Human Rights Archive Zimbabwe

This report is an analysis of the trends emerging from the annual violations reports compiled by the Association of LGBTI people in Zimbabwe (GALZ) between the periods 2012 to 2017. The analysis extensively draws data from a total of 170 violations extracted from 104 actual cases compiled and categorized by GALZ into 12 types. The 12 types of violations recorded are assault, threats, outing, discrimination, police harassment, Unlawful detention, disownment, blackmail, displacement, unfair labour practice, hate speech and invasion of privacy.

The Conference of Women Parliamentarians took place at the precincts of the PanAfrican Parliament in Midrand South Africa on 1st and 2nd November, 2013 under the Theme: “Parliamentarians Responding to Violence against Women and Girls in Africa, from Legislation to Effective Enforcement”.

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.

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.

The project aims to improve the technical capacity of Linking Organisations to promote access to HIV, health and rights services for key populations; to increase the engagement of national policy makers with Key Populations issues; and to improve processes for regional knowledge sharing and learning between Linking Organisations.

The report contains issues like Dealing with complex emergencies,developing a community response ti trauma,state psycho-social support for victims of organised violence and torture as well as the identification of victims.

A community-based approach to dealing with trauma highlights issues about Trauma and complex emergencies. This report is not concerned with describing the many ways in which trauma may be inflicted during complex emergencies, but rather to very briefly describe their effects.

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.

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.

Child marriage remains a problem in Southern Africa due to a variety of factors. These include poverty; gender inequity; tradition; insecurity,especially in times of conflict, limited education and lack of adequate legal frameworks in Member States, most of which are inconsistent.

The International Day of the Girl Child is celebrated annually on October 11 to highlight issues of gender inequality and the challenges facing young girls.

This was a retrospective cohort study conducted at Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, South Kivu Province. Using a non-systematic convenience sample, interviews were conducted on sexual violence survivors as they presented to Panzi Hospital requesting services from the Victims of Sexual Violence Program.

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.

The project is drawn against one of the Government of Zimbabwe’s key interventions in improving utilisation of comprehensive quality services for protection, care and support for GBV survivors in accordance with the National Gender-Based Violence Strategy. The project sought to respond and strengthen community gender-based violence service delivery and holistic support targeting adolescent girls and young women in line with the Multi-Sectoral Protocol on the Management of Sexual Abuse in Zimbabwe and the Constitution

Rights of women to their own sexuality and fecundity remain deeply problematic in many societies. Whether rights over personal sexuality and reproduction are classified as civil or social, they are still the subject of bitter conflict for women worldwide.

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, examining the violent and turbulent years between 2000 and 2006, shows that Zimbabwe has been no exception in this regard.

The article explores the effectiveness of the use of an empowerment workshop, called the Tree of Life, in the treatment of torture survivors. The approach is based on a survivor-to-survivor model of assistance.

Zimbabwean law provides for relatively equal property and inheritance rights for men and women. However, many of the women Human Rights Watch interviewed struggled to claim those rights for reasons unique to their status as widows. In Zimbabwe’s recent history, men traditionally owned all family property, and when women were widowed, they were often “inherited” as wives by male relatives of their deceased spouse.

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 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 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 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.

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

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 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.

Sexual violence is the most pervasive form of violence in many of the conflict-ridden countries in Africa and continues to remain so, through various post-conflict stages even after the conflict has ended. Violence, particularly of a sexual nature and against women, that was characteristic of a prolonged conflict, comes to be accepted as the norm and part of the culture more so than it was prior to the conflict.

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

This report is based on work carried out by the Research & Advocacy Unit (RAU) under its active citizenship and community security programmes. The aim is to understand whether the role of women and young people in local participatory policy-making is contributing to creating a conducive environment for the full enjoyment of its citizens, and also that duty bearers are getting more responsive to the inputs by the community which they serve.