 Pleasure to welcome you to this timely and important webinar on sex torsion and land governance which is being co-hosted by the land portal Mokoro and Transparency International. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Farai Mutondoro. I'm the senior researcher and programs coordinator with Transparency International Zimbabwe. It is my distinct honor to moderate this forum. Our discussion today is on sex torsion and land governance. In the context of such a discussion we are defining sex torsion is the abuse of power to obtain a sexual benefit or advantage. Sex torsion is thus a form of corruption where sex and sexual benefits are the currency attained rather than money. This form of corruption is gone on for years and reported due to a number of structural factors. In an attempt to address sex torsion in the land sector we're going to be having this web webinar discussion on sex torsion and land. Today we're going to discuss on sex torsion and land governance and to help us understand that we seek to answer some of these questions. What does sex torsion mean and how is it relevant to land governance? What are the primary challenges to discussing and addressing sex torsion and more importantly how can sex torsion be tackled? What is needed to bring sex torsion higher on the agenda of land governance and within the anti-corruption communities? Allow me then to introduce you to our esteemed panelists. With us today we have Marwa Fatafa who is the regional advisor for the Middle Eastern North Africa Under Transparency International. We have Elisabeth Dailey who is a principal consultant with Mokoro LTD. We have Amani Mustafa Minda who is the founder and executive director of Aki Madin. Lastly we have Mucanita Mondopa who is the executive director of Transparency International Zimbabwe. I'll begin by pausing three questions to our panelists. This will then be followed by a round of discussion after which I'll open up discussion to the audience. In that regard I want to encourage attendees to share some of your questions you might be having through the webinar system. If you have any questions that come to mind as panellists speak please don't hesitate to write them down. Let me now first ask the initial question regarding the meaning of sextortion. Marwa, I understand you've been working on the issue of sextortion for a very long time. Can you please give us some insights into your understanding and experience with the subject? Thank you very much Farai for the introduction and for bringing this very important subject for discussion. Transparency International has been implementing a pilot project over the last 18 months in partnership with the International Association of Women Judges and TI's National Chapter in Morocco to address the issue of sextortion in the context of Morocco. Right at the start of the project there was a big scandal in Moroccan media about a professor at the University of Tatwan who was asking his female students for sex or for sexual favours in exchange for passing their exam of university examinations. We hear these stories again and again of men who abuse their power and authority to extort sexual favours from vulnerable women not just in Morocco but as we have seen in the video elsewhere almost everywhere around the world where basically power and vulnerability collide. We've heard stories of refugee women from Iraq, Syria and elsewhere who had to give sexual favours in exchange for food and medicine or even sometimes blankets when it's wintertime. There's another story in Tanzania where a court clerk forced his women employees to sleep with him in exchange for getting a paid for the overtime work. He was HIV positive and soon after one women after the other were falling sick. These are all examples of sextortion where there is a demand for sex or sexual favour that is at the very heart of this corrupt transaction and sextortion is a new name, it's a new definition coined by IAWJ the International Association of Women Judges but as you've mentioned it's a very old problem that is often gets not so much attention. The term captures two important aspects one is the sexual exploitation and the other is the corruption aspect of these abuses but to have a clear definition of sextortion there are four elements to this phenomenon. The first is that the perpetrator is someone with an entrusted authority, second that this person abuses the authority by exercising it in exchange for personal benefit and this corruption exchange is very much the same dynamic applies to bribery there's a quid pro quo transaction but in exchange for money they were talking about sex or sexual favours. Third that as I mentioned it the type of bribery is a sexual favour and finally that sextortion relies on the coercive power of authority rather than physical violence or force and naming the problem is very important in the first step and that enabled us to to see and address it as part of a broader corruption problem. Thank you so much Mara for your insights and overview of what sextortion is and the four elements that you have just highlighted allow me then to invite Elizabeth Elizabeth so I'll pass this question to you. How do you interpret the meaning of sextortion and how relevant is it to land covenancy? Thanks Farai and that's a good question so as we've said rather than extorting money or bribes from people in return for access to land with sextortion we're referring directly to the exchange of sex or other sexual favours however as with bribery it's not always avert or explicit and it's something that can be implied in the language used by land administrators or land officers or other government officials who are key guardians of access to land through formal channels and then also in the language used by male family members who have power over their female relatives access to land. Conceptually sextortion is very interesting but also very tricky because it is not always explicit. Many times throughout history there has been cases of women and sometimes men using sex to gain access to power or resources then sometimes the person who is exchanging with sex or sexual favours may actually think that they are doing this as a choice for example choosing to use their body to achieve their goal rather than relying on other methods so the question is you know do I follow the correct but time consuming procedures to be allocated land or do I find a way to speed up the process by flirting with the land officer or my brother-in-law or by following that through to sex or other sexual exchange if it seems that would be welcomed then if I do this have I chosen to use my body as the bribe and does that make me guilty of also being involved in the practice as well so I think it's important to be clear that we're not talking about rape as such but a supposed choice that someone would make to offer sex or sexual favours in place of money and in place of walking away and refusing to engage in any form of corruption but and this is a big but what is critical to understand is that for many women men there's there's no such thing as a choice as such so especially people who are poorer or more vulnerable and those are oftentimes the people who have the least access to land and natural resources and the most need of it just to survive and feed their children so another question then that relates to that is then how we distinguish between sex distortion and what we might call sex exploitation and do we need to so to give an example if you have two women one already has a parcel of land but would like another and the other has no land the first woman might be able to wait and follow the correct procedures to be get to to get a second plot but the other woman might be a poor woman who's more desperate to get her land and then maybe more likely to try to use any advantage she can so if not money in the form of a bride because she's poor then what she has to offer is her body if the land officer knows that she's more desperate and informs her however implicitly that her application could be speeded up if she were to welcome his advances a bit like the case we've just seen in the video then that is very much sex distortion from the land officer but what about where a woman is encouraged by others in her family to use whatever means are necessary to secure the land for the family then is that sex exploitation of the woman by her family now this is something that even could be joked about within a culture that men would send their wives or daughters off to apply for land because the land officer is known to to like young and beautiful women and there's a dangerous