humanitarian and economic situations in recent months will deliver diminishing returns and will ultimately be reversed. For example, the power-sharing government has failed to resuscitate a broken health system, thereby leaving Zimbabwe vulnerable to another major cholera outbreak. A free media is vital to improve accountability in Zimbabwe and ensure that ongoing abuses are both exposed and remedied. The media reforms that have so far been instituted by the power-sharing government are inadequate. The government allowed international media such as the UK’s BBC and the US-based CNN to resume reporting from Zimbabwe. But it continues to restrict freedom of expression for domestic media in an arbitrary fashion. For example, while the government has lifted restrictions on (but not yet granted an operating license to) a previously banned private daily newspaper—the Daily News—it has jailed journalists at other private media outlets.4 It is crucial to have a legal and regulatory framework that protects the media from unwarranted interference and harassment from state agencies. A parliamentary committee has held interviews for the proposed Zimbabwe Media Commission, but legislative reforms concerning the media, such as repealing repressive laws like the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA), have yet to be implemented. Reforming Zimbabwe’s repressive security apparatus is essential if the power-sharing government is to ensure genuine respect for human rights and restoration of rule of law. The government has held just one meeting of the Zimbabwe National Security Council, notionally the new state body to oversee Zimbabwe’s various state security institutions, chaired by President Robert Mugabe with Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai a member. But Human Rights Watch has evidence that the old, repressive ZANU-PF security apparatus continues to operate in parallel and unchanged. At the same time that President Mugabe was publicly announcing three days of national healing in July 2009, renouncing political violence, security agencies loyal to him continued to commit unchecked violence and intimidation against his political opponents. 4 “Newspaper editors face charges, arrested and released on bail,” Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) news release, Zimbabwe alert, May 14, 2009, http://www.ifex.org/zimbabwe/2009/05/14/zimind_editors_arrested/ (accessed August 24, 2009). See also “Govt gives Daily News licence to publish,” Zimbabwe Independent, July 31, 2009. False Dawn 4