1. INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND Issues of age of consent, having sexual intercourse with young persons and access to sexual and reproductive health services cannot be separated. They are intertwined. For that reason, this publication seeks to give an overview encompassing all these issues so that the discussion is situated within its proper and complete context. Age of consent has remained a standing topical issue in Zimbabwe. It is the consequences and effects of the age of consent that have continuously triggered the ongoing discussion, ranging from the incessant child marriages, to the disturbingly high levels of child sexual abuse. Access to health services, particularly sexual and reproductive health services, is yet another. Are there gaps in our law and policy? Are there perhaps gaps in the implementation of the existing legal framework? Do our law and practice conform to the international law standards to which our country subscribes? What does our law say concerning age of consent and protection of children from sexual abuse? What are the implications of such laws? The questions are numerous. It is to these issues that this discussion is devoted. 2. DEFINING AGE OF CONSENT Age of consent is the age at which someone can legally and competently have sexual activity with another person. Put differently, it is the legally defined age at which a person is deemed legally competent to consent to sexual activity. Various inscriptions can be given to this definition, but the import remains the same. What age of consent does is that it sets a legal demarcation in terms of age, below which point engaging in a consensual sexual activity with someone is deemed an offence. Different names are given to this offence in different parts of the world, the most common being “defilement”, “statutory rape laws”, and the phrase “having sexual intercourse or performing an indecent act with a young person”. The latter is the description used in Zimbabwe. However, where such sexual intercourse or activity is non-consensual, the sexual offences laws that generally apply to everyone are equally applicable, with offences such as rape, indecent assault and aggravated indecent assault attaching, as the case may be. 3. WHAT IS THE AGE OF CONSENT IN ZIMBABWE? Is the age of consent in Zimbabwe 12 or 16 years? For reasons that become clearer below, this is not a rhetorical question, but a real question for which confusion may abound, not just among persons who are lay to the law. The age of consent in Zimbabwe is 16 years. However, that age was not always 16 years as once upon a time, Zimbabwe’s age of consent was 12 years. The age was raised from 12 to 16 years through an amendment to the 1