Protecting, Promoting and Enforcing Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom Promotion of Human Rights [continued] 7.3.4 Engagement with Informal Traders and Urban Councils Association, 8 December 2015 The ZHRC held a number of meetings with various Informal (vendors) associations in order to facilitate a dialogue between vendors and local authorities. The background being the conflict that has been going on since Government's announcement of evicting vendors off the streets to the designated points. The main objective of the meetings was to find amicable and sustainable human rights based ways of dealing with these issues. Informal traders stated that they lacked recognition and support by the local authorities who viewed them as criminals. Other concerns raised related to corruption, lack of infrastructure (such as ablution facilities) at new vending sites, and also politicization of the allocation of vending stalls. There was alleged existence of violence, unlawful detention and torture by the municipal police. An issue of concern was that of child vendors and sexual abuse of children and women. The vending sites have no security such that some exchanged sexual favors for security. On the other hand, the Urban Councils acknowledged the concerns of vendors, but appealed that issues of access to livelihoods needed to be balanced with the need to sanity in cities as well. More so, urban councils indicated that the issues of illegal vending were becoming a threat to formal and registered traders in the CBD, at the same time compromising revenue/tax collection. 7.3.5 Outreach with Faith Based Organisations (FBOs), 18 June 2015 ZHRC convened an outreach meeting with Faith Based Organisations. The overall aim of the outreach was to raise awareness of the role and mandate of the ZHRC and to explore strategies for building partnerships with this group to contribute towards realizing the mandate of the Commission. The outreach was attended by ninety eight (98) participants, thirty six (36) being women and sixty two (62) being men, all representing twenty five (25) faith based organisations and over thirty five (35) churches.The engagement resulted in increased visibility of the Commission and created an avenue for information dissemination through the Church which commands respect and influence amongst the cross section of society. Figure 6: Picture Collage showing artists conducting human rights education through drama, a panellist making a presentation, some members of the apostolic sects and the general public following proceedings at the public dialogue to contribute towards ending child marriages Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission Annual Report 2015 29