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Celebrating
10 years of working for the observance of human rights in Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe Human
Rights NGO Forum
February 24, 2008
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The
Founding and the development of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum
The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (Human Rights Forum)
was established after the Food Riots in 1998 as human rights groups
and NGOs in Harare swung into action following the many reports
of human rights violations. This group, a loose alliance of NGOs,
provided assistance to detainees, persons complaining of human rights
violations and ill-treatment, and produced a report on the riots
which was forwarded to the President and Parliament in support of
the request for an independent commission of inquiry. At its inception,
the Forum was constituted by
There was no
response from the government, and the Human Rights Forum lobbied
the UN Human Rights Committee at its meeting in 1998 to consider
the implementation by Zimbabwe of the International Covenant on
Civil and Political Rights. When the Committee produced its final
report in September 1998, it made a strong statement endorsing the
call by the Human Rights Forum for an independent commission of
inquiry. The government took no steps either to constitute a commission
of inquiry or to compensate those who suffered human rights violations,
so the Human Rights Forum decided to go ahead and support the request
by survivors for civil claims against the government. Forty-two
suits were filed in Zimbabwean courts against the Zimbabwe Republic
Police, the Minister of Home Affairs, and the Minister of Defence.
The government, through the office of the Attorney General's
Civil Division, indicated that it would contest all claims. The
majority of these cases have been concluded, with the government
either settling the matters out of court or through judgments handed
down by the High Court.
As the human
rights situation continued to deteriorate, the Human Rights Forum
was not disbanded after the Food Riots but continued to monitor
the human rights situation. From the year 2000 violence escalated
in Zimbabwe, with the aftermath of the Referendum, invasion of white-owned
commercial farms, and, for the first time in Zimbabwe's history,
there was a real opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change
(MDC), that gave ZANU (PF) a run for its money in the June 2000
parliamentary elections. The election period in 2000 was fraught
with violence, and the Human Rights Forum continued to give support
to the victims and write reports both for the government to consider
and for the wider international community.
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