borderline between flirting and sex so in that culture other husbands and fathers guilty of sexually exploiting the women in their family to get better and faster land and I raised this because within our waltz project at Macorra this is something where we found these kind of situations coming up in our research in Mongolia that things would joke about like this and then it became very hard to know what was really going on and how the women involved felt about it so that's just a snapshot of some of the kind of conceptual issues I guess around sex distortion and land governance thank you thank you so much Elizabeth for sharing your insights and experiences I'm sure your intervention is generated a lot of questions from our attendees I want to remind everyone to please add any questions that come to mind using the question feature within the webinar system once we get to the question session question and under session I would try my best to make sure that all your questions are answered but to keep this going Amani tell us a bit about your understanding of sex distortion as a concept and experiences in Tanzania thank you very much for right it is important to understand that this topic of sex distortion is not not just relating to land but to natural resources are more widely it can also apply the respect to access to grazing land forest resources or minerals from our experience in many areas where we work rubbles and waste materials from the mining sites are discarded and can be a major source of access for minerals especially for the poor small scale and artisanal miners who do not have formal licenses to mine and to operate how those mineral materials are distributed amongst all those who'd like to access them is a key point where sex distortion actually occurs for example we found in the world's research that we did with the mokoro in Tanzania that the rubble distribution is somehow organized by informal male artisanal mining leaders they the scope for the women who have or want access to the minerals to use whatever means they have to ensure favorable access for themselves which for those who are poor and desperate enough especially the widows with children to feed it is not hard to imagine that they they could see offering sex as a way to get special treatment or protection from all the miners trying to get the rubble just to elaborate a little bit more on this aspect of succession around access to minerals in our experience at Hakimadini working amongst the mining communities in Tanzania we've seen it as a known for influential community members acting as brokers or middlemen based on trust or gentlemen's act meaning that one could be given minerals to sell in the city for example Arusha daslam then upon selling payback the requested amount to the small-scale producer if a woman wants to sell the same products under the same arrangement they have to give into sexual demands this because they normally have nothing to offer financially apart from from her body furthermore in some cases young girls or women are used as bait in mineral producing sites thereby the peers or families these has been touched by Liz before in both cases it is assumed normal for a woman to give sexual favors in return of a part of the mineral proceeds thank you so much Ammania I appreciate you connecting the the impact of mining and extractive industries and this relationship to sex tuition and how this is being experienced in Tanzania the prevalence of sex tuition in this industry is very troubling indeed mucha nita what about Zimbabwe can you tell us a bit about what you've seen regarding sex tuition and land government see hello mucha nita hello thank you for I for the question I think as already stated by Mao the term sex tuition was coined by the International Association of Women Judges in an attempt to bring to the fore a form of corruption that is prevalent and old but sadly it is least talked about that of using sex as a form of currency in bribe people in positions of authority and power seek to extort sexual favors in exchange for something that is within their power to grant or withhold ultimately as with any other form of corruption it involves the abuse of power or authority in Zimbabwe as transparency international Zimbabwe we have been working extensively on land governance issues and what has emerged is that women are often coerced to engage in sexual acts with male persons who have authority to to access land land in Zimbabwe is not only a form of property but also is also a form of livelihood that's putting women in a vulnerable position a number of factors like I said before place women in a position of vulnerability when it comes to land ownership in Zimbabwe for example despite the laws given equal access and opportunities to inheritance between men and women we we see that Zimbabwe is a patriarchy society where generally men own lots of the majority of the property and land and also I'm sure is I'm not sure if our attendees and panelists are aware there was a land reform program that has done some time in 2000 and from that land reform program the majority of people benefited women and not women that's women were put in a vulnerable position so as a result of that if women want access to land they're often coerced into exchanging sexual favors to get land a case in point is the video that was played by Farai the case of Chisun Banji where Catherine was forced to exchange her body to have an access to land 0.5 hectares of land for that matter the case in Chisun Banji is the case where TIZ has been working since the past 20 since 2015 it is a story about a community members who lost their land to a private investor known as Green Fuel the investor himself got the land through corrupt related ways it was not transparent how he acquired that land so in an attempt to resolve a dispute between the community members and the person who was given the land you offered 0.5 hectares of land to some of the community members mostly men and we really did not deserve to get the land but because women with the vulnerable people they do not have money and most of them were poor single and unmarried they were forced to exchange sex and return for land and like I said before Zemapo is patriarchal so in instances like this it is the village heads who actually submit names of those are supposed to get land so like Catherine she was forced now to exchange sex with the village head in order to get a piece of land for your family. Thank you Farai. Thank you so much Muchanita I'm seeing parallels I'm seeing similarities in what you have just described and what money shared in terms of natural resource governance see women's access to this and where sex exhaustion comes into play but let's move forward and the second question that I have is what are some of the primary challenges in discussing and in trying to address sex exhaustion? Elizabeth what challenges have experienced in addressing sex exhaustion? Thanks Farai I think that one of the biggest challenges is actually in just gathering the evidence about sex exhaustion what we found very much in our world's research in both Mongolia and Tanzania is that people don't always like to talk directly about these things so whereas everyone can talk quite openly about bribing and paying money to get to the allocated land there's no shame in that if you're in a situation where everyone seems to be paying for prefer in order to get preferential access to land or even if there's just a situation where people are paying for land through purchasing land or land allocation fees but we found that there was still seeming to be a lot of shame or taboo about directly talking about paying with sex or with exchange of sexual favours and whether that was people themselves or people talking about whether they would ask their relatives to do something like that to help the family. On the other hand we found enough people who are willing to talk about the issues at least in private individual interviews and sometimes also in focus group discussions that we feel confident that sex exhaustion is part of the bigger picture of understanding access to land for housing for farming for grazing as well as access to minerals in the communities that we've been working in and what we had to do was to weigh the evidence very carefully so looking at who is telling us these things and how credible do we think they are so is it a trusted and respected community member who's telling us something in private then if yes we would give that a lot of credence even if no one seems to want to talk much about this publicly or openly. Thanks once more Elizabeth. I