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2012 a year for credible electoral reforms
Crisis
in Zimbabwe Coalition
October 06, 2011
Zimbabwe Civil Society Organisations are concerned with the escalating
calls by the state for early elections after the draft constitution
has been put to a referendum. Zimbabweans are cognizant and appreciate
that the key element in the exercise of democracy is the holding
of free and fair elections, it however imperative to put in place
certain fundamental prerequisites and these should be coupled by
credible electoral reforms.
Although the
Zimbabwean Constitution
guarantees freedom from inhuman and degrading treatment,. The government
has not taken any serious steps to criminalise torture in all of
its laws and fully incorporate with the United Nations thematic
mechanisms on torture.
For three years
into Zimbabweans' power-sharing government, President Robert
Mugabe and the Zimbabwe African National Patriotic Front (ZANU PF)
have used violence and repression to continue to dominate government
institutions and hamper meaningful human rights progress. Police
continue to arbitrarily arrest human rights defenders and journalists
for their legitimate human rights work.
Indeed, the
year 2012 must not be for elections but a year for electoral and
fundamental reforms. 27 Zimbabwe CSOs have taken a major step of
taking the human rights fight to the United Nations (UN) by presenting
the Advocacy Charter, a document that sums up in detail the human
rights track record of the Zimbabwe's coalition government
on Wednesday 05 October 2011 at the on-going UN Human Rights Council's
12th session of the Universal Periodic Review in Geneva.
According to
the Advocacy Charter,
Zimbabwe has not ratified all the outstanding human rights treaties
and their Optional Protocols such as the United Nations Convention
against Torture, Cruel or Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
(CAT), the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons
against Enforced Disappearances. The charter also stipulates that
the unity government has also not ratified the Optional Protocols
to Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination
against Women, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
International Covenant on Economic Social Cultural Rights and the
Convention Rights of the Child.
Crisis in Zimbabwe
Coalition thus urges the United Nations to call upon the government
of Zimbabwe to fulfil its obligations in terms of the African Charter
on the rights and freedoms of its citizens; to implement fully the
provisions of the GPA
and accept and implement various recommendations from civil society;
to effect genuine electoral reforms in line with the Declaration
by the African Commission on principles governing democratic elections
in Africa before the conducting of any new elections.
Visit the Crisis
in Zimbabwe fact
sheet
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