"UN report damns Mugabe slum clearance as catastrophic" by UN News / BBC News / The Guardian / UNICEF 11:35am 23rd Jul, 2005   Porta Farm, Zimbabwe, 27 July 2005    "Forced evictions and demolitions continue despite UN condemnation", by James Elder. (UNICEF)    Twenty-four hours after UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s Special Envoy on human settlements, Anna Tibaijuka, called for an immediate end to demolitions and evictions in Zimbabwe, thousands of people at Porta Farm – a settlement 20 km from the capital, Harare – watched helplessly as bulldozers destroyed their homes, for the second time in a month.    Porta Farm first felt the full force of Operation ‘Drive Out Trash’ – a campaign which the Zimbabwe government says is supposed to “clean up cities and to fight the black market” – during Ms. Tibaijuka’s fact-finding visit three weeks ago.    Ernest Marume (not his real name) was living at Porta Farm a month ago when bulldozers destroyed thousands of homes, including his. Around 4,000 people are thought to have been forced to flee – either to their rural homes, or to a government transit camp, Caledonia Farm.    Sixty-four year-old Marume, his wife and their five grandchildren spent three weeks in Caledonia Farm, before it was abruptly closed. He then brought his family back to the ruins of Porta Farm where he started to rebuild. Forty-eight hours later the bulldozers returned.    “What am I now supposed to do?” asks Marume. “I have five grandchildren to care for [Marume’s daughter died in 1998], and men half my age can’t get work. I am desperate...do something for me.”    In response to the pleas from Marume and tens of thousands like him across Zimbabwe, UNICEF is providing blankets and plastic sheeting as protection from the cold of Zimbabwe’s winter. The organization is also distributing 90,000 litres of water each day, providing sanitation facilities, and supporting chronically ill people with home based care supplies.    But as UNICEF’s Representative in Zimbabwe, Dr. Festo Kavishe, points out, demand continues to outstrip supply. “We have been working around the clock for the better part of two months and are improving the situation for tens of thousands, but such is the gravity of the situation that we are asking the international community to support the people of Zimbabwe.”    Nonetheless, UNICEF continues to step up its operations throughout the country. The organization is now helping organize additional mobile medical clinics and planning the further distribution of blankets and shelter materials for children and their families.    The forced evictions of hundreds of thousands – including 220,000 children – have exacerbated the already dire situation in Zimbabwe. The country, which has the world’s fourth-highest rate of HIV prevalence, is also grappling with fuel shortages, a growing food emergency, declining economic performance and the sharpest rises in child mortality in the world.    So what’s next for Ernest Marume? “I have adapted so many times in the past years, but this time I am at a loss. I have no home, no job, and five children to feed and school. You tell me, what would you do?”    22 July 2005    Zimbabwe’s evictions carried out with ‘indifference to human suffering,’ UN envoy says. (UN News)    A United Nations report released today calls on the Government of Zimbabwe to stop the demolition of homes and markets, pay reparations to those who have lost housing and livelihoods and punish those who, “with indifference to human suffering,” carried out the evictions of some 700,000 people.    “The Government of Zimbabwe should set a good example and adhere to the rule of law before it can credibly ask its citizens to do the same. Operation Restore Order breached both national and international human rights law provisions guiding evictions, thereby precipitating a humanitarian crisis,” UN-HABITAT Executive Director Anna Tibaijuka says in her report to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.    Mr. 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.”    He called on the Government to stop the operation and to make sure that “those who orchestrated this ill-advised policy are held fully accountable for their actions.”    After a two-week fact-finding visit to the southern African country, Ms. Tibaijuka says Operation Restore Order, or Operation Murambatsvina, was based on colonial-era Rhodesian law and policy that had been “a tool of segregation and social exclusion” and she calls on the Government of President Robert Mugabe to bring the national laws into line with the realities of the country’s poor and with international law.    Though the Government is collectively responsible for the disastrous results, evidence suggests that “there was no collective decision-making” about the conception and implementation, enforced by the police and military, and the “few architects of the operation” should be held to account, Ms. Tibaijuka says.    The corrective programme, Operation Garikai (Rebuilding and Reconstruction), is beyond the best efforts of the Government of Zimbabwe, she says, and she appeals to the international community to mobilize immediate aid and avert further suffering.    Ms. Tibaijuka, who visited Zimbabwe as Mr. Annan’s Special Envoy, criss-crossed the country, holding town hall meetings and talking to local and national officials.    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.    “The humanitarian consequences of Operation Restore Order are enormous,” she 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. “Operation Garikai 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.    Ms. Tibaijuka points out that many African countries face similar problems and could well experience a similar eviction operation “sooner than later,” since Africa is the most rapidly urbanizing continent and its urbanization is unplanned and unsupervised.    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.    She told a news conference at UN Headquarters that the presence of her entourage kindled hope in those who had been evicted and her visit could be counter-productive, therefore, if the homeless people looking to the UN were not aided. She added that her mandate was not to apportion blame or calculate how much the aid would cost, but to recommend ways in which the international community could offer assistance to the Zimbabwean people.    22 July, 2005 (BBC News)    A major UN report has called for an immediate end to Zimbabwe's slum clearance programme, declaring it to be in violation of international law.    "The scale of suffering is immense," it said. About 700,000 people have lost their homes or livelihoods and another 2.4 million people have been affected.    Secretary General Kofi Annan said it confirmed "catastrophic injustice" had been done to Zimbabwe's poorest.    But Zimbabwe said the allegations in the report were "definitely false". Foreign Minister Simbarashe Mumbengegwi told journalists in the capital Harare the report showed an "in-built bias" and had described the clearances "in vastly judgmental language".    