EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The shift away from undemocratic methods of gaining and maintaining political power has
led many African autocrats to seek electoral strategies for keeping power. Recent research
indicates that one-fifth of elections in Africa are violent, and, in many cases, this violence occurs
before elections take place (usually by incumbents): Zimbabwe, for example, has shown this for
the 2000 Parliamentary elections, the 2002 Presidential election, and the 2008 Presidential re-run.
In other cases, violence that occurs after elections, is generally more violent than pre-election
violence, and is mostly precipitated by the challengers.
Thus, our understanding about political violence becomes more nuanced. There is violence
that takes place in countries but falls short of so-called “armed conflict.” Such violence will be
more short-lived than would be necessary to be defined as “armed conflict”, but can have very
profound effects on citizens and a country as a whole.
One of the more disturbing features of elections in Zimbabwe has been the use of schools
as both places where political campaigning takes place and even their use as so-called “bases” for
militia activity. By implication, the use of schools as places of political activity (and even worse
as places of violence) will involve children in witnessing events harmful to their psychological
and moral development, and there is worrying evidence to this effect in Zimbabwe.
The concerns about schools as places that become targets in armed conflict has now
attracted international concern with the establishment of the Global Campaign to Protect
Education from Attack (GCPEA). This campaign, to which the Research and Advocacy Unit
(RAU) is a participating member, has been raising international opinion about the dangers faced
by children and teachers during armed conflict. This initiative is strongly bolstered by the United
Nations Security Council Resolution 1998 of 2011.1
This desk top study is an attempt to at least quantify the risks using data from the past decade
in Zimbabwe. It was not possible to provide any estimate of the consequences of these risks for
children, but at least specifying the probable risks does allow some estimate of the scale of the
needed response for Zimbabwean children.
The Political Violence Monthly Reports of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum were
examined for cases of political violence where children were involved. This involved looking at
all the reports produced between July 2001 and December 2008. Three categories of cases were
developed:
Those where children were specifically identified as being victims of or
direct witnesses to political violence;
Those cases where violence occurred at schools, involving violence
against teachers, violence taking place at schools, or schools being used as
“bases”;
Those cases where violent attacks took place at citizens’ homes, where
the implication is that children may have been involved, but children are
not mentioned specifically.
This resolution expanded the criteria for listing parties to conflict in the Secretary-General’s report on
children and armed conflict to include parties that attack or threaten schools and hospitals.
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