Global Issues

Zimbabwe

• Source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children forced into sex trafficking.

• Women and girls from Zimbabwean towns bordering South Africa and Zambia subjected to sex trafficking in brothels that cater to long-distance truck drivers.

• Young women from rural areas are recruited into forced prostitution through the guise of city beauty pageants.

• Zimbabweans migrate to South Africa and forced into sex trafficking in Musina, Pretoria, Johannesburg, or Durban.

•  Young women and girls lured to China, Egypt, the United Kingdom, and Canada under false pretenses, and then subjected to prostitution.

• Men, women, and children from Bangladesh, Somalia, India, Pakistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia are trafficked through Zimbabwe en route to South Africa.

• Women and children from border communities in neighboring countries are trafficked to Zimbabwe for forced labor and prostitution.

• 29.5% of women in Zimbabwe report intimate partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 18.9% of women report sexual intimate partner violence in their lifetime.

• 36.2% of women report intimate partner and/or non-partner physical violence in their lifetime.

• 25% of women report intimate partner and/or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime.

• 21% report forced first sex.

• 8.3% report abuse during pregnancy.

• Constitution allows for discrimination, primarily against women, on the grounds of “customary law.”

 

Advocacy:

• Rape clinics were set up in public hospitals in Harare and Mutare.

• In November 2009 the IOM, UNICEF, and the UN Population Fund created a one-stop center project for gender-based violence survivors.

 

Sources: UN Women Violence against Women Prevalence Data: Surveys by Country 2011; U.S. Department of State 2010 Human Rights Report, U.S. Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report 2011