think it's enlightening to hear that people are so ready to accept the financial corruption and that sex exhaustion is seen as so shameful and something that cannot be discussed. It is heartening to hear that you have nonetheless found people willing to discuss these issues just like Catherine. Amani what are some of the challenges you're experiencing in Tanzania? Thank you Farai. One of the biggest challenges when addressing sex exhaustion is the nature of relationship between the people the parties involved the people involved which sometimes because they they tend to become very close and it becomes more complicated than a relationship a usual relationship between people connected by bribery extortion or corruption as normally discussed because of the nature of the sexual nature of the extortion and the physical closeness or intimacy it could sometimes generate difficulty in addressing it. We have been working for over the years there are small proportion as an example there are small proportion of normally single and married or divorced or widowed women who get licenses to run mining operations just like the men and more especially in gold or gemstones compared to more usually where it is men who get licenses but yes a few women get the licenses however even where the women have sufficient financial power to get their own licenses or engage in mining directly they usually seek a male partner for physical protection and to watch over the operations. In the male if the male partner who manages it is a male partner who manages the mine for her while the woman is involved in other social and economic responsibilities taking care of the kids and all that. In return the male partner assumes you know a role of husband beyond the normal activities and this is perceived by communities as normal. If the woman tries to break away from the husband wife relationship for any reason she may end up losing everything since the property is totally dependent on the influence of the man for its going economic viability and this is a huge challenge in our case. Thank you Amani. I think what you've just shared with us shows that there's a lot at stake especially for single women to enter into business and to have to face extortion and the risk of losing everything without the involvement of a male protector. Marwa you've spoken earlier on what are the challenges that you see in addressing extortion? Well similar to what was said before one of the biggest challenges in addressing extortion is actually recognizing it as a form of corruption. Usually it is framed as sexual harassment, sexual exploitation, sexual violence and abuse but it's really rarely that it's framed as a crime of corruption and that is very problematic for a number of reasons. One, it makes it very difficult to capture and collect information and data on the issue especially because corruption is measured in economic or monetary terms. For example, if we're talking about bribery surveys that ask people about their experiences paying a bribe to have access to a basic good, it is often that these kind of questions don't capture the sexual bribery or the sexual part of extortion. Again, we're talking about bribery in a very monetary sense and in the lack of understanding that actually it can take other forms such as extortion makes it very difficult for us to understand okay what's the depth and the spread of this phenomena and the second reason why it's problematic is that when a crime of extortion is taken down the legal route so it goes to court for example the case of the professor I mentioned earlier on it is often ruled or addressed again as an issue of sexual harassment or sexual violence and we then see discussions about consent of the women who was involved in this crime. We're talking about discussions about why it was instigated, what was she wearing, was she giving hints to the man etc etc and these discussions we don't see when we're talking about bribery. I mean there is, we've already established zero tolerance for bribery so why are we, we need to basically establish the same zero tolerance for extortion and we're not dragged into conversations about is it rape, was it consensual, was she wearing a certain outfit etc. So framing is very important and until this point we haven't established extortion and there isn't enough understanding of the issue as a corruption crime and as a gendered form of corruption and the second challenge we faced in Morocco is actually to encourage women to come forward and speak up. I mean in Morocco we have an advocacy and legal center that provides legal help and support for witnesses or victims of corruption and we did gender training for that center in order to be able to receive these cases. However what we found out is that when dealing with women we have to build trust relationship because of the social, the cultural stigma around even the psychological needs of these women who go through crimes such as such as extortion and so as a next step we are partnering up with women organizations in the country who have already listening centers who have already built trust relationship with these women in order to tackle these and the thing is that they do receive these issues they do come to the centers of women who have experienced extortion but they they don't know that actually what happened to them is a corruption crime and nothing else. Thank you so much Marwa thank thank you for bringing to form the realities around some of the legal hurdles that victims as it were first whether it's rape or blame the victim mentality where they're blamed for what they were wearing and some of the challenges that women face in reporting this form of corruption. Let's hear from Zimbabwe Mucanita what are some of the challenges you are facing in trying to address extortion? Thank you Farai I think as alluded to by Laura in the in a in a brief presentation the biggest challenge borders around the victims of sextortion not wanting to come out or to expose the paper traitors and I think this is due to what she said illegal barriers which do not recognize sextortion as a form of corruption it usually it is usually framed around the issue of sexual harassment a study which was conducted by TIZ in 2017 revealed that although uh revealed that sextortion is the least talked about form of corruption with only 7.7 percent of the respondents who took part in the research acknowledging its existence but like what Marwa said when you do discuss this issues in forecast group discussions that's when you see a lot of women opening up to the issues and acknowledging that it's there and it's happening as TIZ during the study we also noted that the lack of reporting or the willingness to come forward and report and expose sextortion is due to a number of structural disincentives such as the masculine nature of the reporting institutions itself you'll recognize that in Zimbabwe the majority of the police men I'll say men because they are males and even where there is a victim friendly unit which is usually dedicated to issues to assist victims of sexual crimes and gender-based violence the police who are men those stations are male it is still male dominated therefore in for female to come forward and report they feel that there's a sense of shame more so the people minding those units they are not really confident of what sextortion is they'll treat it as a sexual harassment meter another humans is the corruption within the legal system itself a study we did again as Taze they've noted that there's a lot of corruption within the judiciary itself such that a lot of people have lost faith in the judiciary so they think even if they report the issues of sextortion it will not be handled accordingly therefore they've lost trust in the system the cost of legal aid in itself is a prohibiting factor because you see that in Zimbabwe a case once is put to court it is not dealt with right then they come to and put to a conclusion in most instances the victims or the complainants have to attend court frequently the cost of doing that becomes a disintensive to the victim of sextortion I think like in most cases the fear of losing what you would have got poses as a hindrance I'll give an example with Zimbabwe the communal liens like the ones in Chosunbanje do not come with title deeds or a right to ownership but they're given as part of the traditional liens such that if you now report sextortion that you get to engage in sexual acts or favors with the village yet to get a piece of land you actually run the risk of losing that piece of land so again like what Laura said the stigmatization