2008

This dissertation exposes the legal and other obstacles which prevent rural women, Zimbabwe’s traditional environmental stewards, from fully realizing their human right (HR) both to sustain their families from forest produce and help to preserve the country’s forests. The researcher’s deft use of several gender-focused methodologies and complementary data collection methods combine to present clear evidence of the urgent issues at stake.  The study’s overall guiding methodology of the Grounded/Women’s Law Approach maintains its focus on the affected women, whose experiences are revealed as ‘lived realities’ within a rich multilayered private and public context, the legal implications of which help to highlight their problems and suggest possible solutions.  The latter are finally presented as valuable legislative and other reforms and recommendations which are laudably motivated by the desire to ensure that Zimbabwe complies with its local, regional and international HR obligations.

BY MAKANATSA MAKONESE

This dissertation examines the cultural norms, practices and customs which prevent Muslim women from exercising their reproductive rights and sexual autonomy.  These Human Rights are guaranteed under Islamic law (which, when honestly interpreted, the writer perceives as largely progressive and just) as well as relevant regional and international HR instruments.  Using several gender-focused methodologies, especially the Grounded Theory and Women’s Law Approaches, the writer gathers and analyses a wide range of data to reveal that the majority of Muslim women are kept poor, illiterate, fearful and ignorant of their rights in a patriarchal community led by a majority of purportedly religious men who misrepresent Islamic law and enforce its alleged practices for their own benefit and in order to preserve the status quo.  Education campaigns to promote women’s awareness of their rights are one of several laudable reforms recommended by the writer.

BY HAMISA OMARI MWENEGOHA

The writer of this dissertation, a local NGO officer, uses her inside knowledge of the Murewa Rural District Council (“MRDC”) to explore, through the increased participation of women councillors, the potential for their own personal development and that of the district, in general. She collects and analyses a wide range of data utilising several women-centred methodologies (including the Women’s Law and Grounded Theory Approaches) in order to reveal the ‘lived realities’ of several women councillors which, in turn, points to the legal, social, economic and other contexts between which they juggle their private and public lives. In order for Zimbabwe to comply with its international human rights obligations to improve women’s political rights, she suggests, inter alia, the limited use of quota systems and gender-sensitive political education programmes.

BY LOVENESS  MUPFEKA

According to this study, culturally-tolerated acts of domestic violence against women refugees (crimes under the Ugandan Penal Code) are rife in this and, probably, other refugee settlements.  Relying on a combination of methodologies, particularly the Women’s Law and Grounded Theory Approaches, the researcher collects and interprets a wide range of substantive data that presents the problem from the in-depth point of view of (or from the ‘lived realities’ of) its desperate victims, most of whom suffer in silence.  The few courageous women who dare simply to report their perpetrators to the apparently indifferent authorities find themselves victims of further vindictive attacks, even death. Sound legislative, administrative, social and educational reforms are suggested in order to eradicate this shameful endemic abuse of human rights in terms of Uganda’s national and international commitment to Human Rights as contained in various relevant legal instruments.

BY PHEONAH NATUKUNDA

Written by an experienced judge at the forefront of prison reform, this long-overdue study highlights the humiliation suffered by poor, illiterate, menstruating female prisoners from the moment of their arrest and throughout their detention in custody pending the finalization of their trial. Appreciating that the right to menstruate with dignity and in private is a human right, protected, though only implicitly, by both local and international binding/persuasive HR instruments, the writer captures material evidence which is relevant to making the urgent and necessary reforms which will realize this right. From, inter alia, in-depth interviews ranging from the silent, ignorant victims themselves all the way up to the apparently uninitiated Government law and policy makers, comprehensively presented through the perspective of modern methodologies (including the Women’s Law Approach), she reveals a silent conspiracy of shame and taboo which must be eliminated.

BY ESME JYNET CHOMBO