m a ppi n g wo m en ’s n eeDs i n Zi m ba bw e’s nat i o na l h e a l i n g pr o ce ss order to ensure accountability, serve justice and achieve reconciliation. It consists of both judicial and non-judicial processes and mechanisms, including prosecution initiatives, facilitating initiatives in respect of the right to truth, delivering reparations, institutional reform and national consultations. (United Nations, 2010) Historically, however, as Mutua (2008) argues, one of the blind spots in human-rights discourses (which encompass transitional-justice discourses) has been their inattentiveness to women’s rights and needs for justice. Civil-society and human-rights defenders have tended to focus mainly on legal and prosecutorial agendas. Feminist scholars, such as Hilary Charlesworth and Christine Chinkin (cited in Mutua 2008) have denounced the patriarchal construction of international law. Even at the United Nations’ Beijing Conference on Women held in 1995 women’s rights were seen as an addendum to human-rights discourses, despite the fact that the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was already over 15 years old. However, since the 1995 Beijing Conference, the search for answers to women’s needs in times of transition has begun to receive more attention. A women-centred national healing process that consults broadly with women as part of effecting transitional justice is beginning to be seen as imperative, and this dispenses with the narrow legalistic perspectives that have tended to dominate the discourse until recently. Violence against women The most widely used definition of violence against women is provided by the United Nations’ General Assembly Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (Resolution 48/104 of December 1993). Article 1 and 2 of this resolution offer the following definition: Violence against women means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life. The resolution goes on to say; Violence against women shall be understood to encompass, but not limited to the following: a) physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring in the family, including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation; b) physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the State, wherever it occurs. The same definition is recalled in UN Resolution 45 of 2003, in which economic exploitation is added to the definition of violence against women. It is important to note that although the above declaration provides a fairly comprehensive description of acts of gender-based violence, violence against women is in no way limited to these acts alone. As in other violent conflicts in the region, sexual violence against women became a politically motivated and systematically orchestrated strategy in Zimbabwe after 2000. An analysis of the political landscape in Zimbabwe reveals four main manifestations of violence (see Galtung, 1969; 1990) that have affected women both during and since the worst of the 2000–2008 political crisis. The first is direct physical violence, calculated to ‘wound a perceived enemy’ by dehumanising the victim, injuring her and her family circle, and spreading terror in her 3 IJR Zimbabwe Womens needs OP proof 2.indd 3 7/16/2012 11:01:30 AM