...Internal to the organization, challenges face CEDEP as well. One of these is the inclusion of women who have same-sex relationships in its activities, a group that it has not currently reached. Monica Mbaru, the Africa regional coordinator for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, one of CEDEP's key partners, indicates that lesbian women in Malawi may face issues specific to women - like so-called "corrective rape" - that are not yet being addressed. "Although we cannot yet ascertain the scale of the problem," says Mbaru, "we know from some lesbian women in Malawi that they are subjected to corrective rape or other violence within their families. Their families believe that they have simply not found a proper man to induct them into having sex, so they start making advances, and these women close up and end up dying in their own spaces..."

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