Human Rights Archive Zimbabwe

The Research & Advocacy Unit (RAU) undertook an analysis of the gender equality provisions under Zimbabwe’s new Constitution and compared these provisions to those constituted by select countries in the region.This document sets forth the analysis by providing a comparison between the gender equity provisions of the Constitution of Zimbabwe and those of Botswana, and Kenya, and South Africa.

The study shows the relationship between Social Capital and measures of political Interest and Participation.

The case emphasizes on the need to specify sexual orientation together with the nature of the Right to Equality and Non-discrimination.

The pamphlet provides a summary of the Domestic Violence Act [Chapter 5:16] and explanatory notes on its application for the benefit of children, their caregivers and partners in the child rights sector.The Act was enacted on 26 February 2007 and became operational on 25 October 2007.

The present study examined social capital in women using the data from the last three rounds of the Afrobarometer surveys on Zimbabwe. Social capital in women is associated with Freedoms, Political participation,; Agency, Support for Democracy, and Political trust.

This report explores what challenges and opportunities the current MPs under PR have and what the next steps should be after the expiry of Section 124 in 2023. Learning from the shortcomings of the current quota system, the report further seeks to explore how women should utilize the current quota and what is the strategy beyond 2023 to ensure that gender parity is realized.

This Report focused on the Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights of Women has been prepared and submitted to the CEDAW Committee by Beyond Beijing Committee (BBC) as an Alternative Report to the 4th and 5th combined periodic report submitted by the Government of Nepal. The purpose of the report is to maintain the government accountability both inside the country and at the United Nations.

The paper is structured in such a way which makes possible a systematic assessment of each of the relevant provisions of the draft. It will point out and commend the provisions which adequately address women’s needs but also point out any inadequacies and suggest improvements.

What Zimbabwean Women Demand in the new Constitution

Concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women

This paper advocates that election observation should take note of the issue of gender equality in electoral processes. Women’s full and equal participation and the integration of gender perspectives into all levels of the electoral processes enhance democratic practices in elections and for this reason, election observer missions should be prepared to render an election not free and fair on the basis of significant transgressions of the electoral rights of women.

This second National Gender Policy replaces the first National Gender Policy of 2004. The first National Gender Policy gave way to a range of initiatives meant to address gender inequalities. The ethos of Growth with Equity underpinned the 2004 NGP which was implemented under four thematic areas namely – (i) Women in Politics and Decision Making; (ii) Women and the Economy; (iii) Education and Training of Women; and (iv) Institutional Mechanisms for the Advancement of Women.

The report on a symposium entitled Accountability for conflict-related sexual and gender-based violence: Successes, challenges, narratives, and omissions which took place at the University of Pretoria from 15–17 March 2017.

This paper is founded on two intertwined arguments. The first is that many national healing processes fail to consider the needs of the victims of violent conflict, especially women (partly because transitional justice processes are often driven by elites who proscribe and institutionalize them). The second is that, in identifying and addressing women’s needs in the national healing agenda, Zimbabwe should aim to avoid the traps of transitional justice initiatives that have focused on the human-rights violations alone.

This paper explores how attempts to confront abusive pasts have deliberated gender in the promotion of reconciliation. In particular it will examine the nexus between gender justice and reconciliation in order to assess and considers ways to re-calibrate engagement with ongoing reconciliation processes.

This is the second report on child marriage in Goromonzi District, following on a preliminary report of a study carried out in 2014 (RAU.2014), and series of legal reports prior to this (Dube.2012; RAU. 2011(a); RAU. 2011(b)). These reports are a contribution to the rapidly growing debate in Zimbabwe and the international world on the undesirability of early marriage for girls.

The report talks about the two different forms of rape which need to be distinguished: the first, rape that occurs during actual war, and the second, politically motivated rape, which can occur outside of war situations, but is used a political tactic against a particular ethnic or political grouping. This report is concerned with the latter since it is evident that a state of war does not exist in Zimbabwe, although it could rightly be described as a “complex emergency”2.

This report is based on the results of this study, which was done through the administration of a questionnaire prepared by RAU with a special focus on rape as a component of sexual violence. The study revealed interesting findings about how people view rape including that,Most people had a good understanding of what rape is and they based it on cultural implications.

The typical woman human rights defender (woman HRD) that this publication focuses on is one who asserts her rights as a human being first, and then as a woman, knowing full well that she bears the brunt of a breakdown of the human rights fulfilment matrix directly or indirectly.

This report has been issued to coincide with the 16 days on gender activism, and concerns the organized violence and torture experienced by Zimbabwean women during the crisis that has engulfed Zimbabwe since 2000. The women described in this report have all fled Zimbabwe into exile in South Africa, and most are currently seeking political asylum.

This Bill seeks to establish a Gender Commission as provided for in section 245 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe which creates an independent institution called the Zimbabwe Gender Commission. It also seeks to fulfil international and regional instruments that Zimbabwe is a party to, namely the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Declaration and platform for Action