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Deputy Chief Justice Gwaunza
Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association (ZWLA) is an association of women lawyers that was established in 1992 by a group of women who were all lawyers in either private practice, government service or the academia and non-governmental sector. This association was formally launched in October 1995 and registered as a trust in December 1995, according to the laws of Zimbabwe.
ZWLA is a charitable organisation that enables women and children to assert their rights by providing them with access to the relevant legal resources.
The association promotes women’s and children’s rights through:
- Provision of legal aid at the two offices in Harare and Bulawayo and through mobile legal aid clinics
- Provision of legal education to women and communities at large. For instance we have been largely responsible for the constitutional literacy
- Law, policy and administrative reform. In this case we have contributed largely to the enactment of the Domestic Violence Act, The CEDAW Shadow report in 2012 and are leading on the establishment of family courts
ZWLA’s mission is: To develop, defend and to dialogue on women and children’s rights.
Vision: Justice and equality for all.
Goal: A Zimbabwean society where women are empowered and assert their rights within a justice system that treats men and women equally and that is sensitive to the needs of children.
The association promotes women’s and children’s rights through; provision of legal aid in eight provinces in Zimbabwe and through mobile legal aid clinics to reach women and children in inaccessible places, provision of legal education to women and communities at large.
The organization has contributed largely to the enactment of the Domestic Violence Act enacted in 2007 and the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women Shadow report in 2012.
ZWLA has remained a leading women’s organization pushing for inclusion of women’s rights issues in Zimbabwe’s national priorities, demonstrated by our advocacy interventions in the Constitutional reform process that lead to inclusion of women’s rights in the Constitution.
ZWLA has experience in strategic litigation as shown in the case of Margaret Dongo vs the Registrar General and another 292/08 in which the Supreme Court ruled that the Registrar General’s Office, which is responsible for issuing passports, should allow married women to apply for their minor children’s passports without having to prove their husbands’ consent.
The intervention extended married women’s rights and restored their dignity because they no longer need to plead with an errant or uncooperative father to apply for a child’s passport. ZWLA handled another strategic litigation case of Mildred Mapingure vs the Minister of Home Affairs and Others SC 22/14 meant to bring broad change to women in general facing challenges in terminating pregnancy resulting from rape.
We hope that we will have an open dialogue around the objectives of this conference, respecting one another’s opinion and learning about the best practices to adopt as we strive to improve the legal trajectory.
Some of our activism starts as soon as we draft our legal papers, bearing in mind that our aim is to improve the position of the woman and the girl child in the community.
Some of it is when we make our submissions before the bench and some is when we directly involve ourselves in our communities.
Ultimately we are all intertwined in our endeavour to safeguard women and children’s rights in the 21st century.
These remarks were made by Deputy Chief Justice Elizabeth Gwaunza at the Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association’s 25th Anniversary recently.
Online Reporter