that the victims encounter you know in Zimbabwe when you report cases of sextortion you are labeled a prostitute instead of demeaning the perpetrator you are you are asked what did you do to warrant such to yourself instead of repeating the the perpetrator again the patriarchal nature of society where you know marriage is something that's really valued if you report you stand a chance of the family breaking down your marriage being over as well as the fact that you know anti-corruption activists and gender-based violence activists they are not really coordinated in their efforts to try to fight sextortion such that you know we've got two voices that are parallel although we're trying to fight the same issue we are not coordinated in the way we're doing our things so far those are some of the challenges that you've been experiencing in Zimbabwe as far as trying to keep the issue of sextortionist consent. Many thanks to you much Anita thank you so much for for for for such a term the structural disincentives the muscular nature of reporting institutions and other disincentives. I think I'll quickly just share a term that we came across when you're doing a stade on young people in corruption where students within academic institutions they use linked terms like STDs for sexually transmitted degrees to disguise the sextortion element so thank you much and thanks to our panelists so I'll come on to our final question for the day which is how then can sextortion be tackled what is needed to bring sextortion higher on the agenda of land covenancy and anti-corruption communities and let me first give this floor to Elizabeth. Thanks Farai I think actually step one you can call it is just to get the topic higher on the land and natural resource governance agenda I mean really that's the most important thing and it's what we're hoping to make a start with through today's webinar you know to have an open and wide-ranging debate on how sextortion can be tackled is is like really important and also to learn from experiences of other sectors who could be further ahead addressing some of these issues that are coming up within land governance. I mentioned earlier that what makes people vulnerable to sextortion is particularly if they are poor or they cannot resort to more conventional corruption they don't have money to pay a bribe so they're using their bodies instead so although it won't tackle the broader problem of corruption in land governance one solution is going to be to tackle poverty to make people feel less vulnerable to feeling that they have no choice but to use their bodies although of course we don't want them to bribe with money either so at the same time we need to tackle corruption in land governance more generally and really try to integrate the whole thing look at it together. Then I also think it's important just to add a note that legal change on its own is not necessarily going to be enough so let's say you provide legally for all widows to get land that's not necessarily going to take away the problem of sextortion because at the local level of implementation there's still that vulnerability to local officials for widows to be able to claim their land rights and so really what we need to be trying to get at is having more transparency and more inclusivity and more gender equitable participation in land governance at the community level to try and to raise awareness of sextortion as an issue to try to get to a situation where we're making it locally and culturally unacceptable for vulnerable people to be exploited in this way. Thank you so much Elizabeth I like how you mentioned the term vulnerability where the poor often vulnerable to sextortion so in in addressing this subject today we're trying to raise awareness and to begin a conversation on how to stop this horrible form of corruption Amani what are your thoughts personal experiences hello hello Amani yeah yeah just echoing what Liz already started I think there are there are no discussions at all about sextortion in land or natural resource governance we need to start popularizing this concept to keep it on the top of natural resource policy debates not only leaving it to a discussion around revenues and benefits but also you know the cost that women are exposed to and the dangers that are exposed to a public campaign to break silence on sextortion and to remove social stigma from the affected women could be a very good approach too there is also need for capacity building for authorities who are involved in anti-corruption in our countries because sextortion is never in their strategies and for them to take action they need to recognize and understand what sextortion is and you know the challenges in exposing that these will help help them encountering the the problem thank you Amani thank thank you so much so possibly this webinar can be seen as the beginning of a larger campaign to combat sextortion Marwa would like to hear from you on how to get the subject of sextortion on the land governance agenda thanks for right we need to talk more about it and this webinar is a perfect example of how we bringing different communities together to discuss a common issue sextortion is a problem that is hidden in a plain site we know it exists but we don't talk about it and when we talk when we do talk about it we're not talking about it in the right framing and so we need to make sextortion part of our anti-corruption discourse and response it needs to be part of our studies our surveys and as part of our anti-corruption strategies and steps that we take in different sectors to combat corruption and flight and sextortion more more specifically but until we we do mainstream sextortion as part of corruption we won't be able to combat it the right way and the second important step is to encourage women and men also who experience sextortion to speak out when they are when they are suffering at the hands of those who are in power because silence contributes as previously was discussed there's a number of issues like stigma shame lack of information about rights mistrust of the justice system fear of retaliation or even reporting mechanisms or law enforcement that are masculine in nature and they're not responsive enough or in the proper way to women victims of sextortion so unless we pay attention to the ways in which people see the sexual violence is different from financial ones we won't be able to tackle how those differences contribute to impunity and victims who are reluctant to come forward and perpetrators who excuse their conduct as romantic or you know kind of a socially acceptable in a patriarchal setting and so I mean to sum it up we need to make sextortion a conscious part of our anti-corruption effort and this awareness needs to be reflected in our policies and our strategies and our outreach and I think there's more room for building bridges between different communities between women's rights activists between for example land governance between anti-corruption activists human rights activists because I mean the issue in essence is the same but it can be tackled from different communities in different ways and as I said again and I want to stress on this fact that we do need to recognize sextortion as a gendered form of corruption. Thank you so much Mara for your insights on the many challenges from recognizing sextortion as a form of corruption and recognizing power relationships involved in overcoming the shem of it and more importantly in creating policies to combat sextortion. I think people would ask if the United Nations Convention against corruption makes an attempt to to recognize sextortion. So allow me to invite Muchaneta what would you say should be part of the strategies in bringing sextortion on the land, covenant, and higher agenda. Thank you Farai. I think the same way that human rights activists have joined hands with anti-corruption activists and try and are now labeling corruption as a human rights violation I think it is also imperative that is anti-corruption activists and women's rights activists join hands and fight corruption or try to bring it to the fore on a higher scale because like I said we usually we're trying to address the same thing but we're running parallel lines. I think there is great there's much to be achieved if we join hands with the women's rights activists to address uh sextortion not only to bring it to the fore but also to advocate for it to best stand alone criminal offence because from what I've been hearing from other panelists in most countries it is not recognized as a form of a crime on its own it is usually housed under gender-based