Author: WITNESS

16 Jul Exposing Gender-Based Violence in Zimbabwe

Senior Program Manager Bukeni Waruzi first met Zimbabwean human rights defender Kuda Chitsike at a WITNESS video advocacy training in South Africa in 2008. As a lawyer with The Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU), an independent institute in Zimbabwe, Kuda was eager to learn how RAU could turn their lengthy written reports on politically motivated gender-based violence into videos to pressure citizens to action. This meeting was the beginning of a multi-year partnership between WITNESS and RAU. Since 2000, sexual violence has been used as a weapon by a number of Zimbabwean political parties to repress political dissent, intimidate political opponents and incur psychological damage. While working together RAU and WITNESS created a number of video advocacy pieces featuring the stories of survivors of physical and sexual violence. For each video, WITNESS worked with Kuda and her team to produce a Video Action Plan, a process designed to help activists think through messaging, how to reach their target audience and how to tell the story most effectively. RAU and WITNESS took great precaution and care to ensure the safety of the survivors filmed in the project. They went through a rigorous process of obtaining informed consent, ensuring that participants fully