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The Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ) has pledged to work hard to eradicate gender-based violence (GBV), a vice that is stalling progress across all spheres of life.
This emerged while commemorating the 16 Days of Activism against GBV when the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ), with support by UNWomen under the Spotlight Initiative Programme convened a 2 Day-Women Symposium in Harare from 6 to 7 December 2021..
The symposium has been the platform of the women’s movement to critically reflect on how they can organize within the global context, strategize, evolve and make an impact on fighting violence against women (VAW) even under the most hazardous circumstances.
The symposium also brought together various stakeholders such as Government Ministries, Parliament, and Independent Commissions to discuss the status quo on the protection of women and girls from violence.
Over 200 women from grassroots, national, and regional levels, who converged at the Symposium for the two days noted a number of areas of concern.
The women said Zimbabwe is a party to several regional and international instruments that promote women’s rights and gender equality and also extend protection to women against all forms of violence, such as the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Violence Against Women (CEDAW).
The Constitution of Zimbabwe guarantees equality, freedom from all forms of violence, equal access to resources among other provisions.
Despite these progressive measures, women, and girls in Zimbabwe, continue to be subjected to violence in both public and private spaces. Public transport is emerging as a breeding space and hot-spot for perpetrators of VAW who sexually harass women.
Women and girls remain marginalized across the economic, social, and political spheres in Zimbabwe and this makes them vulnerable and exposed in terms of experiencing and wearing the face of gender-based violence. COVID-19 has exacerbated inequalities and increased the rates of VAW.
The mandatory lockdowns have seen many women and girls being trapped with their abusers and not knowing where to go or how to get help during the lockdown. Marginalized various subgroups of women are taking the hardest hit of VAW. These include girls, women with disabilities, and sexual minorities.
Child marriages have increased during COVID-19, which has seen the majority of the girl children dropping out of school thereby exacerbating gender inequalities in education.
Rita Nyamupinga, the WCoZ Member and Deputy Chair of the humanitarian response cluster under the same orgnisation, who facilitated the symposium, briefed the media that as the world focuses more on COVID-19 containment measures such as vaccine formulation and roll-out, GBV response has been deprioritised.
“Noting these challenges, this briefing is therefore a call to action for duty bearers, stakeholders, development partners, CSOs, communities, and individual citizens, to adopt and implement comprehensive measures for decisively addressing violence against women.
“We urge Government and Parliament to urgently conclude on the enactment of the Marriages law, which seeks to criminalise and penalise child marriages. We call for urgency in the enactment of a clear specific sexual harassment law, to address various. We also urge the Law Enforcement bodies and the Judiciary to deal with cases of VAW expeditiously, and in a manner that passes a message of deterrence to offenders.
“We call upon adequate capacitation and resourcing of national gender monitoring bodies such as the Zimbabwe Gender Commission, for effective execution of their Constitutional mandate. In addition, we urge Government to decisively curb VAW in public transport by introducing “Pink buses” to ferry women and children only,” Nyamupinga said.
The human rights defender, speaking on behalf of WCoZ, emphasised the need to reinforce the recommendations to stakeholders, international partners, CSOs, and the Government of Zimbabwe to urgently implement a dedicated ring-fenced budget to increase domestic funding for national GBV response.
The women’s movement is also calling for a safe and enabling environment for women’s rights organisations to effectively carry out their work. She said the symposium gave birth to a renewed campaign on ending Violence Against Women and urged everyone to become a part of the movement by subscribing and following the women’s movement on the following social media platforms:
Twitter: EndingVAWGZIM Facebook: Ending VAWGZIM
▪ https://twitter.com/EndingVAWG?t=X9AsgYdQaOOmAq1taYpsZg&s=08
▪ https://www.facebook.com/Ending_VAWG-101568042381728/