need to go back to school. Some need to be empowered to enable them address why they got married in the first place. 4.2 The Future While Zimbabwe has developed programmes that seek to address prevention of genderbased violence and the National GBV Strategy (2012-2015), which seek to improve government efforts, civil society and donors, to prevent and respond to GBV through a multi-sectoral approach, an effective and coordinated response is still needed. In addition to the above programmes, the Government of Zimbabwe also reviewed and brought into effect the Protocol on the Multi-Sectoral Management of Sexual Abuse and Violence in Zimbabwe (the Protocol). The Protocol highlights the roles and responsibilities of the various role players in the management of sexual abuse and violence. Despite these progressive laws, programmes and policies, several challenges remain with survivors of gender-based violence facing violations at community and institutional level. Although Zimbabwe has made notable strides in ensuring support to survivors at community level, from the implementation of the Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) and Gender-Based Violence (GBV) project, the three partners have noted that the services are not only inadequate but lack adequate resources. Gaps in service delivery still remain. Even worse for survivors, the Zimbabwe legal system is adversarial in nature, making most litigants require legal representation as they may not understand the procedures or the laws. Community structures put in place by government, such as the CCWS and the WardCOs still require support of civic partners for them to discharge their mandate. Although the project has seen marked change of attitude by the traditional leadership structures, more still needs to be done to strengthen the gains made to date. This is more in line with the realisation that attitude change is a process that needs more time and can only be realised well after the conclusion of the project. Such strengthening includes training of traditional leaders on their jurisdiction and the assessment of communities’ uptake of the adversarial legal services compared with the traditional court system services. This is in response to the observation that the rights of survivors cannot afford transport and accommodation costs to attend courts. The time that the courts take to complete the cases can result in abandonment of cases and the barring of other justice seekers. Violence can be prevented, and data from Mashonaland Central seems to confirm this. 5 Prevention programmes need to be upscaled and more efforts need to be invested in programs that tackle the risk factors at individual, community and societal levels, using effective interventions tested in the project areas – for example, programmes aimed at strengthening women and girls’ economic independence coupled with gender empowerment training. 5 2015 ZDHS Key Findings/UNFPA.