violence or sexual harassment which processes a threat when it comes to evidence now saying it's sexual harassment the evidence are needed or the elements of the crime they're quite different from what sextortion would entail furthermore I think there's also need to strengthen our policy makers like Amani said you know they can only advocate for something that they are aware of so we need to create researchers that bring to the fore the impact of sextortion on on women then train or capacitate our policy makers on how to address and come up with policies that address this form of corruption as TIZ we have already started initiatives around this idea we were now training the parliamentary portfolio committee on women and other legislators on gender corruption so we're hoping that as we continue training for continuing training them the issue of sextortion will be advocated at a higher level and policies will be put in place most importantly I think there is need to name and shame the perpetrators of sextortion so as TIZ again we've come up with the training program we were targeting investigative journalists because we know it's not easy for the women themselves to come out and expose these things so we've partnered with the media hoping that they'll they'll encourage women to report by exposing and shaming the perpetrators of sextortion we have also noted that women fall victim of sextortion not only because they are poor but also they leak information on their land rights and those in authority and power they take advantage of this information asymmetry and coerce women into having sexual favors in exchange for something that the women are legally entitled to or they should be provided at no cost so in this regard what we have done is Transparency International Zimbabwe we are conducting community outreaches where we target specifically women and we teach them their land rights and thereafter we conduct more by legal aid clinics through our ELEP offices where now they can report such cases so I think a lot can be done in addressing sextortion it's only matter of collaborative efforts and strengthening the capacity of those who can advocate for a change in law thank you Farai thank you so much much Anata and many thanks to all our panelists for your very insightful responses to these questions clearly I think what's or the picture out there or the picture that you've painted for us is that sextortion is a very serious problem in the land governance sector I can see that there are several points imaging from this conversation first is the issue of the acknowledgement and recognition of sextortion as a form of corruption and not to interrelated or to mix it with gender-based violence or sexual offences second is the recognition should be made official in legislation this makes sextortion a crime just like what Muchanita was saying earlier on third in order to tackle sextortion we need to build the capacity of stakeholders like parliamentarians caucuses of parliament and other civil civil society actors and communities as well and finally I think there's an agent need to raise awareness of sextortion is a problem and this webinar is just a beginning I like my submission that we need to bring on board a land activist gender activist and anti-corruption activist so that we target them and work with them so I'd like to ask participants attending this webinar if you'll be willing to support any instant declaration in support of these four points if so please express your support in in supporting the chat we can use this to help build momentum for the issue before we move on to the question and answer session allow me to ask a round of question to our panelists so the first question I will throw it to to to Elisabeth it's a question coming forward on is it necessary and is it relevant to to to relate uh sextortion and sexual exploitation is it relevant if if yes how is there a distinction between the two um yeah thanks Farai um yeah I mean I raised that a bit earlier in in single the points I was making I think um we've defined sextortion as being an abuse of power by authorities um that relates to sex or sexual favors instead of money or financial um financial favors I guess you could call them and I tried to make a subtle distinction between when those authorities are the land administrators or the land officials who are having some kind of expectations perhaps about what's needed to speed up the process of being allocated land or just simply what's needed in order to gain access to land compared with the situation of family members so perhaps husbands or fathers or other male family members who would then understanding that that was the position of the land administrators and authorities might then try to um somehow persuade or coerce their female relatives in order to to go along with this now if they have that amount of influence then you could argue anyway that that is also an abusive authority within the family but I think that I just tried to make that distinction because I think there's subtly different types of authorities so one is um one is family members where relationships are very closely entwined and very complex and the other is where you actually have government officials or administrators who are abusing their formal authority in that sense so it's maybe two sides of the same coin and and maybe we don't need to distinguish about it um through using different terms but I think we need to understand that there are subtly different relationships at play and different pressures on the victims if you like you know the ones who are ending up having to use their body in ways that they may not be choosing really to do or may not be comfortable with. Thanks Elizabeth thanks Mara you mentioned earlier on about bringing in activists from the land governance sector gender and anti-corruption so my question to you is uh what should what should take first precedence should you deal with sextuation first or we address the inequalities in terms of access to land uh as a means to to to fighting sextuation we need to start acknowledging that in the first place is the root of the problem or what do you think should be done what are some of the first steps well I think um well I think the fact that there when we're talking about gender inequality or not actually gender inequality but inequality in the sense of not being able to have same access to basic services and that can actually be gender blind so let's hypothetically talk about um access to water and those who are able to pay a bribe in order to have a good service that they can those who can then that they are further marginalized and and and hurt by this corrupt act and similarly like sextortion I mean hello Mara yes sorry so yes so having access to I would like actually to address this question from a different point of view is that sextortion does um exacerbate the inequality and of course um when you we have vulnerable women then it makes a sextortion uh flourish so when we're talking about access to land um having inequality in terms of um that women are not allowed or cannot have access to land unless they give sexual favors to the head of the village or the person responsible from the authorities about land distribution that makes them of course more vulnerable to it but the the the main the main important aspect is that it makes it worse sextortion makes inequality worse thanks Mara thanks thanks so much much Anita I wanted to to to invite you over you you spoke about targeting parliament portfolio committees like the parliament portfolio committee on women affairs how we have been they responding to this and you've made an attempt to work with the under corruption commission on this issue and the land commission thank you Farai so the parliamentary portfolio in women they've been receptive and um I think uh in the next coming weeks we'll be taking them on a tour to Chisun Banje for them to have an experience of what the women go through themselves we have also engaged the Zimbabwe anti-national corruption commission with the hope of having a national anti-corruption strategy which will take into account the gender forms of corruption um unfortunately it has come to a halt first for in the meantime but it's something that we are working on and hopefully it will produce results because with the we're hoping that with the national anti-corruption strategy it will encompass all forms of gendered corruption including sextortion and create policies that are in line with keeping that form of corruption okay thanks mucha thank you so much uh I want to to throw a question to Amani one of our