Through the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) African Heads of State and Government have made a commitment to human rights and accountability in Africa. We are calling on African leaders to honour these commitments and end their long silence on human rights violations in Zimbabwe.

Today in Zimbabwe, hundreds of thousands of people are internally displaced and destitute, not because of a war, an earthquake or a tsunami, but because their own government has forcibly evicted them, demolished their homes, and destroyed their property and their livelihoods. These acts, totally unjustifiable under international law, have been widely condemned. However, African States have remained conspicuously silent and have not demonstrated the political will to respond to the human rights crisis in Zimbabwe.

The Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), Kofi Annan, has described Zimbabwe’s mass evictions as “a catastrophic injustice...carried out with disquieting indifference to human suffering”.

UN Special Envoy on Human Settlement Issues, Anna Tibaijuka, has reported that the government’s Operation Murambatsvina directly affected 700,000 people, indirectly affected at least a further 2 million people and “has precipitated a humanitarian crisis of immense proportions.”

Human rights are being further violated in the context of the humanitarian crisis. There is considerable evidence that the Government of Zimbabwe is unable or unwilling to ensure that those affected have access, at the very least, to minimum essential levels of food, water, shelter and medical care. It is denying victims the humanitarian help they so desperately need:

• Thousands of people, including children, the ill and the elderly, are facing the rainy season with little or no shelter. The government is not providing basic shelter for those in need, and it is blocking the UN and churches from doing so; police have forced destitute people from churches at night.
• More than four million people need food aid, but the government is limiting food aid distribution, having also blocked a UN appeal for humanitarian aid and forced tens of thousands to return to rural areas where food security is already low.
• Tens of thousands need clean water and sanitation, but the government is restricting the work of aid agencies that are trying to assist.
• Despite the already grave humanitarian and internal displacement crisis the government has continued to evict people; some families have been forcibly evicted and moved several times in the past few months.

• Publicly express concern about the deteriorating human rights situation in Zimbabwe, including the human rights violations that have been a direct consequence of Operation Murambatsvina;
• Publicly encourage and offer support to the Government of Zimbabwe to implement the recommendations contained in the reports of the ACHPR and the UN Special Envoy on Human Settlement Issues, as a matter of urgency;
• Place the human rights and humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe on the agenda of the AU January 2006 Assembly of Heads of State and Government;
• Condemn the refusal of the Government of Zimbabwe to cooperate with the Special Envoy of the African Union Commission when he visited Zimbabwe in July 2005 and insist that he be allowed to return to Zimbabwe, fulfil his mandate and report to the AU on the situation of internally displaced people in Zimbabwe;
• Call for the immediate lifting of all unnecessary restrictions on the provision of humanitarian assistance, including restrictions on the provision of temporary shelter.
• Call for the provision of effective remedies for the victims of the mass evictions and demolitions and all other human rights violations, including access to justice, reparations, guarantees of non-repetition, compensation and restitution where possible;
• Call for an end to impunity for perpetrators of human rights violations in Zimbabwe and for those responsible to be brought to justice;
• Pledge to seek alternatives to forced eviction in their own jurisdiction.

• Give full support to the UN initiatives aimed at addressing the human rights and humanitarian situation in Zimbabwe and to put pressure on the government to allow independent human rights monitoring in Zimbabwe, including UN Special Rapporteurs.
  
• In particular, we call on African members of the UN Security Council (Algeria, Benin and Tanzania) and those States that will become members in January 2006 (Ghana and Republic of the Congo) to allow the Security Council to be regularly informed on the situation in Zimbabwe, including the situation in respect of the UN’s humanitarian access to displaced and vulnerable people.