affected by grave human rights abuses, ordering perpetrators to pay monetary
compensation or make other types of reparation to victims;
•to explore the desirability of facilitating genuine community reconciliation;
•to facilitate processes of community driven exhumation, reburial and memorialisation.
•To be effective this Commission must be independent, credible, efficient, adequately
resourced, accessible and victim-friendly.
Civic organizations should monitor and support the operations of this Commission.
Victims appearing before this Commission must be treated with sensitivity and respect and be given
protection against reprisals.
There is need for a proper gender balance on this Commission and particular attention must be
paid to the special needs of women and children victims.
The government formed after the transition must commit itself to co-operate with and to support
the activities of this Commission and must give an unequivocal undertaking to implement its
recommendations wherever possible.
The participants called for the conducting of a comprehensive people driven constitutional reform
exercise that will lay emphasis on the protection of all human rights and the establishment of a
number of Commissions to protect and promote these human rights.
There should be special Commissions to deal with land, gender issues and economic crimes such as
corruption, asset stripping and debts incurred by previous governments in connection with human
rights abuses.
The mandate of the Commission on economic crimes should include:
•referral of cases to the Attorney-General for possible prosecution;
•in conjunction with other appropriate state agencies, taking of vigorous steps to
recover misappropriated state assets:
•imposition of financial penalties upon those who were financial beneficiaries of human
rights abuses.
A substantial portion of the assets recovered by this process should be devoted to compensating
individuals and communities harmed by past human rights abuses.
All these Commissions must be given an explicit mandate to recommend measures aimed at
redressing socio-economic injustices of the colonial and post-colonial periods.
The new Government must immediately establish a reparations fund to compensate victims
of human rights abuses. Concerted efforts must be made to tap all possible sources of local and
international finance for this fund, including assets recovered by the Economic Crime Commission.
If financially feasible, full compensation should be paid to those who suffered the greatest harm as
a result of grave human rights abuses and some more limited compensation should be paid to other
victims. The fund should also be used to establish local development projects in areas particular
badly affected by past human rights abuses.
All victims must be provided with free and proper health care and social support to deal with the
lifetime disability that can arise from violations of their human rights.
i
ii
See also Themba Lesizwe (2004), Civil Society and Justice in Zimbabwe, Proceedings of a symposium held in Johannesburg, 11-13
August 2003, PRETORIA: THEMBA LESIZWE.
There is an extravagantly large literature dealing with the effects of organized violence and torture, but the interested reader is
referred to the article mentioned above. Here see again Mollica ,R F, Lopes Cardozo, B, Osofsky, H J, Raphael, B, Ager,A, & Salama,
P(2004), Mental health in complex emergencies, LANCET, 364: 2058–67.
iii This is based on a previous paper. See Reeler , A P (2008), Dealing with the “Complex Emergency” in Zimbabwe: Thoughts on
Psycho-social support to the community. HARARE: RESEARCH & Advocacy UNIT [www. Kubatana.net].
iv Here see Mollica ,R F, Lopes Cardozo, B, Osofsky, H J, Raphael, B, Ager,A, & Salama, P(2004), Mental health in complex
emergencies, LANCET, 364: 2058–67; see also Mollica, R.F. Guerra, R. Bhasin, R. & Lavelle,J (Eds), BOOK OF BEST PRACTICES.
TRAUMA AND THE ROLE OF MENTAL HEALTH IN POST-CONFLICT RECOVERY, Project 1 Billion: International Congress of Ministers of