The BBC's Susannah Price at UN headquarters in New York says the UK and US are likely to use the hard-hitting document to renew their calls for the UN to take immediate action. To date, the Security Council has refused to call a meeting on the clearances.    Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe usually rejects any criticism as coming from racists - or their stooges - opposed to his nationalist stance, but correspondents say this will be more difficult with this report.    Zimbabwe says the policy - known as Operation Murambatsvina [Drive Out Rubbish] - is intended to crack down on black-market trading and other criminal activity in the slum areas.    Hundreds of thousands of homes in the country's shanty towns have been torched and bulldozed in recent months.    The report was compiled by Kofi Annan's special envoy Anna Tibaijuka, an international diplomat from Tanzania, a country with close political links to Zimbabwe.    The Zimbabwean government's programme was carried out in "an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering," the report said. "The scale of suffering is immense, particularly among widows, single mothers, children, orphans, the elderly and disabled persons," it said.    "The international community should encourage the government to prosecute all those who orchestrated this catastrophe and those who may have caused criminal negligence leading to alleged deaths," the report said. But it said the government was collectively responsible. Mr Annan called on the Zimbabwean government to stop the forced evictions and demolitions immediately "and to ensure that those who orchestrated this ill-advised policy are held fully accountable for their actions".    The Zimbabwean opposition says the evictions are meant to punish urban residents, who have rejected Mr Mugabe in favour of the opposition in recent elections.    Among other things, Ms Tibaijuka recommended that Zimbabwe should:    * urgently launch a broad humanitarian aid campaign to help those evicted    * revise its outdated housing and planning laws    * set up a compensation fund to help restore a climate of trust and dialogue with the people    * take steps to reform its economy.    Mr Annan said the UN would urgently seek agreement with Zimbabwe "to mobilise immediate humanitarian assistance on the scale that is required to avert further suffering". He urged the international community to respond "generously".    July 23, 2005    "UN report damns Mugabe slum clearance catastrophic", by Ewen MacAskill. (The Guardian)    A UN investigation yesterday denounced Robert Mugabe's slum clearance operation, which has left hundreds of thousands of people homeless, as a "catastrophe" that violated international law.    The UN's 98-page report concluded that 2.4 million people had been affected, of whom 700,000 had lost their homes or livelihoods or both, in a humanitarian crisis of "immense proportions".    It called for an immediate halt to any further demolitions and for Zimbabwe to allow unhindered access to the international and humanitarian community to provide assistance.    The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, said the report was "profoundly distressing".    The language was harsh by UN standards. It said the clearances were a "disastrous venture". It added that 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, with indifference to human suffering, and, in repeated cases, with disregard to several provisions on national and international legal frameworks".    Such unqualified criticism from the UN will be harder for Mr Mugabe to shrug off than reprimands over the last five years from the British government.    Mr Mugabe's neighbours, particularly South Africa, have been reluctant to intervene against another African state under pressure from a European country. But the UN is more difficult to ignore.    South Africa potentially has a lot of leverage, especially after Mr Mugabe this week asked its president, Thabo Mbeki, for a substantial loan.    Britain and others are likely to press for Zimbabwe to be raised at the security council. Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, said: "We will be speaking to our international partners, in Africa, in the European Union and at the UN, to ensure the international community responds swiftly, appropriately and constructively."    The report was written by Anna Tibaijuka, a special envoy sent by Mr Annan to Zimbabwe. She met Mr Mugabe and went to the scenes of the slum clearances.    Mrs Tibaijuka said yesterday that while crimes against humanity may have occurred, making such a determination could turn into a bitter, protracted debate that would distract from the immediate crisis. She suggested instead that those suspected of responsibility should be tried inside Zimbabwe.    She did not identify those responsible, other than to say the decision to carry out the operation was not taken collectively. The report said: "Evidence suggests it was based on improper advice by a few architects of the operation."    The Movement for Democratic Change, the opposition party, has charged that the campaign is politically motivated, aimed at the areas that had supported the MDC. Trudy Stevenson, an MDC representative in the Zimbabwe parliament, welcomed the report's findings. "That is wonderful - music in my ears," she said.    The UN report said the operation was popularly referred to locally as Operation Tsunami because of its speed and ferocity. While Mr Mugabe has promised to rehouse the former slum dwellers, the UN expressed scepticism given that the Zimbabwe economy was crippled.    The report said: "Even if motivated by a desire to ensure a semblance of order in the chaotic manifestations of rapid urbanisation and rising poverty characteristic of African cities, nonetheless Operation Restore Order turned out to be a disastrous venture based on a set of colonial-era laws and policies that were used as a tool of segregation and social exclusion. There is an urgent need to suspend these outdated laws."    The victims were among the poorest and it would take years before the people and society as a whole could recover. "The vast majority of those directly and indirectly affected are the poor and disadvantaged segments of the population. They are today deeper in poverty, deprivation and destitution, and have been rendered more vulnerable."    It added that the operation "took place at a time of persistent budget deficits, triple-digit inflation, critical food and fuel shortages and chronic shortages of foreign currency".    # The Universal Rights Network supports calls for members of President Robert Mugabe's regime responsible for this ongoing misery to be indicted at the International Criminal Court for "Crimes against Humanity".    Further it calls on African Union member countries particularly South Africa to unequivocally condemn the Mugabe regime's recent actions.    The Universal Rights Network also notes the Chinese Government's support for both the Zimbabwe and Sudanese regimes in the face of "Crimes against Humanity" and strongly encourages the Chinese Government to in future adopt policies in line with international humanitarian law where local populations are imperiled.    Kim Gleeson, Director - Universal Rights Network
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