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Fungai Lupande Mashonaland Central Bureau
Justice for Children Trust has appealed to the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) to set up more regional courts in Mashonaland Central to enable victims of sexual abuse from remote parts of the province to access justice.
Speaking at a dialogue on sexual reproductive health rights with adolescents at Zimbabwe Ezekiel Guti University (ZEGU) recently, the trust’s programmes coordinator, Mrs Chinga Govhati, said people who travelled from Mbire to Bindura seeking judiciary services ended up abandoning their cases due to the costs involved.
“The dialogue programme with adolescents is a pilot project that we are carrying out in the province with the support of the Southern Africa Trust,” she said. “We are also looking at the challenges that the children are facing in accessing justice.
“We only have the regional court in Bindura, which means people from other districts have to travel to Bindura for their cases to be heard.
“At the end of the day, the litigants fail to travel due to (the high) costs involved and the cases die a natural death. We are a lobbying our Government to set up administrative structures and to avail more magistrates.
“Since the beginning of the year, we have dealt with 24 cases of sexual abuse. Mashonaland Central has the highest number of gender-based violence and child marriage cases because of economic activities like mining and farming. “Some of the people who come to do mining activities are from other provinces and they go back after abusing girls and infecting them with sexually transmitted diseases and HIV in addition to unwanted pregnancies.”
Mrs Govhati said it was important to dialogue with adolescents around issues of SRHR and provide the youths with comprehensive information. “Most of the cases that we handle are of sexual abuse and issues around consent. This is something that needs to be discussed at national level.
“We had discussions with parents and they don’t know where to start from to get these children to open up about issues around sexual intercourse.”
Online Reporter