, GJU launched its 2024–2028 Strategic Plan alongside EmpowerLine, the first GBV reporting and legal information platform of its kind in Malawi. Available through a mobile app and a toll-free Interactive Voice Response (IVR) service on 4285, EmpowerLine offers anonymous access to legal information, reporting pathways, and survivor support in four languages. EmpowerLine also contributed to the first use of IVR technology in electoral monitoring in Malawi.
What changed for women?
Mobile courts delivered 14 judgments in places where the legal system had felt out of reach. Community liaisons, equipped with bicycles, halve GBV reporting travel times in remote areas. EmpowerLine reached more than 2,859 users with legal information and reporting pathways. Through the radio, our work reached more than 800,000 listeners.
The year in numbers
- 4,121 direct beneficiaries
- 2,859+ users on EmpowerLine
- 800,000+ radio listeners
- 14 mobile court judgements
- 30 community liaisons trained
- 11 electoral interventions
- 15 partnerships, with 2 formal MoUs signed
Looking to 2026
In the year ahead, GJU will:
- Expand EmpowerLine into additional vernacular languages so that no woman is excluded from legal information because of literacy or language barriers
- Scale services across Dedza beyond the current two Village Development Committees
- Replicate the Dedza model in additional districts with multi-year support from the Irene M Staehelin Foundation, working towards 11 districts in total
- Intensify advocacy for the reopening of the Maonde Court as a permanent justice facility
Read the full report
Download the GJU Annual Report 2025
- For partnership enquiries, please contact info@genderandjustice.org
- To access GJU services in Malawi, dial 4285 (toll-free) to reach EmpowerLine.