Zimbabwe: Setting the Human Rights Agenda for Mugabe Government

Your Excellency, We at Human Rights Watch, an independent organisation that monitors and reports on human rights in more than 80 countries, write to you to express our concerns about the human rights situation in Zimbabwe and to request that you give priority to improving human rights during your presidency.

We urge you and the incoming administration to take clear, decisive measures to honour the country's human rights obligations and ensure the protection and promotion of fundamental freedoms for the benefit of all Zimbabweans. Human Rights Watch believes that this is an important opportunity for your government to help nurture and develop a culture of respect for human rights in Zimbabwe that should not be missed.

Zimbabwe's new constitution, signed into law on May 22 2013, enshrines the country's domestic human rights obligations. The preamble to the constitution recognises "the need to entrench democracy, good, transparent and accountable governance and the rule of law," and reaffirms, "commitment to upholding and defending fundamental human rights and freedoms."

Zimbabwe's international human rights obligations are derived from the many international human rights conventions to which Zimbabwe is party including the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as customary international law.

Human Rights Watch calls on your administration to place the promotion and protection of human rights at the top of its agenda and recommends the following priority areas for the new government's human rights plan:

Reaffirm Rights Provisions in new Constitution

Under a power-sharing government with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) from February 2009 to July 2013, a number of human rights reforms were initiated, including enactment of the new Constitution with a much broader bill of rights than its Lancaster House predecessor. To put Zimbabwe on a democratic and rights-respecting path leading to genuinely credible, free and fair elections, and to a durable human-rights environment, the new administration should reaffirm and ensure the realisation of the rights provisions contained in the new constitution.

Human Rights Watch urges the new administration to immediately amend or substantially repeal a number of laws to bring them in line with the provisions of the new constitution. For instance, article 208 of the new constitution states that members of the security services -- the Defence Forces, the Police, the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), and the Prison Service -- must be non-partisan.

(2013-09-08/allafrica)