By Michael Gwarisa
In a bid to strengthen collaboration across various Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), and social movements, Zimbabwe has become the first country in the sub-Saharan region to launch an advocacy cohort coordination program to harmonise Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) advocacy work.
This comes at the back of observations that various regional movements were fragmented, and working in a siloed environment that often limits functional collaboration across Civil Society Organisations.
Speaking in an interview with HealthTimes on the side-lines of a two-day Zimbabwe Advocacy Cohort Coordination Co-creation meeting hosted by the Sexual Rights Centre (SRC), in collaboration with the AIDS and Rights Alliance For Southern Africa (ARASA), Dr Ntombi Muchuchuti, the ARASA Executive Director said working in isolation had halted progress in the implementation of regional SRHR policies.
In terms of the progress towards the implementation of the regional and international policies regarding SRHR. There is the issue of coordination. We need to be coordinated as countries if we want to implement SRHR policies and the legal instruments that we set collectively,” said Dr Mchuchuti.
“We need to collaborate for us to be our brothers’ keepers. If, for instance, Southern Africa, and the SADC, would sit down together and say, these are the policies that are more specific to SADC. If we’re not collaborating and everyone is doing what they can when they can, it’s impossible to collectively realize success together. And in terms of capacity, what we can do, we have to strengthen collaboration within countries, within the region, and even internationally.”
She added that while individual movements have made strides, and milestones, the prevailing siloed approach was not conducive to sustainable advocacy or change.
“I’m happy that Zimbabwe has done so much in terms of progressive implementation of the policies and also Zimbabwe has done so much in strengthening other sectors that are to improve the access to sexual and reproductive health, but there is still a lot to be done. We’ve got civil society, people that are on the ground. For many years, civil society has been termed a watchdog, but for me, there are no watchdogs, because there is no one to watch. We are supposed to come together collectively and work as a team. So if civil society can work collectively with the government and say to ourselves, what are the priorities that we need to address in Zimbabwe?” added Dr Muchuchuti.
She also said the silos in the region were manifesting through data and information gaps crucial for informed programming and policy formulation.
The SRC, in partnership with ARASA, are spearheading the cohort advocacy coordination work at the national level in Zimbabwe.
Musa Sibindi, the Executive Director SRC said the Cohort had provided an opportunity for various social movements to come together and advance one common goal in a well-coordinated manner.
“The cohort is strategic to the work that SRC does, but also to the broader social movement in Zimbabwe. The trajectory of various social movements to work in silos as distinct or exclusive movements does not yield much results and half the time what that does is it dilutes the collective voice, it compromises the agents of the voice of the masses in running behind one issue or one cause,” said Sibindi.
She said the cohort seeks to bring together into safe spaces or platforms, diverse social movements, where they deliberate on the key goals that we seek to achieve as a distinct movement and begin to co-create or have a consensus on shared vision or shared goals.
“Half the time, I’ve also realized, in the development sector, we are working towards the same thing. Probably what is seemingly different is how we are naming or framing these issues. Some will seek to say we are working in the HIV movement, others will say we are working on safe abortion, we are working on adolescent issues, but if you look at it, we are really pushing for social justice, we are really pushing for positive development outcomes, we just want a just society where rights of everyone or every citizen are respected, distribution of resources and there’s greater access to sexual reproductive health rights for everyone in Zimbabwe.”
Meanwhile, the cohort also seeks to empower members with advocacy and negotiating skills to engage higher offices such as parliament, and government and development partners.
Former Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Health Chair and SRHR Advocate, Dr Ruth Labode said the cohort was crucial in strengthening the capacity of CSOs to collectively articulate unified messages to parliament and government.
“I strongly feel it is about time,and it is very appropriate. Especially for Parliament, when I was in Parliament, it was a nightmare because you would get about eight different civil society organizations inviting the same committee to different meetings to discuss, for example, access to health services,” said Dr Labode.
