Evaluation of the Southern and Eastern Africa Regional Centre for ...

32A male senior law officer in the section for Legal Aid in the Ministry of Justiceexplained how his own ‘gender lens’ played a role now in dealing with his legal aidclients. He estimated that approximately 30 per cent of his case work involved usinga ‘gender lens’ (see box below). Again, in considering half of his clients are women,this is significant.‘My level of argument has developed a different dimension. I can argue now with a genderdimension and identify stereotypes. Before I thought it was an ordinary problem but now Ican critically examine if in fact the issue is gender based violence. In another case, a manwanted to divorce his wife because she had visual problems related to diabetes. He was theclient but was planning to loot the property. But I advised the man instead to invite thewomen to a discussion and both parties got 50-50 split of the settlement. Before I would nothave suggested this. I learnt best practices in international standards from the course and usethese in arguments.’ Samuel Deme (Principal Law Officer at Ministry of Justice and LegalAffairs)Overall, other respondents working in the sector identified how more womenfriendly judgements are taking place in Zimbabwe.In addition to these findings in Zimbabwe, in Zambia there has also been impactwithin its own Law Commission:‘After the SEARCWL, I noticed the shortcomings in our commission, in management, how we tookon law reform and research. I spoke to the director. We have now had two training programs forcolleagues in our department- in research methodology, issues of data collection and administration,issues for workshops- and projects to review the penal code and the criminal justice code. Myresponsibilities have drastically changed. I have become more reliable. Whenever there are seriousassignments related to women human rights I get them’.Sam Mwapela (Research officer, Zambia Law Development Commission)Graduates also worked on access to justice in the Ministry of Justice in Zimbabweand Zambia. One cited that in having done the course and also being a man, he islistened to more in pushing for social justice in this sector.The public and institutional spaces identified have been also impacted by civil societyand the NGO sector, especially in terms of legal aid and inputs on law reform. Inaddition, SEARCWL also adds synergy, in providing research and training, oftenworking with its graduates in different organisations and sectors (and see later sectionon SEARCWL’s role beyond the course). One such example concerns the recenttraining of magistrates in partnership with the NGO sector and work on FamilyCourts.We therefore conclude this section by summarising the impact across diverse sectorsand arenas visually in the following diagram: