Efforts are underway by IOM, the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and
the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) to provide help and support for
victims of gender-based violence in Zimbabwe after a joint
assessment mission earlier this year found that the social,
political and economic instability in the country had led to the
increased vulnerability of women and girls to sexual violence and
abuse.

The three organizations have teamed up to increase access to a
more holistic care and support for survivors of gender-based
violence by setting up one-stop referral, support and response
centres in areas identified as having the largest gaps in the
provision of such services.

Zimbabwe currently only has one centre for rape survivors based
in a central hospital in the capital Harare. It is able to cater to
the needs of only a small catchment area within the city.

Displacement and unstable housing have in particular
marginalized large groups of people, many of whom are women and
girls susceptible to sexual violence. Data collected during the
joint IOM/UNFPA and UNICEF assessment mission in May found that
protecting women and girls in particular was a priority but one
which lacked resources to implement any response, supporting
IOM/UNFPA findings in a 2008 study on mobile and vulnerable
populations.

Then, more than 50 per cent of 1,900 respondents, both male and
female in Mberengwa, Mudzi and Mutare in Midlands, Mashonaland East
and Manicaland Provinces respectively, said that women and girls
among mobile and vulnerable communities are forced to have sex
against their will.

Worryingly, one in four displaced women interviewed said that
they had been forced to have sex at some point in their lives while
nearly 35 per cent of the women reported being worried about the
risk of rape.

Underlining the lack of services to help victims of gender-based
violence, 46 per cent of the respondents said they did not know
what to do to cope with rape experiences.

With victims largely blamed and stigmatised by society for
sexual abuse and violence, most survivors never report what
happened to them, leaving them to face the physical and
psychological consequences of rape by themselves, at times with
life-threatening results.

In a bid to help address some of these gaps, IOM/UNFPA and
UNICEF will establish centres in three provincial and three
district hospitals in the country, with the district centres at
Makoni, Mudzi and Mberengwa  providing a link between local
communities and the more established, yet less accessible
province-based services. Provincial centres will be established at
Gweru, Marondera and Mutare Provincial hospitals.

The centres will provide health care, psycho-social support and
legal aid to victims of gender-based violence, targeting about
150,000 people, mostly women and children but also some men.

"The aim is to ensure a survivor-centred approach to our work by
doing whatever is needed to get the right help to the survivors,"
said Marcelo Pisani, IOM Chief of Mission in Zimbabwe. "This
includes centre staff accompanying victims to other services if
needed or requested and to offer other assistance including life
skills and livelihood training, and lessening the risk for such
violence in the future."

UNFPA, which is coordinating the programme, will focus on
ensuring the space and resources for the work with UNICEF
coordinating the psycho-social counselling with NGO partners and
referral needs.

IOM, which has received nearly USD 139,000 of funding from the
UN's Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), will, with its NGO
partners, provide livelihood, life skills and risk mitigation
training to survivors. It will also establish a network of
community-based outreach workers to not only ensure referral and
access to services at community level, but also to help
destigmatize the centres and those who are in need of their
services.

For further information, please contact:

Judith Chinamaringa

IOM Zimbabwe

Tel: +263 4 33 50 48

E-mail: "mailto:JChinamaringa@iom.int">JChinamaringa@iom.int