attendees says and I'll read zero tolerance does not fit for Africa where lands are controlled by families none can fight against customs directly and I think the situation can be that of education so the question is how do we teach young generation like boys to consider the land rights of females that's the question to you Amani yeah thank you thank you very much I think with with our culture we need to start educating our kids early enough not to rebel against the culture but to accept the good things and to do away with the with the you know with the abbey I would say um and I think the traditional education system at the moment which is focusing more on knowledge rather than the values is letting us down so I think from the African context it's really important to emphasize on on the values value system and this is key because knowledge only creates you know well school people but not cultured in that sense but I also I think we need to also to work with the traditional system in most of our countries Tanzania included we have the traditional leaders who are custodians of our culture our traditions which you know you know which are in in in some extent you know entrenching this extortion and abuse of women so we need to educate them also because it is through them that we can change the most difficult patriarchal nature of our our value system thank you so much thanks Amani Elizabeth quite interesting that I think we are having a lot of questions around our males also experiencing extortion one of the questions from our attendees is that it seems as if the webinar only talks is focused on women alone is there gender aspect if is there any metadata or impediments on extortion affecting men as well um yeah I guess we should apologize for that as panelists if we're giving the impression that this is a an issue that is only for women I mean I think the you know majority of cases probably the victims of extortion would be women but by all means it's not only women and in fact we tried to get at it a little bit earlier when we're talking about vulnerability and vulnerable people um so what you would find it's not all women that would be victims of extortion it will be more vulnerable women so we mentioned widows earlier sometimes female headed female household heads but then the same will apply with men there are always men in any community who are more vulnerable than other men it could be disabled people it could be a gay man a man who for whatever reason did not get married or did not produce children um so you know there are there are poor men as well there are there are many many vulnerable people um and not just men and women so it's I think it's very important to keep that I mean in terms of data and statistics on this I think that um we've kind of touched on this a little bit earlier that one of the problems we have is in actually gathering data about it um you know when corruption surveys are done extortion at the moment is not really something that's addressed within that and even on a qualitative level when you're involved in field work at community level it's very hard to um address uh you know to address some of those issues so I don't um I think there's work to be done there on trying to um come up with ways in which we can really try to figure out the best way to find out you know the extent that this is going on and to reach out to people to share about their experiences and trying to see how to create the kind of safe spaces where all vulnerable people would be open and willing to try to address these issues to raise awareness about it in order to try as I said earlier that we're trying to make this culturally unacceptable that this form of exploitation would continue. Thanks Elizabeth so I have a question from Daniel Mesh. I asked the question where can I read more on the nature and extent of of the issue so before I throw this to tomorrow I think I will refer you to the TI website Transparenza National website under the land section where there's a working paper on corruption in the land sector there's another recent publication on women, land, and corruption resources for practitioners and policymakers then there's also this practical guide on gender responsive work on land and corruption. Perhaps Elizabeth you can also share some of the sources where some of our attendees can get insights on the nature and extent of the issue. Elizabeth? Yeah hi for I um I think that your uh the sources you've mentioned actually that's a really good place to start. Certainly the TI report is very you know it's really brought a lot of the issues up to the fore. We've also just recently in Macquarie with our waltz project we've now published our country reports from our research on Mongolia and Tanzania and if you read if you read those as well you'll also find some examples of things in there but I think as a general guide to the the issues maybe more conceptually I would definitely recommend to take a look at that TI report. Thanks Maro you want to come in I know you did a blog on that you want to share some of the sources? Yeah so TI is definitely there is some resources on association and also the links between corruption and gender in general and I would also recommend there's an excellent toolkit prepared by IAWJ who again named the named the sixth coin the name sextortion and it addresses the definition very clearly the gives different examples from countries about sextortion and also goes into the legal aspects of the problem and what can be done legally to combat the issue. So I would definitely recommend that is I think it's called the toolkit on sextortion and you can find it on the IAWJ website. Thanks Maro thanks like like I said earlier on to our attendees if you go to the TI website there's a very recent publication on gender responsive work on land and corruption it profiles what TI has been doing under the land and corruption project. There is this interesting question and I'll read it to our attend panelist. Actually this topic is very new to me I came to learn of feet of the today here in Myanmar all land water and resources are owned by state and most lands were owned by state and it was managed by government even in the smallest unit of governance the village lands were under management by state that is the central government and even in in one of the families the owner is men all of this dealing with land is only with men and village authority it's not a question I think the the the the attend is just sharing. We have Nasei Kisambu who says a high interesting discussion and congratulations to our panelist. My question is directed to Elisabeth Daley I think he or she is still typing the question. There's another question we're from Annetti which says what are sexually transmitted degrees? Sexually transmitted degrees it's a slang term which is being used in in institutions of islanding in Zimbabwe where a female student nominally gets a passing mark from a male lecturer through consenting to sex with the male lecturer so other students will then term that degree sexually transmitted degree. So we have another question here from our attendees the question is do you have any research that covers land and corruption or it is mostly based in Africa? I will throw it over to to to Muchaneta and also to to Amani. Do you have any research that covers land and corruption or most of it is based on Africa? Hello Muchaneta. Yes thank you for I think you highlighted the research that is available. TI Zimbabwe, Zambia and a few other chapters have been working on land issues in the guide and reports are available on the TI website. Okay Amani do you have any studies from that from that end? Hello Amani. Hello yeah we we we don't have we don't have a lot of a lot of studies on land and corruption but this is a work in progress. We have a Tasmania land alliance which is working on on this bit on this bit of research. Okay okay okay there is this question and I will invite Marwa again so if the legislation the executive and the judicial institutions do fail to acknowledge in the address extortion what can be done at all? Thanks Farai. What can be done is trying first of all to to recognize again extortion as part of corruption in legal terms meaning that if you look at the anti-corruption legislations in place the anti-bribery legislations for example it is often if it's not explicitly referring to money it can refer to it can refer to I'm using some phrase some words that we've seen like other other advantages so that the public official for example is is not allowed to take money or bribes or other advantages. The problem here is that