The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) should publicly press President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and his party to end their harassment and arbitrary arrests of civil society activists and political opponents. The SADC is meeting beginning March 31, 2011, in Livingstone, Zambia.

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.

The South African government should ensure that “temporary shelter sites” for homeless and traumatized victims of recent xenophobic violence comply with international standards, Human Rights Watch said today. The UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement require states to provide food, water, shelter, medical care and security to displaced persons.

South African officials involved in the arrest and deportation of undocumented migrant workers often assault and extort money from them, and commercial farmers employing them routinely violate their basic labor rights, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.