Masters Dissertation

This essay finds its departure in the preparatory work in the Muhimana case1zeroing on the interaction with respective witnesses who subsequently testified in the case. The accused, Muhimana committed exclusive and disproportionate crimes against women and girls in Kibuye during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. As the prosecutor rightly put it,…

This research seeks to analyse the laws governing land under permit and its impact on women’s rights to land. This includes access, control and ownership of that land under the Fast Track Land Resettlement Programme (FTLRP) but specifically looking at women who are on A1 (small scale) farms. This research…

This study explores the reasons behind what has made “rite to passage” initiation schools so resilient despite the fact that some of its practices have been outlawed. The writer felt prompted to investigate the law that applies to and ought to protect adolescent initiates. The most serious questions the research…

Many people in Zimbabwe, especially women, earn their living through informal crossborder trading. Many fail to see the developmental role informal cross-border trading plays and so when the laws, or lack thereof, restrict and negatively affect informal cross-border traders, nothing is seen to be done to assist women involved in…

The writer of this dissertation explores why Zimbabwe is a girl child traffickers’ paradise. Adopting several gender-focused methodologies, guided overall by the Human Rights based Approach, she collects, analyses and presents data (including relevant law, literature and evidence from key informants in relevant State departments and NGOs) which reveal that…

This dissertation examines in detail the so far ill-fated journey of Uganda’s ambitious Domestic Relations Bill (“DRB”). Generally, the Bill seeks to improve and harmonise, to some extent, domestic relations between men and women under various marriage and ‘quasi-marriage’ regimes which subsist in civil, customary and Islamic law. Using several…

Although the Zimbabwe government has, with the help of the NGO community, begun to issue some gender sensitive primary school textbooks, it still lacks the resources to replace completely those which reinforce gender stereotypes which discriminate against girls. The insidious influence of these pernicious stereotypes on the minds of young…