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Ray Bande
Senior Reporter
LEGAL practitioners in Mutare have been equipped with requisite background knowledge on the value of wildlife to enable them to prosecute and adjudicate fairly when handling wildlife crimes.
In an interview on the sidelines of the Manicaland edition of the Zimbabwe Rapid Reference Guide training on wildlife crime today at a local hotel, founder and executive director of Speak Out For Animals, Advocate Ever Chinoda, a wildlife rights proponent and facilitator of the training sessions, said training of legal practitioners on wildlife crime covers the gap created by lack of formal wildlife crime lessons in law school.
“Wildlife crimes happen everywhere, within the region in Southern Africa and beyond. Our animals do not have borders, they travel from Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and other countries. This is why these offences are prevalent everywhere and anywhere.
“This is against the background that we do not have wildlife laws being taught as a formal subject in law school. So we now have prosecutors and magistrates going to prosecute and adjudicate on wildlife related cases without having had prior theory on the value of these animals and the sentences that are supposed to be preferred to perpetrators of such crimes.
“Here in Zimbabwe trainings of this nature have been going on just like in Namibia, Botswana or Zambia to protect wildlife through the legal system,” she said.
The Mutare edition, which ends tomorrow (Friday), is the last of a series of similar training sessions that have been held around the country.
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