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'Forced concubinage' in Zimbabwe
Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU)
April 20, 2011

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Introduction

'Forced concubinage', as the phrase suggests, is a situation in which women are coerced into a sexual partnership 'with a man and/or compelled to perform the wifely duties expected by the partnered male. Involuntary or forced concubinage may take the form of sexual slavery, human trafficking, rape and other forms of sexual violence. It occurs predominantly, but not exclusively, in areas of conflict, whether violent or non-violent. Forced concubinage is a gross violation of human rights which must be prevented, and, if it occurs, must be investigated and punished. In Zimbabwe, forced concubinage is manifest in two main forms; namely, politically motivated rape of women and human trafficking. This piece seeks to reiterate the obligations of the state with regard to these forms of violence and to recommend some of the possible ways of addressing the violations.

Background to forced concubinage

Rape and sexual violence have accompanied warfare in virtually every known historical era. Before the 19th century military circles supported the notion that all persons, including unarmed women and children, were still the enemy, with the belligerent having conquering rights over them. That "to the victor goes the spoils" was accepted and women were regarded as such spoils. Institutionalised sexual slavery and enforced prostitution have been documented in a number of wars, one of the most well known examples being "comfort women" - a euphemism for the close to 200,000 women who served in the Japanese army's brothels as sex slaves during the Second World War and were subjected to many forms of abuse.

The war crime Tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda revealed that combatants used rape and sexual assault as a means of waging war and helped focus the world's attention on this horrendous facet of war. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, mass rapes and the forced impregnations of women were adopted as part of the process of - ethnic cleansing. As a result of the evidence of such atrocities, the international instruments that form the normative framework of the criminalisation of sexual violence against women emerged.

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