Free Republic

Harare - A United Nations envoy met with some of the tens of thousands of Zimbabweans left homeless in a so-called urban renewal drive that has drawn international condemnation. Anna Tibaijuka, who arrived on Sunday to assess the humanitarian impact of the government's Operation Murambatsvina, or Drive Out Trash, toured the Caledonia Transit Camp on Friday where about 4,000 people are living in "difficult conditions" outside Harare, UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said at United Nations headquarters in New York. She also stopped off at demolition sites and places where the government is proposing to relocate people along the road to...

A special United Nations envoy sent to investigate Zimbabwe's controversial campaign of shack demolitions praised President Robert Mugabe's government for its "vision", the state-run Herald newspaper claimed on Friday. The paper said Anna Tibaijuka, the head of UN-Habitat, told Cabinet ministers on Thursday that the Zimbabwe government had shown its "seriousness" in allocating housing stands to homeless people. "The allocation of stands for housing is a reflection of the seriousness of [the] government. Operation Garikai [Settle and Prosper] is good. The vision is clear," Tibaijuka was quoted as saying. Police launched a wave of shack demolitions, dubbed Operation Restore Order,...

NEW YORK (AP) - Internal U.N. audits sent to the director of the Iraq oil-for-food program uncovered extensive mismanagement of multimillion-dollar deals with contractors and fraudulent paperwork by its employees, according to copies of the some of the reports obtained by The Associated Press. More than 50 audits, which were carried out from 1996 to 2003 by the U.N. watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight Services, have been a source of contention between the United Nations and members of Congress examining allegations of corruption in the humanitarian program. An independent panel led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who...

Chapter I - Preamble(emphasis added by Tailgunner Joe) 1. We recognize the imperative need to improve the quality of human settlements, which profoundly affects the daily lives and well-being of our peoples. There is a sense of great opportunity and hope that a new world can be built, in which economic development, social development and environmental protection as interdependent and mutually reinforcing components of sustainable development can be realized through solidarity and cooperation within and between countries and through effective partnerships at all levels. International cooperation and universal solidarity, guided by the purposes and principles of the Charter of the...