Zimbabwe Barometer 2013 Chapter 1 Constitutional and legal rights

Key points

• Citizens scored the country’s progress at 71% of where Zimbabwe needed to be by 2015 in terms of achieving the SADC Gender Protocol targets relating to Constitutional and legal rights.
• Zimbabwe’s new Constitution has strong gender equality and women’s rights provisions; Section 34 obligates the State to ensure that all international conventions, treaties and agreements to which Zimbabwe is party are incorporated into domestic law
• Contradictions between customary law and statutory law are eliminated in the new Constitution. Women’s rights and gender equality are no longer subjugated to traditional, cultural and religious norms and values that encroach on the fundamental rights and entitlements of women and girls as citizens.
• The women’s movement, which lobbied for a gender-responsive and expanded rights-based Constitution, is focused now on law reform to align these provisions to the country’s laws and to secure the gender equality and women’s rights gains.
• The Constitution creates an independent Gender Commission that is mandated to keep a close watch on the advancement of gender equality and the protection of women’s rights.

Download the chapter. To comment, scroll down and type your comment in the comment box.