The Europeans have spoken. After a recent high-profile visit of European Union officials to Harare, the EU said it will not lift targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe and that it was premature to resume development aid to a country that had not made needed reforms.
They might end up as costly baubles on sale in shops around the world. But for some diamonds mined in Zimbabwe, the journey begins in massive illegal pit mines where men, women, and children are forced to work long days under the brutal authority of government troops, who took over the mine in a spree of bloodshed.
Namibia hosts the Kimberley Process Intersessional Meeting in Windhoek starting tomorrow. Namibia's Deputy Mines Minister, Bernhard Esau, who chairs the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), has a problem on his hands: protecting the integrity and credibility of the Process and the international diamond industry.
The Zimbabwean finance minister, Tendai Biti, is coming to London this week to ask for a step-change in British aid for Zimbabwe. As a long-time opponent of President Mugabe, a human rights lawyer and the number two in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Biti is the right messenger, but is it the right message? Is aid to Zimbabwe's new power-sharing government what the country needs most right now?
As the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe spreads across regional borders, southern African governments have come together to discuss a regional strategy to stem the outbreak.
Leaders of the Southern African Development Community meeting at an emergency summit in South Africa today will be hoping that their intervention will finally break the political deadlock between Zimbabwe's two main parties, ZANU-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change.
As a member of the United Nations security council for two years, South Africa has had many opportunities to speak out forcefully for human rights - or to join those speaking out against them. Again and again, it has chosen the latter course.
For years now, women’s groups in Southern Africa have campaigned tirelessly to ensure that the Southern African Development Community adopt the Protocol on Gender and Development. Yesterday, the SADC finally took that historic step. Member states will be obliged to amend their laws to ensure equal rights for women across a wide range of issues, from provisions that require member states to enshrine equality in their constitutions, to firm commitments to reduce maternal mortality by 75 per cent. But while that’s a cause for celebration, the Protocol still does not refer explicitly to domestic violence, and it still doesn’t oblige states to introduce legal provisions that criminalise marital rape.
Talks in Zimbabwe aimed at breaking the political deadlock in that country cannot succeed unless the human rights violations that are the root cause of the crisis are addressed.
The Europeans have spoken. After a recent high-profile visit of European Union officials to Harare, the EU said it will not lift targeted sanctions on Zimbabwe and that it was premature to resume development aid to a country that had not made needed reforms.
They might end up as costly baubles on sale in shops around the world. But for some diamonds mined in Zimbabwe, the journey begins in massive illegal pit mines where men, women, and children are forced to work long days under the brutal authority of government troops, who took over the mine in a spree of bloodshed.
Namibia hosts the Kimberley Process Intersessional Meeting in Windhoek starting tomorrow. Namibia's Deputy Mines Minister, Bernhard Esau, who chairs the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), has a problem on his hands: protecting the integrity and credibility of the Process and the international diamond industry.
The Zimbabwean finance minister, Tendai Biti, is coming to London this week to ask for a step-change in British aid for Zimbabwe. As a long-time opponent of President Mugabe, a human rights lawyer and the number two in the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Biti is the right messenger, but is it the right message? Is aid to Zimbabwe's new power-sharing government what the country needs most right now?
As the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe spreads across regional borders, southern African governments have come together to discuss a regional strategy to stem the outbreak.
Leaders of the Southern African Development Community meeting at an emergency summit in South Africa today will be hoping that their intervention will finally break the political deadlock between Zimbabwe's two main parties, ZANU-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change.
As a member of the United Nations security council for two years, South Africa has had many opportunities to speak out forcefully for human rights - or to join those speaking out against them. Again and again, it has chosen the latter course.
For years now, women’s groups in Southern Africa have campaigned tirelessly to ensure that the Southern African Development Community adopt the Protocol on Gender and Development. Yesterday, the SADC finally took that historic step. Member states will be obliged to amend their laws to ensure equal rights for women across a wide range of issues, from provisions that require member states to enshrine equality in their constitutions, to firm commitments to reduce maternal mortality by 75 per cent. But while that’s a cause for celebration, the Protocol still does not refer explicitly to domestic violence, and it still doesn’t oblige states to introduce legal provisions that criminalise marital rape.
Talks in Zimbabwe aimed at breaking the political deadlock in that country cannot succeed unless the human rights violations that are the root cause of the crisis are addressed.
African leaders must do more to end the repression in Zimbabawe and must place the responsibility for the violence firmly on Robert Mugabe’s doorstep.