Annan 'profoundly distressed' by UN report

Annan 'profoundly distressed' by UN report

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By Staff Reporter

A UNITED Nations report released Friday calls on the Government of Zimbabwe to stop the demolitions 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.

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 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.

Zimbabwean officials say they are studying the report.
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