Background
Zimbabwe Peace Project
remarks from the media, community members, party membership and from rival
political party members as factors that forced women to withdraw after filing their
papers in the nomination courts. According to IFES, in 2018, 60% of violent discourse
and related content in the political space was directed at women. Women were the
object of nearly three times the amount of physical violence-related online sentiment
than men. ZPP has documented cases of forced concubinage as a means of punishing
women or their spouses for participating in politics, numerous cases of rape, gang rape,
torture, intentional transmission of HIV, and sexual slavery by perpetrators against
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survivors of political violence have limited opportunities to get justice and healing.
This contravenes Zimbabwe’s obligations under the Beijing Declaration and Platform
for Action (BPfA).
Women do not usually report violence for fear of retaliation, stigma or not being
believed. In politics and elections, additional reputational risks exacerbate these fears.
Within political parties, members may not speak about violence fearing their partisan
loyalties and discipline will be questioned. In addition to direct (physical violence)
women in politics also experience indirect, structural violence (social arrangements
that put individuals and populations in harm's way). The arrangements are structural
because they are embedded in the political and economic organisation of our social
world; they are violent because they cause injury to people (typically, not those
responsible for perpetuating such inequalities). The idea of structural violence is linked
very closely to social injustice and the social machinery of oppression. An example of
structural violence is unfair documentation rules which prevented women from
registering as voters. Institutions established to provide access to justice and healing
women victims of VAWP such as the police, the courts and Independent (Chapter 12)
Commissions have failed to take action against VAWP, especially if it is state
sponsored. In Zimbabwe, it is difficult for law enforcement to bring perpetrators of
VAWP online to book because sometimes it is perpetrated under a veil of freedom of
expression and the challenges to social media accounts to certain individuals. The
Zimbabwe United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework 2022-26
has four development outcomes, none of them explicitly or implicitly mention VAWP
or work that will be done to reduce it.
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