This report is a follow up to the previous Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum preliminary report entitled Order out of Chaos, or Chaos out of Order? A Preliminary Report on Operation ―Murambatsvina‖ issued in June 2005.
This latest report traces developments that have taken place since our June report and gives an overview of the main consequences of Operation Murambatsvina since it commenced on 19 May 2005. It also locates the Operation in the context of events that have happened in Zimbabwe over several years.
The Vice-President announced on 27 July 2005 that Operation Murambatsvina was now over, following the receipt of the highly critical report of the UN Special Envoy. This report generally castigated the Zimbabwe Government for a highly inappropriate programme, and made a number of specific recommendations. The report of the UN Special Envoy was criticised by the Zimbabwe Government on a number of specious grounds, but the report has been corroborated in virtually every respect by local Zimbabwean research.
It is evident that many of the concerns raised by the UN Special Envoy are being dismissed or minimised by the Zimbabwe Government. As this report indicates, the Zimbabwe Government has a long history of reneging on international agreements, as was the case around the Abuja Agreement, or failing to respect the recommendations of international treaty bodies, as was the case with the recommendations of the UN Human Rights Committee in 1998.
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