Zimbabwe's Human Rights Record During the 25th Anniversary of the Mugabe Regime

Abstract

During 2005, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe celebrated his 25th year in offi ce as President of Zimbabwe. This evaluation describes the current human rights crisis in Zimbabwe, and the response by the international community. The two particular instances of severe human rights violations that have raised international concern are the Zimbabwean government’s land policy aimed at seizing land owned by white farmers, and the policy of clearing urban squatters from their settlements. Zimbabwe’s government introduced a land redistribution programme whereby most of Zimbabwe’s white commercial farmers were removed from their farms to make way for landless blacks. The land redistribution policy has had serious implications concerning human rights in Zimbabwe. It has also infl uenced the Zimbabwean economy, contributing to an already precarious economic situation. The land redistribution programme has been an incremental one, beginning in 1979 and gradually increasing in coverage. This has discouraged long-term investments by farmers, culminating in the implications it has had for agricultural productivity. Given that agriculture is the mainstay of the Zimbabwean economy, the consequences of land seizures have thus gone beyond just shortages of food. The crisis in the Zimbabwean economy is refl ected in the runaway infl ation, the decline in the value of the Zimbabwe currency and the failure of Zimbabwe to meet its obligations to the International Monetary Fund.