22/7/2005
Zimbabwe’s Evictions Carried Out With ‘Indifference To Human Suffering,’

A top UN official said this week that the Government of Zimbabwe should stop the demolition of homes and markets, pay reparations to those who have lost housing and livelihoods and punish those who evicted some 700,000 people from their homes with indifference to human suffering.

Anna Tibaijuka, Executive Director of UN-HABITAT, has been studying the effects of Mr Mugabe's on-going so-called slum clearance programme, conducting an exhaustive examination, with the co-operation of the Zimbabwean Government

Her report is uncompromising and damns the Zimbabwe government for its actions. Operation Restore Order breached both national and international human rights law provisions guiding evictions, thereby precipitating a humanitarian crisis,” she wrote.

Ms. Tibaijuka says the operations were based on colonial-era Rhodesian law where such policy had been a tool of segregation and social exclusion. She calls on the Government of President Mugabe's Government to bring national laws into line with the realities of the country’s poor and with international law.

The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan called the report “profoundly distressing”, saying the evictions had done “a catastrophic injustice to as many as 700,000 of Zimbabwe’s poorest citizens, through indiscriminate actions, carried out with disquieting indifference to human suffering.” The Zimbabwe Government should immediately meet its human rights responsibilities, particularly with regard to the situation of those people who have already been displaced, said in a statement issued through the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights.

Mr Annan called on the Government to stop the operation and to make sure that “those who orchestrated this ill-advised policy were held fully accountable for their actions.”

According to UN sources millions in the country are experiencing food insecurity, 70 per cent of the 13 million population are unemployed and 1 million children are AIDS orphans. This has led to the world's fastest rise in child mortality – 22 per cent.

Against this background no alternative plans had been made for those being removed from their homes, leading to a human tragedy.

“The humanitarian consequences of Operation Restore Order are enormous,” Ms Tibaijuka says. “It will take several years before the people and society as a whole can recover.”

At the same time, the evictions have wrecked the informal sector and will be detrimental at a time that the economy as a whole is in serious difficulties, she says. “Apart from drastically increasing unemployment, the Operation will have a knock-on effect on the formal economy, including agriculture” she says.

The operation, “while purporting to target illegal dwellings and structures and to clamp down on alleged illicit activities” was carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, she says in the report.

“ Operation Garikai [he rebuilding operation planned by the Government] is based on the scenario that Government will provide stands (plots of land) upon which those rendered homeless will build their new homes,” she says. The plan assumes, however, that the local authorities will be able to provide the access roads, highway infrastructure and basic services to
enable displaced people to build new homes in compliance with the law.

She called for the implementation of her agency’s Habitat Agenda, which makes a clarion call to the international community to address the environmental sustainability of urban centres, including such needs as improving water and sanitation and upgrading slums.

Meanwhile, the Government of Zimbabwe must allow the international and humanitarian community unhindered access to assist those that have been affected, she says. Priority needs include shelter and non-food items, food and health support services.