Lack of funds hampers work of Anti- Domestic Violence Council

Director of Musasa Project, a non-governmental organisation which deals with gender based violence, Nettie Musanhu, said: “The operational mandate of the anti-domestic violence council in Zimbabwe expired in October 2010 and it had been operating without any budget.”

Mushanhu said the council had been unable to carry out its work effectively for the past three years due to lack of any meaningful funding. The council still had no office or staff members. She said this was as a result of lack of gender sensitive budget policies by the government.

“The council adopted a strategy which had not been implemented to the detriment of hundreds of women who continue to be battered everyday by their partners or husbands,” Musanhu noted. She also said there was lack of monitoring of the Domestic Violence Act, lack of training for community based counsellors including the judiciary and the police. This had resulted in the escalation of cases of gender based domestic violence.

The Anti-Domestic Violence Council was established with a mandate to promote the protection and relief of victims of domestic violence through research, information dissemination, coordination and monitoring of the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act in Zimbabwe. Domestic violence is defined as any unlawful act, omission or behaviour which results in death or the indirect infliction of physical, sexual or mental injury.

Director of the Zimbabwe Women Resource Centre and Network (ZWRCN) Naome Chimbetete, said there was gender discrimination in the allocation of resources in Zimbabwe. “Our budgets… tend to favour men only, but we need budgets that are gender sensitive,” she said. The lack of gender sensitive budgets was surprising because of an existence of a policy directive within the Ministry of Finance.

An analysis of allocations to different government ministries made by (ZWRCN) revealed that the budget of the Ministry of Women Affairs, Gender and Community Development which was instrumental in setting up the Domestic Violence Council constituted a mere 0.23% (US$ 6, 857,000) of the 2011 budget marginally increasing by 0.2% in 2010.

The Ministry was only allocated US$50, 000 for gender mainstreaming for all the government ministries. Chimbetete said each government ministry should have its own independent budget for gender mainstreaming activities. The 2011 national budget presented by Finance Minister Tendai Biti last month did not address these issues.

“The allocation given to the Women Affairs Ministry is meagre given the level and intensity of the work to be undertaken by the Ministry. The gender mainstreaming budget should be increased to address gender gaps in all line ministries.

She said there was a need for a women’s fund targeted more to rural constituencies where women had less access to factors of production such as credit and loans.

Chimbetete said the Ministry of Women Affairs should widen its structures through which women can access the funds, including awareness raising in rural areas on the fund and providing training to women on proposal writing. Acting Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Women Affairs,Gender and Community Development, Cecilia Manyame, agreed that operations of the anti-domestic violence council had been severely hampered by lack of resources. She said she hoped that some donors would come on board and support the operations of the council.

She said her ministry was expecting to get support for the council from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNFPA).