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Background:
UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security.
UN Women work in Zimbabwe focuses on supporting the government and civil society in advancing gender equality and implementation of the national and international commitments on gender equality and women's human rights.
The country has also ratified several global, regional and sub regional human rights instruments on the protection of women and girls from discrimination. In addition, Zimbabwe has submitted periodic reports on progress being made to implement the human rights standards to the appropriate treaty monitoring bodies to ensure that the available protections are implemented and enjoyed by women and girls in practice. The passing of the 2013 Constitution was a critical milestone in this regard, as the Constitution requires that all laws, customs, practices, and conduct must be consistent with its provisions. In this regard, previous laws, customs, practices and conduct that had the effect of discriminating against women and girls have been rendered unconstitutional.
However, despite these efforts, significant gaps in the protection of women and girls from discrimination still exist in law and in practice. For example in Zimbabwe women's representation in political leadership remains low, despite the gender parity provisions in the Constitution, further supported by the legislative women's quota. UN Women conducted assessment/research in 2021 which comprehensively examined the laws of Zimbabwe and findings are that a number of legislative actions must be taken to bring the laws of Zimbabwe in conformity with its obligations under international law on gender equality. These legislative interventions are necessary across the spectrum of all sectors in Zimbabwe, including marriage and family law, the political environment, business and commercial settings, justice delivery and the education sector, as well as social, religious and cultural/customary settings and institutions.
The report furthermore, uncovers how the judiciary has played an important role in efforts to eliminate discrimination against women and girls, applying the Constitution and international human rights law to promote the principles of equality and non-discrimination. There are nevertheless situations in which judges have been unable to hand down gender responsive decisions due to existing gaps in the law.
Legislative actions by Parliament and the Executive have been tied to efforts to align the country's laws with the 2013 Constitution. Given that there are many laws that require alignment, new laws aimed at addressing the rights of women and girls have not been given priority, hence the continued gaps in this regard. Therefore there has been call for the Government to enact a Gender Equality Law being as a legal instrument that will put in place the necessary measures to accelerate both the alignment process and enactment of new laws in order to secure the full domestication of relevant global and regional human rights norms and standards.
It is envisaged that the gender equality law will support full implementation of gender equality provisions in the Constitution so as to defend, protect, promote and enforcing women and girls' rights.
To address this, and in the spirit of regional and international normative frameworks above, the Ministry of Women Affairs, Small , Medium Enterprise, Zimbabwe Gender Commission (ZGC) and the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Women Empowerment (UN Women) has initiated a joint initiative to reengage stakeholders towards the enactment of a gender equality law .
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