Friday, September 04, 2009
SADC: Press Zimbabwe to Implement Rights Reforms, by Marie-Êve Marineau
(Johannesburg) - Southern African leaders should press Zimbabwe's power-sharing government to end ongoing human rights violations and to implement legal reforms, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Heads of state from members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are holding a summit meeting in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, on September 7 and 8, 2009.
The 20-page report, "False Dawn: The Zimbabwe Power-Sharing Government's Failure to Deliver Human Rights Improvements," highlights the transitional government's lack of progress in rights reforms in the six months since it was created. The former ruling party, Zimbabwe Africa National Union - Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), has demonstrated a lack of political will to effect change and wields more power than the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the former opposition party and now a partner in government. Police, state prosecutors, and court officials aligned to ZANU-PF conduct politically motivated prosecutions of MDC legislators and activists, and fail to ensure justice for victims of abuses or to hold perpetrators of human rights violations to account.
"Southern African leaders should stop looking at Zimbabwe through rose-colored glasses," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The region's leaders need to press Zimbabwe openly and publicly for human rights reforms to prevent the country from backsliding into state-sponsored violence and chaos."
At the summit meeting, heads of state are expected to assess Zimbabwe's compliance with a number of rulings by the SADC Tribunal on illegal land seizures in Zimbabwe. President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, the organization's current chairman, is also expected to brief leaders on the progress made by Zimbabwe's power-sharing government, which has been in place since February. The government was created by a SADC-brokered September 2008 agreement, which followed a period when ZANU-PF and its allies unleashed a campaign of violence to prevent an MDC electoral win.
In its new report, Human Rights Watch urged Southern African leaders to extract concrete commitments on human rights from the government of Zimbabwe and to tie them to specific benchmarks for progress within a clear time frame. The summit meeting's participants were also urged to raise concerns about Zimbabwe's failure to enact basic institutional and legislative reforms that would guarantee the rule of law as well as fundamental rights for Zimbabweans.
"SADC leaders should stand with the people of Zimbabwe by calling for urgent reforms to address the country's political and human rights crisis," said Gagnon. "Without these necessary changes, Zimbabwe's inclusive government will continue to be built on sand."
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Labels: Human Rights Watch, Marie-Êve Marineau, Zimbabwe
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Zimbabwe: Cholera grips capital, by Noémie Cournoyer
In Zimbabwe’s capital Harare, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is responding to a massive outbreak of cholera, which the local Ministry of Health has declared “the biggest ever in Harare.” MSF has set up cholera treatment centres in Budiriro Polyclinic and in Harare Infectious Diseases Hospital, where 500 patients have been treated to date and, on average, 38 new patients are admitted every day.
About 78 per cent of the patients come from two densely populated suburbs in the south west of Harare, Budiriro and Glen View. They have a combined population of approximately 300,000 people. The outbreak has also affected people from the neighbouring suburbs of Mbare, Kambuzuma, Kwanzana and Glen Norah. Up to 1.4 million people are in danger if the outbreak continues to spread.
Since asked to assist with the outbreak in Harare, MSF has been providing human, medical and logistic resources at both treatment centres. Amongst a growing team of more than 40 Zimbabwean staff are nurses, logisticians, chlorinators, and environmental health workers. The latter perform an important role in reducing the spread of cholera in the community by disinfecting the homes of those affected, following up contacts of patients and supervising funerals, where the traditional practice of body washing, followed by hand shaking and eating, is a significant factor in the spread of cholera.
Medical teams overwhelmed
MSF water and sanitation officer Precious Matarutse comments on the situation: “At Budiriro cholera treatment centre things are getting out of hand. There are so many patients that the nurses are overwhelmed. In the observation area one girl died sitting on a bench. The staff is utilising each and every available room and still in the observation area patients are lying on the floor. A man came to the clinic yesterday for treatment. His wife had just died at home and that is what made his relatives realise this is serious, and they brought the man to the clinic. They wanted to know what to do with the wife’s body. People are concerned about catching cholera from others. Health education must be intensified to inform the population.”
The challenges MSF teams face in the treatment centres are many. Vittorio Varisco, an MSF logistician, describes the struggle: “It is a constant challenge to keep up with increasing patient numbers. We are running out of ward space and beds for the patients. Today patients at the Infectious Diseases Hospital are lying outside on the grass and we are setting up tents with additional beds as an overflow for the wards.”
MSF doctor Bauma Ngoya explains how vital human resources are in order to effectively treat patients and contain the outbreak: “Patients need constant supervision to ensure adequate hydration, without which they will die. As patient numbers continue to increase we must continue to recruit and train nursing staff.”
New urgency
Cholera is not a new phenomenon in crisis-shaken Zimbabwe. In some of the rural areas of the country cholera is endemic and occurs every year. However, until recent years cholera was relatively rare in urban areas of the country where treated, piped water and flush toilets exist in most homes. With the ongoing economic crisis and the constantly deteriorating living conditions these urban areas are more and more affected. The disease is water-borne and transmitted by the oral-faecal route; hence it thrives in unsanitary conditions.
Run-down infrastructure, burst sewage pipes and water cuts are mainly responsible for the outbreak, as they force people to dig unprotected wells and to defecate in open spaces. During the rainy season from November to March, heavy rains effectively flush standing sewage into unprotected wells. The fact that the recent outbreaks of cholera have commenced before the rains are a clear indication of the deteriorating sanitary conditions and shortage of clean water, and a worrying precursor to the rainy season.
Link
Labels: Doctors Without Borders, Noémie Cournoyer, Zimbabwe
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