Zimbabwe, like the image of its flag above, is a country battered and torn by political strife, infrastructure collapse and grave human rights abuses. The new unity government in Zimbabwe has yet to address the human rights crisis. Zimbabwean security forces continue to target human rights defenders and political activists who call attention to the country’s ongoing crisis. Four months after their abduction by state security agents, three political detainees remain in maximum security prison on charges of terrorism widely believed to be fabricated by the state. They are among some 30 human rights and political activists whom government authorities abducted, detained, and tortured between October and December 2008. Most were released by early March 2009, but the charges against them remain.

During the past three decades that Mugabe and his ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), have been in power, the Government has established a record of gross human rights abuses that is well documented. Human rights organizations have shown how the Mugabe government has carried out policies designed to cause suffering and loss of life to specific groups of people. Groups they have targeted include the Ndebele ethnic minority concentrated in Matabeleland, as well as Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) supporters.

Zimbabwe was once Africa’s breadbasket, but is now in complete ruins. The health and nutritional status of Zimbabwe’s people has acutely worsened this past year due to a raging cholera epidemic, high maternal mortality, malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and now anthrax. The cholera epidemic is an outcome of the health system collapse and of the failure of the Government to maintain previously operative safe water and sanitation systems, and provide prompt infection control and patient care. The epidemic, having claimed the lives of more than 4,000 people and infected nearly 100,000, is a man-made disaster, was likely preventable, and has become a regional health and security issue because of the failure of the state to respond to the health and basic living needs of its people.

Zimbabwe’s education system, once a model in southern Africa, now lies in ruin. Serious economic, social and infrastructure challenges exist that impede many Zimbabweans’ access to education. In a routine assessment by UNICEF in early 2009, the organization found that 66 out of 70 schools visited were abandoned. Those schools that were operational had only a third of children in attendance.

Viewed through a human rights lens, the health and healthcare crisis in Zimbabwe is a direct outcome of the abrogation of a number of human rights, including the right to participate in government and in free elections and the right to a standard of living adequate for one’s health and well being. Despite the new unity government being formed in February 2009, the ZANU-PF-controlled security forces continue to violate Zimbabweans’ civil and political rights. Organized violence, torture, and restrictions on the rights to freedom of association, assembly and expression persist. Human rights activists, journalists and other prisoners of conscience remain imprisoned in inhumane conditions throughout the country.

Amnesty International and Physicians for Human Rights are therefore calling for the United Nations and the African Union to send civilian human rights monitors to Zimbabwe to forestall further human rights abuses and to help ensure Zimbabwe’s fledgling unity government’s transition toward democracy and rule of law.

For further background information to the crisis in Zimbabwe:

• Get Amnesty International USA’s most recent news and publications on Zimbabwe
• Read about Amnesty International USA’s work on behalf of Women of Zimbabwe Arise (WOZA)
• Further information from PHR on Zimbabwe: Health in Ruins: PHR Reports on the Man-Made Health Crisis in Zimbabwe.