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This article participates on the following special index pages:
New Constitution-making process - Index of articles
Participation of the Women's Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ)
at the Second All Stakeholders Conference
Women's
Coalition
October 18, 2012
The Women's
Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ) submitted names of 120 women rights
activists from across the country, to participate at the forthcoming
Second All Stakeholders Constitutional Conference. These women have
a right and a responsibility to participate at the second all stakeholders
conference. WCoZ has advocated for the equal participation of women
from civic society, political parties and geographical areas in
the current constitution
making process. Women are 52% majority in Zimbabwe and any process
that is deemed to be 'people driven' should actually
be largely 'women driven'. Section 6 of the GPA
commits to engaging the majority of Zimbabweans to make a constitution
'for themselves and by themselves'. The Second All Stakeholders
Conference is a platform to give feedback to COPAC on the draft
constitution released on the 18th of July 2012 and women have a
responsibility to participate in this process.
The WCoZ is
a network of 75 women's organizations with national structures
and women rights activists. The WCoZ is a forum where women meet
to engage in collective activism on issues affecting women and girls
in Zimbabwe. Its central role is to provide a focal point for activism
on women and girl's rights. WCoZ brings females from diverse
backgrounds to collectively advocate for the attainment and enjoyment
of their rights. The organisational members of WCoZ work in diverse
fields including health, legal aid, access to education, gender
based violence, skills training, poverty reduction, research, property
rights and governance issues. WCoZ has chapters in Bulawayo, Masvingo,
Kariba, Gwanda, Bindura, Chinhoyi, Harare, Marondera, Gweru, Harare
and Mutare.
We stringently
deny allegations that civic society is partisan in Zimbabwe. As
WCoZ and our membership we have engaged all political players, government
and the private sector in the country with a women and development
agenda. Since the formation of the inclusive
government we have advocated for the equal participation of
women in all transitional processes including constitution making.
We engaged COPAC and the Ministry of Constitutional Affairs on numerous
occasions around this. We also engaged with the women policy makers
in COPAC, the Women's Parliamentary Caucus, women wings of
political parties and the principals in our struggle to get a gender
sensitive constitution out of this process.
Section 6 of the GPA makes it very clear that women have a right
and responsibility to participate in the current processes of constitution
making that includes the Second All Stakeholders Conference and
the referendum. We urge political parties to respect the provisions
of the GPA that "the people (read women) of Zimbabwe have
a right to write the constitution for themselves and by themselves".
We are seriously concerned that despite being the majority numerically,
women remain largely marginalised from processes that should include
them and the debacle around participants to the Second All Stakeholders
Conference is indicative.
We urge political
leaders to look beyond narrow party interests and accommodate citizens
of Zimbabwe to bring a national debate to the Second All Stakeholders
Conference. Women have worked to build consensus among themselves
and it would be a huge loss to derail that momentum in favour of
petty partisan politics currently dominating our country. We need
a new and mature way of making sure that we recognise the critical
work that women of Zimbabwe have done over the past three years
and will continue to do, given an opportunity.
Lets rebuild
this country together, we can learn a lot from the unity of purpose
that women, across their diversity, have showed in this exercise.
We have invested in building bridges among all women of Zimbabwe,
its time all groups followed suit.
Nothing is going
to deter the women of Zimbabwe from carrying out the national duty
of speaking to their draft national constitution. Against, a current
constitution that allows overt discrimination of women, we have
nothing to lose by lobbying for a draft that promises to at least
address gender inequalities and rampant discrimination.
Visit the Women's
Coalition fact
sheet
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