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ZLHR condemns illegal detention of mothers and infants at Harare central hospital
Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR)
June 04, 2004

Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) has learnt with shock and dismay that twenty-eight mothers and their newly born babies are being illegally detained at Harare Central Hospital for failure to pay the high maternity fees being charged by the hospital. ZLHR believes that the detention of mothers and their infants against their will is a highly reprehensible and irresponsible method of debt collection by the hospital authorities. It is very disturbing to note that the women and their newly born infants are being denied their freedom and are being detained in a manner similar or akin to that under which convicted prisoners are held i.e. the women are prohibited from putting on their own clothes and their movements in the hospital are severely restricted. The practice is not only illegal but highly immoral and unacceptable in that the women and infants are being placed under stressful and quite torturous conditions at a time when the mothers are supposed to be celebrating new motherhood and convalescing from the painful experience of childbirth.

ZLHR condemns the high handed manner in which the institution has acted as the majority of these women who are alleged to be indebted to the institution are patients referred to Harare Hospital by rural hospitals and will be labouring under the impression that they don’t have to pay any fees at all since they are mostly Social Welfare dependants with no viable sources of income.

The action taken by Harare Hospital raises a lot of issues the most pressing one being whether or not the poor in Zimbabwe people do not have a right to life as enshrined in section 12 of the Constitution of Zimbabwe. The right to access health facilities is intrinsically linked to the right to life. Zimbabwe together with 52 other nations is party to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights and the action taken by Harare Hospital flies in the face of what Zimbabwe as a nation believes and upholds since the African Charter does among other things clearly enunciate social and cultural rights.

The detention of the women and their infants is not only illegal but also unconstitutional since this denial of the right to personal liberty is not as a result of the execution of a court order, neither is it based on a reasonable suspicion that the mothers and their newly born babies are about to commit any offences. Surely walking out of hospital with one’s new baby cannot by any stretch of imagination constitute an offence or morally wrongful conduct!

It is quite an affront to any sense of justice to welcome newly born babies into society by forcibly detaining them and their mothers in hospital primarily on reasons that have nothing to do with the babies. The practice also amounts to discrimination against women since they are the ones who have to carry the babies before delivery and the men as partners are allowed to roam the streets freely when they are equally responsible for any debts that are as a result of any union or relationship between the two sexes. Zimbabwe is also a signatory to the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the failure by the Executive to take any appropriate action against the health institution is indeed regrettable and an embarrassment to a nation which prides itself in taking center stage when it comes to promoting the rights of women.

There is no legal basis why mothers and newly born babies must be detained at all. If the hospital feels that the mothers owe them any debts, then the hospital’s remedy is to proceed to sue and recover its money in terms of the law, rather than to take the law into its own hands. The practice that also amounts to extortion is also a sign of the high levels of impunity with which members of the civil service have continuously treated members of the public.

ZLHR therefore calls for an end to the illegal detention of the mothers and their babies; and also appeals to the Minister of Health and Child Welfare to intervene on behalf of the women and their babies to put an end to this illegal practice.

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