when it's not explicitly recognized as a form of bribery when we take these cases to court like as I mentioned in the case of the University of Tatwan we had discussed with the judges that it didn't occur to them that other advantages could include sexual favors and because there was in court there was no legal precedence again it was not it was immediately tackled as a as a sexual harassment issue and not as a corruption issue. So there's a lot of reform to be done on the legislative side especially in the anti-corruption legislations and policies and I think there's also on the on the policy side of things there's a lot of mainstreaming work to be done so for example on programs development programs or any government initiatives that deal with women empowerment or the economic development of women or purely corruption initiatives or the national strategies of the country these can can include be reformed to include and recognize extortion as a form of bribery and also to also consider that extortion is an obstacle to the economic and social development of these women and therefore it needs to be taken and boards with with these initiatives. So definitely then to summarize reform and anti-corruption legislations and also to make extortion as part of the government policies that are getting women in the country. Maybe just to add on to that Farah I think there's also need to recognize that everyone has a part in the role to play in exposing and advocating for extortion as part of a crime in enhancing the policy reforms that you are talking about. I think the attendee asked a question what can be done if the law itself does not recognize extortion as a crime so I think we all have a role to play advocate policy talk about it more often expose it name it and shame it like I said before strengthen the capacity of those who are in a position to lobby for law reform and then I think everyone then has a role to play and it can be done. Okay thanks much and it's so I think finally Naseko did throw the question so the question is addressed to to Elizabeth so Naseko is saying I agree with you Elizabeth all that extortion is more related to sexual harassment and gender-based violence section 25 of the prevention and combating of corruption act in Tanzania recognize extortion as a form of bribe and a criminal offense so given their context on land covenants and administration in Tanzania and specifically the management of the village land which is said to be 70 percent of all land in Tanzania and in consideration of the reported corruption incidences in local government do you find this form of corruption within the Tanzanian context Elizabeth? Yeah thanks Naseko for the question. I think the issue well there's two issues actually one I think is that there would be a lack of awareness of the law on this particular point and I'm sure that that's one of the things that could be a helpful part of the solution in Tanzania is actually raising awareness that extortion is legally considered as form of bribe and criminal offense but I think the second issue and maybe the bigger issue that we also we talked about earlier is how to get people to talk about these things that the stigma around it and when you're trying to do research on the subjects people don't always want to talk about it so I mean the short answer is yes that I think that that is there and that we have found that extortion is an issue and certainly you know recently in our waltz research but I've been involved in a lot of research on land issues in Tanzania going back many many years Naseko knows some of it you know we've been working on together and one of the issues is getting people's trust in order to talk about what are difficult and complex things that they don't necessarily want to tell you straight away when you first go in and and meet them or want to start interviewing them so some of these issues emerge as relationships develop after you can build trust with people sometimes in life history interviews for example rather than in surveys but some people do talk about it and I mentioned earlier about looking at whether influential people in the community are prepared to talk about these issues in private and I think if you have influential people who know what's going on and who can say look honestly you know this is happening that women are are using sex to get land then you would give out a lot of credence and that is something that we found in our recent research okay thanks Elizabeth so there's an interesting comment from Elien Wakesho Elien says that I think it's more important to make it clear that women are not vulnerable rather they approach it to positions of vulnerability to keen to hear any efforts around protecting women and creating self-spaces for them to speak up and seek redress without fear of victimization and I think Marua spoke spoke it lined up around that and I think Marua you can you can come in again and try to answer Elien Marua in Amman so I'll pass it first to to Marua then I'll come to Amman thanks for I I think it's a very important point indeed what we don't want to we don't want to frame women here as as solely victims that like agency or you know that exhaustion only happens to vulnerable women I mean if we follow for example the Mito movement in the U.S. or the scandals of what's his name Weinstein I think or Weinstein where again these are women who are have a huge influence their celebrities their actresses with with social status with money and with a lot of influence yet again they are exposed to extortion and if you want to get a certain role then not to give sexual favors to so and so and that example is to I mean it's it's well it's remote from our discussion from land and governance issues but it again shows that it could happen to the best of us it could happen to highly educated women it could happen to iron power and all it takes is just a person who has an authority higher than you and to abuse that power and to extort a sexual phase from you in exchange for something else and so in in Morocco and to talk about how we try to address this issue without further victimizing women who are already victims of extortion what we did is we try to I mean we got a gender expert on on the project from the very start and to make sure that all of our activities including outreach activities raising awareness, seminars, including the the ALUX try to make it very gender sensitive to the point that way we are not portraying an image of victims or to try to again to frame extortion as an issue that only happens to women that coming from disadvantaged backgrounds and also to try not to retraumatize women when they decide that they want to speak up about an issue not to retraumatize them in the process when they decide to come forward and that requires again a great deal of gender training and having or exhibiting a lot of sensitivity towards how you receive cases and and try to engage with them without causing unintentionally further damage to the victim of the crime and there is always of course there needs to be safety there's needs to be confidentiality these are the very two basic conditions of our work at these ALUX centers and and as part of that women should always have the right to decide when they report on extortion whether they want to go ahead and and pursue the matters legally for example so i've heard stories about women deciding to come forward and then after that they've retracted their complaints because of social pressure because of psychological pressure maybe because they are under threat whatever the reason is then we always need to respect the course of action that this person decides to take whether again to push the the issue into into the court or to have the issue being used in research or for awareness raising or even to decide to you know join a public campaign and speak up on the issue which some did like the girl who decided to speak up against her professor she decided not to take quiet and she went on social media and she used facebook to say this is what was done and she recorded it and of course there was a certain you can expose yourself to certain social blackness but for us as as STI or as in this project specifically we gave a lot of agency to to these women to decide how they want to go forward and what kind of help they need. Thanks Marwa Amani how have you been dealing with communities especially women in trying to protect them from victimization and encourage them to to come forward and report? I think it's very interesting that even the most powerful and well educated women could be exposed to extortion and even given to