Zimbabwean NGOs call on AU rights body for humanitarian aid

By Violet Gonda
23 November 2005

Zimbabwean NGOs have appealed to the African Union's human rights body to help the victims of “Operation Murambatsvina”. The United Nations described the so called clean up exercise as a disastrous venture which left more than 700 000 people homeless.

The AU's African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) is in session in Gambia until next week, and the Human Rights Forum (HRF), a coalition of 17 Zimbabwean NGOs, is there to appeal for assistance.

An ACHPR special envoy, who was sent to investigate the impact of the operation, was this year forced to leave the country without even starting his work after the regime described his visit as unprocedural.

Eileen Sawyer, director of HRF, said " We are asking the organisation to champion the cause of those affected by Operation Murambatsvina - it is a humanitarian disaster."
HRF has also released an audit of ACHPR's recommendations, made in 2002 after a fact-finding mission in the wake of elections, which found evidence of human rights violations, and that the government could not wash its hands of responsibility for all the incidents.
The rights groups laments the lack of follow-up from the mother body as the AU still has not commented on the report, which was finally adopted last year.

"We wanted to point out that there has been no improvement in the situation since then [2002]. While physical violence has dropped, there has been an increase in intra-party violence in both the ZANU-PF and the MDC as a result of faction fighting ahead of the senate elections," explained Sawyer.

She said recent amendments to the constitution had made "life increasingly difficult for ordinary people. They effectively abolish freehold property titles; remove the landowner's right to appeal expropriation; usurp the authority of the courts, and restrict the movement of Zimbabweans.”

"As the Zimbabwean crisis extends into another year, the absence of national dialogue remains a deeply disturbing feature of the political landscape ... It appears highly unlikely that internal opposition forces will, in the near future, be able to build sufficient pressure to force ZANU-PF into a political compromise," the HRF report observed.

According to HRF, the rapidly declining economy was unlikely to make the government "more pliant", and could perhaps lead to a "more authoritarian state reaction.”