Zimbabwe: UN demands unfettered Access to all those In need by IRIN News / UN News 7:40pm 24th Aug, 2005   26 August 2005    Zimbabwe: still no accord on UN donor aid appeal as country faces ‘meltdown’. (UN News)    With Zimbabwe facing a meltdown and life expectancy cut in half, the United Nations has not yet reached agreement with the country’s Government on an overall international aid appeal for a crisis which has been exacerbated by the authority’s mass urban eviction campaign, the UN chief humanitarian envoy said.    “We have not reached agreement with the Government on the text (of an appeal), we have not agreed on how many are affected, how to help them, the role of (non-governmental organizations) NGOs and other operational aspects,” Jan Egeland, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, told a news briefing today in UN headquarters in New York.    The complex emergency in Zimbabwe comprises a combination of widespread food insecurity, high unemployment and a 25 per cent HIV/AIDS prevalence rate.    Most recently, the Government's two-month-old Operation Murambatsvina (Restore Order) urban eviction programme, described by senior UN officials as an ongoing violation of human rights, has forced an estimated 650,000 to 700,000 into conditions much worse in many cases than before they were evicted.    Mr. Egeland said the world body has been using funding from an earlier appeal to provide some aid to 170,000 and 100,000 people affected by the evictions and, of that number, about 100,000 are getting regular assistance to include food, temporary shelter, water and sanitation. But a much broader programme is still lacking and is sorely needed to address the broader emergency in the country, he added.    “The backdrop is a dramatic one in Zimbabwe, one of the most dramatic in the world. Life expectancy has plummeted from around 63 years in the late 1980s and early 1990s to 33.9 years in 2004. This is a meltdown. This is a nearly halving of life expectancy,” Mr. Egeland said.    He said talks were continuing with the Zimbabwean Government and in the absence of an agreement, the UN has not been able to get out an appeal to donors. “We made an appeal for $11.9 million in July and we’ve gotten quite a bit of that, but we would like to have a more comprehensive plan to help more people and we need government help for that.”    He said most people affected by the eviction have gone back to the countryside to live with relatives, or have been absorbed by rural villages or other urban areas. But many live now out in the open, or in urban shelters, or in the rubble of the demolished homes in which they had lived before being evicted.    Central to the problems in the country is an HIV/AIDS prevalence rate, which now stands at about one-quarter of the adult population. Some 3,000 people die from HIV/AIDS per week in Zimbabwe and about 1.3 million children have been orphaned by the pandemic..    Johannesburg , 22 Aug 2005 (IRIN)    At least 700,000 were affected by urban cleanup operation, many of them moved to rural areas..    Unrestricted access to people affected by the Zimbabwe government's controversial urban cleanup campaign is crucial if humanitarian needs are to be addressed, says UN Resident Coordinator Dr Agostinho Zacarias.    He told IRIN that the UN country team hoped to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the government of Zimbabwe, to ensure that aid was distributed impartially and reached those left homeless and vulnerable by Operation Murambatsvina ('Drive out Filth').    According to the UN, over 700,000 people were affected when the government demolished informal homes and businesses in the country's urban centres.    The campaign was heavily criticised by UN Special Envoy Anna Tibaijuka, who said it "breached both national and international human rights law provisions guiding evictions", and had resulted in a humanitarian crisis.    A recent report by ActionAid International, the Combined Harare Residents Association and the Zimbabwe Peace Project claimed that up to 1.1 million people were affected by Operation Murambatsvina, and that the assistance they received subsequently was "sub-optimal and inappropriate - to say the least".    The UN was still holding discussions with the government over a planned appeal to assist those displaced by the cleanup campaign, and the issue of access was "on the table also".    In and around urban centres "de facto access is not a concern, but a general policy is needed to safeguard the activities of UN agencies and those of our partners ... we need to have a MOU to assure that," Zacarias pointed out.    However, many of those displaced by the cleanup campaign had moved to rural areas and "just reaching some of the groups who have returned to the countryside has been very difficult", he noted.    "The MOU is aimed at facilitating us reaching such people. So, really, we are looking for a general agreement about respecting the humanitarian principles of non-discrimination and neutrality, and access to all those in need," Zacarias said.    He added that humanitarian aid should not be compromised, particularly "not because of political party affiliation - that should be clear to everybody, including those people at local [authority] level".    "Humanity, neutrality, impartiality, non-discrimination, are key principles that guide humanitarian work, and these should be [included] in the MOU," Zacarias commented. There should be no room for "different interpretations of the general rules of engagement of the UN in this country, and that kind of communication must filter down to local levels," he stressed.    Negotiations with the government over the appeal and the MOU would continue until Wednesday, when "we hope to reach a full agreement", Zacarias said.    For the full ActionAid report go to: www.sarpn.org.za    [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]    10 August 2005    UNICEF rents housing for evicted Zimbabweans with disabilities. (UN News)    In the wake of the housing and business evictions that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people in Zimbabwe, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) says it will rent housing for more than 100 evicted families with disabled children and provide them with transportation and business investment.    Updating its report on its work since Anna Tibaijuka, the UN Special Envoy on the evictions who is also the UN Human Settlements Programme's (UN-HABITAT) Executive Director, issued a report last month saying some 700,000 people had lost homes or businesses in the Zimbabwean Government's demolitions, UNICEF said all of the more than 100 women in the Zimbabwe Parents of Children with Disabilities Association are receiving emergency humanitarian assistance.    One of them, Barbara Fero, an HIV-infected widow whose home in the working-class suburb of Mbare was demolished and whose nine-year-old daughter is disabled, said the rented housing "is exactly what we need."    "Since the evictions I have been constantly sick," Ms. Fero says. "I do not have a place to take a rest, I cannot afford adequate meals, I am on ARV [anti-retroviral] treatment and I cannot afford to get my next monthly supply. My daughter, Elaine, needs to be accompanied to her school as the transport is no longer reliable and I do not have money."    In partnership with a local non-governmental organization (NGO), UNICEF gave the Feros blankets against the southern hemisphere winter, as well as cooking pots and soap.    UNICEF said it had joined the UN World Food Programme (WFP), the International Office of Migration (IOM), the Zimbabwe Red Cross Society and local NGOs in providing hundreds of thousands of people with blankets and plastic sheeting for protection from the cold, along with sanitation facilities, food and shelter. The organizations are also supplying chronically ill people with home-based treatments.    "We have been working around the clock for the better part of three 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," UNICEF's Representative in the country Festo Kavishe said.
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