In Zimbabwe, the Amani Trust has worked closely with individual victims and victim groupings, and has helped guide and facilitate the formation and development of victim groupings, material development, research and advocacy around victims needs. Between April and August 2004, a joint NGO initiative involving the Advocacy Unit of IDASA’s Zimbabwe office, the Amani Trust, the Centre for the Rehabilitation of Torture Victims and the Zimbabwe Community Development Trust ran a series of three workshops designed to enable victims of organised violence and torture to participate and share information on the subjects of democracy building, transitional justice, and advocacy. The writer was actively involved in the transitional justice and advocacy workshops, at which a range of transitional justice concerns were raised and discussed, and where the ‘Symposium Declaration’ was assessed and effectively embraced. This process has been an important development, but will need ongoing support if it is to be sustained and subsequently expanded. It is trite to say that we must be sensitive to victims’ and survivors’ needs. This goes without saying. They are amongst the most marginalised and vulnerable of Zimbabwe’s citizens. It is also a constituency that is heterogeneous and continues to grow by the day. Their meaningful inclusion in any efforts and initiatives to promote the objectives of justice and accountability must become a priority and the modus operandi of the transitional justice lobby. Issues and areas requiring more focused attention Although the ‘Johannesburg Declaration’ provided a framework of issues with which to engage in terms of retrospective accountability, there was general consensus that the ‘Declaration’ was not written in stone, but instead provided an indication of issues requiring further engagement. Over and above general concerns about the need to ensure that these issues become part of public consciousness and discourse, some specific challenges were raised. These included issues relating to social and economic structural considerations, class and gender. Several interviewees also pointed to themes that required considerably more structured interrogation. In particular, the need to develop a gendered understanding of violations and their impact was raised on several occasions. This reflects some broader concerns about the shortcomings of many transitional justice initiatives in this regard. Gender Some transitional justice approaches have indeed sought to shine light on the gendered nature of violations. These include strategies that have been used by truth commissions, courts, reparation programmes and institutional reform efforts, such as: focused research and/or hearings and testimonials on gendered patterns of human rights abuse; proactive efforts by prosecutors and investigators in pursuing gender-based abuses; developing flexible approaches to issues such as evidence and due process in addressing testimony for crimes such as rape; defining categories such as ‘crimes against humanity’, or ‘politically motivated’ human rights violations to include crimes such as rape; seeking to hire a significant number of staff members for truth commissions or prosecutorial offices; establishing protocols for victims in prosecutions or in public hearings to ensure the confidentiality of sensitive information; and reparation initiatives that are premised on addressing gender-specific violations; or seeking to take creative steps to avoid replicating problematically gendered patterns when providing restitution for losses.33 33 ICTJ, ‘Background Paper’, pp. 3–4. 19