extortion. I think it's important to develop support systems and spaces where women individual women can discuss about this kind of exploitation and corruption because even in situation where well exposed and educated woman finds herself resisting against the entire community pushing or even family pushing her towards giving in because they see it as a normality and this is a challenge there's a lot of pressure around individuals and it's only collective effort awareness and confidence build that it can be addressed so I think it's important to build support systems because it's not about individual it's about changing the entire value system. Thanks, thanks there is a comment from Patricia it's not a question really Patricia is saying she does agree that women due to gender inequalities are forced into a vulnerable situation with regard to access to land and control and ownership of the letter so there's need to address that as a means to an end. So thank you so much many thanks to to our panelist many thanks to Elisabeth Muchaneta, Marwa and Amani. I think from this webinar discussion I think there is convegency amongst our panelist that sex torsion is the abuse of power in Amani involving the use of sex and sexual benefits as the currency of that corruption transaction and I think from the webinar discussion our panelist also conveyed that women are forced into a situation of vulnerability because they do not have control and access of a land they do not have control and access of a capital so therefore then to use sex Elisabeth brought interesting insights into the distinction between sexploitation and sex torsion as it were. More importantly I like the submission that Elisabeth just shared on one point about the need to get men on board there is need to work with men as a constituent in trying to address sex torsion. I think this webinar discussion brought to four one the issue that sex torsion is not legally recognized in law and one of the challenges which makes it diff which makes conventions to diff to deal with it is that once you go into the port of the time it is treated as something of a sexual harassment or anything of that nature and not specifically as a form of corruption. Then I think from Muchaneta there is need for communities to come together the community on gender the community on land rights the community on anti-corruption there's need to bring all these communities together. More importantly I think from this webinar discussion panelists shared with us that one of the challenges in trying to address sex torsion is the privacy of the issue sexes it way which I think there is need then to protect victims of sex torsion as as explained by our esteemed panelists. So we're coming to the end of this this webinar discussion and like I said TI wants to come up with a campaign so the campaign is centered around one sex torsion must be acknowledged as a form of corruption the second thing is the recognition that should be made in official legislation that makes sex torsion a crime. Third in order to track and to tackle sex torsion we need to build the capacity of stakeholders who work on that. Again I'll recap on the three important points so the first one is acknowledging sex torsion as a form of corruption and not to treat it as a form of sexual harassment in as much as it is but within the context of corruption sex torsion is a form of corruption just like bribery. Secondly this recognition should be made official in legislation it should be so explicit in official legislation that this is a form of corruption that needs to be dealt with. More importantly there is need then to build the capacity of stakeholders to do so. So among some of the stakeholders I think Elizabeth shared with us that we need to consider men they're part of the constituency whom we need to target. There is also need to target arms of government like the anti-corruption commissions the land commission the human rights commission and the gender commission. More importantly there is also need to build the capacity of policy makers so that they design gender-sensitive anti-corruption policies like the parliament portfolio committee on minds or committee on lends and committee on women affairs. So attendees this is the discussion that we've been having on sex torsion. I know that TI will continue with this conversation using its social media portals like Twitter I know Mukoro and other land portal I think they also try to to keep the discussion ongoing. This is the end of today's webinar discussion on sex torsion. So before I close it off I'll round it out to our panelists. I'll start with Elizabeth what are your last comments Elizabeth that you can share with some of our attendees. Thanks for I think that was a great summary of the discussion that we've had and I'm just so pleased that we've managed to have this webinar today and that people have been interested to come together and start looking at the issues in a kind of integrated way as you know we said with different communities. I think I just want to emphasize that point about you know we've talked a lot about women but it is about gender it's about vulnerable people and actually if you look at who the authorities are when it comes to land governance so you know majority of land administrators and officials in most countries are are men so we also need to keep men on board we need to do that by talking about the gender dynamics around this extortion issue and not just make it about women and men so I think I would just like to finish on on that point. Thank you very much for for inviting us to to be here to be as panelists and and for facilitating that for I So thanks Elizabeth thanks for stressing the needs for including men on that and I'm happy that my brother Amani is here he's a man and is taking passion interest in this subject Amani what are your closing remarks? Thank you Farai. I think this is a very important discussion at this point it's just the beginning but I think we need to build a stronger movement around this issue because we've seen it is it's cutting across different sectors it's not only in land even beyond land and yeah you actually even mentioned about sexually transmitted degrees which is similar we have a similar term here in Tanzania in Swahili so I think it's it's important for us to organize and to raise the voices and to link national and international efforts just to bring more visibility to this. Great work and thank you very much Tia and Moko. Thanks so much Amani thanks so much let me bring it closer home Mochanita any last last last comments before I give it to tomorrow? Thank you Farai it has been a trillion insightful webinar my last thoughts will be everyone has a role to play in fighting extortion and bringing to the fore the negative consequences of this form of corruption there is need to strengthen collaborative efforts because I've had many panelists saying they're doing great a work around that area maybe there's also need for regional focus in international focus as well we will put collaborative efforts in trying to to aim extortion thank you. Thanks Mochan Marwa are from from North Africa and personal experiences in Morocco you shared quite insightful issues any last comments. Thank you Farai very much for facilitating the discussion and I'm really very happy that we're having this conversation and I think this is now we're seeing more and more and more conversations about extortion and my hope is that just like corruption has become unaccepted around the world and bribery is being criminalized around the world which wasn't the issue decades ago it was seen as the normal way of doing business I do hope that extortion will be very soon treated the same way as that there's zero tolerance towards extortion and regarding I mean and not going into the gray zones of framing you know framing it as sexual harassment or sexual abuse and going into the discussions of these power dynamics I do hope also that we see that reflected in these conversations to be reflected in international conventions indeed like the the uncorrected agreement that there is a recognition of extortion is a form of corruption this is these are very important conversations and they make us more aware about these kinds of crimes and raises more awareness about the issue and I hope it does encourage people to especially victims of extortion to recognize it also is such and to be able to come forward and use existing reporting mechanisms for to to end the impunity of these perpetrators thank you so much thank you so much and many thanks to our attendees many thanks to Patricia many thanks to