Report of the 2015 International Women’s Day Stakeholder Commemorations Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) as well as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. She said Government, through the Ministry of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs commissioned two consultancies with the support of UNDP and UNICEF in 2012 and 2013 respectively. The first consultancy was conducted to review the status of ratification and domestication of human rights instruments in general and the second one focused on human instruments on women and children only. The strategies that were crafted by these consultancies are a good guide for Government in terms of prioritization of domestication. Over and above this, line Ministries are responsible for the implementation of the Treaties which fall under their purview and such Ministries are expected to raise awareness and engage in activities that implement these Treaties. She concluded by saying that the ratification, domestication and implementation of human rights is a process and not an event and therefore these processes are ongoing. j) Gender Based Violence (GBV) in Zimbabwe - Men are part of the solution The presenter for this session was Mr. Jonah Gokova of Padare. He first presented some of the myths about GBV e.g. that violence is part of our culture and that some women ask for or provoke men to rape, batter or abuse them through their own behaviour. He went on to present the facts about GBV explaining that GBV is a crime that is culturally condoned, but is punishable by law; nobody asks or deserves to be violated and men must take responsibility for their violent actions. He noted some of the factors that make it difficult to measure GBV, for example, privacy and ethics issues, shame associated with GBV, certain forms of gender-based violence are “invisible” in conventional research and policy and unavailability of baseline data to allow measurement. He explained why it is important to focus on men when address GBV. He observed that gender as a determinant of social relations that legitimizes and sustains men’s power over women, is inherently about relations between women and men, as well as relations among groups of women and among groups of men. Achieving gender equality is not possible without changes in Page 15 of 17