Posted on 11/18/2003 8:25:03 PM PST by Clive
There is overwhelming evidence that the Zanu-PF government in hungry Zimbabwe has provided food aid to supporters while denying it to perceived adversaries. The use of food as a political tool is both morally abhorrent and violates international law.
The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights outlaws discrimination on the basis of race, sex, language, religion, political opinion and other distinctions. It also endows people with the right to food and other resources needed to attain health and an adequate standard of living.
The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) reaches further than basic rights benchmarking to outline specific provisions about the right to food.
Zimbabwe acceded to the Covenant in 1991, and is thus bound to recognise everybody's right to adequate food, to act to ensure that this right is realised fairly and as widely as possible, and to cooperate with the international community to ease domestic hunger.
These international laws and the rights they enshrine are being flouted daily in Zimbabwe through the discriminatory distribution of food aid, based on perceived political affiliation.
"Select groups of people are being denied access to food," says Peter Takirambudde, head of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights group that on 24 October published the comprehensive Not Eligible: The Politicisation of Food in Zimbabwe.
"This is a human rights violation as serious as arbitrary imprisonment or torture."
With the UN estimating that more than 5.5 million of Zimbabwe's nearly 14 million people will need emergency food aid in the coming months, the potential scale of this rights violation is massive and continuing.
"The international community has spent hundreds of millions of dollars pouring food aid into Zimbabwe," says the rights group, "yet thousands continue to go hungry".
Human Rights Watch joined the international chorus of organisations and governments, as well as local civil society groups, who have accused the government of discriminating against perceived political opponents by denying them access to food aid.
It reports that government authorities and officials of Zanu-PF penalise political opponents by manipulating the supply and distribution of government-subsidised grain, managed by the Grain Marketing Board, and the registration of people eligible for international food aid.
Those most affected are suspected MDC supporters, teachers, ex-commercial farm workers and urban residents. Commonly, only people who can produce a Zanu-PF card get onto food relief lists. It also reports "rampant" corruption and black market profiteering at the GMB.
The rights watchdog also accuses international relief agencies of not ensuring that food access "is based on need alone and not biased" by political concerns, for two reasons.
First, there is a "degree of political manipulation" in cases where aid agencies have to rely on local authorities to determine who should benefit from aid. Second, it claims "tacit complicity" among agencies in preventing food from reaching people resettled under the country's fast-track land reform programme, because some donors are opposed to funding 'land invaders'.
The government has repeatedly denied the politicisation of food aid. Aid agencies say they make every effort to respond only to need and are unable to deliver food to ex-commercial farms until a comprehensive needs assessment is done - which the government is unlikely to do as it would imply that land reform has failed.
But by far the gravest accusations are against Zimbabwe?s government, which is repeatedly violating both the Universal Declaration and the ICESCR on many levels, reports Human Rights Watch in a legal commentary in Not Eligible.
The UN Covenant demands that states act individually and through cooperation to ensure that their people are free from hunger, by improving methods of production, conservation and distribution, and by ensuring "equitable distribution of world food supplies in relation to need".
In 1999, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights produced a comment that clarified the right to food, and warned signatory states that inequitable or discriminatory access to food ? on various grounds including political opinion ? violates the Covenant.
It defined the state?s obligation to provide the right to food as threefold, involving obligations to respect (existing access to adequate food), protect (through measures that ensure people are not deprived of access) and fulfil (strengthen people?s ability to ensure food security).
When people or groups are unable to enjoy the right to adequate food by means at their disposal, states are obliged to fulfil that right directly, writes Human Rights Watch. A state violates its obligations if it ?allows or engages in discriminatory distribution practices designed to consolidate control, or further political goals?. Also, primary responsibility for hunger lies with the state: where a state claims that resource constraints make it impossible to provide food to the needy, says the rights body, it must prove that every effort has been made to satisfy food rights, including international support. The Committee?s comment also stresses the need for accountability and transparency: ?The war council devised to implement and oversee the food distribution program reflects the political, rather than humanitarian, nature of Zimbabwe's food strategy?. Government is also accountable for the actions of its agents, the rights group stresses, including ?responsibility for the arbitrary and discriminatory decisions of village heads, youth militias, and other local community leaders who politicise the distribution of food?. As a member of the UN and signatory to the CESCR, ?when it engages in discriminatory distributive practices, and allows rampant corruption and opportunistic abuse, Zimbabwe abrogates its international legal and treaty obligations.? The CESCR also forbids donor countries and international aid organizations from delivering conditional food assistance, or using food as an economic or political lever: Human Rights Watch argues that under its international obligations the government should instruct officials in charge of beneficiary lists to "abide by the principle of non-discrimination", and stress to political parties that using food to "influence or reward" voters is prohibited: ?Punitive action should be taken against those who flout this prohibition". It recommends that the global community attain tighter control over food distribution - difficult, considering government's recent efforts to remove aid distribution from them altogether - and work to get food aid to poor people resettled under the government?s ?fast track? land reform, many of whom forcibly occupied white-owned farms. Donors who no longer support humanitarian aid in Zimbabwe should ?reconsider their duty, under international law, to assist those in need".
* This column is provided by the International Bar Association. An organisation that represents the Law Societies and Bar Associations around the world, and works to uphold the rule of law. For further information, visit the website www.ibanet.org
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