Human Rights Archive Zimbabwe

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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 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 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.

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 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 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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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

What Zimbabwean Women Demand in the new Constitution

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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.