Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) Human Rights Violations Report. 1.0 Introduction On 10 October 2017, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC), launched a blitz Biometric Voter Registration (BVR) exercise across the country. The blitz was a follow up to the launch of the BVR by former President, Robert Mugabe on the 18th of September 2017. Several Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) including Heal Zimbabwe noted that the process was rolled out against a background where there was lack of robust voter education around the new voter registration exercise exposing the process to manipulation by politicians. This was a direct contradiction with International and regional best practices on elections such as SADC Principles and Guidelines Governing Democratic Elections that compel Electoral bodies such as ZEC to carry out robust voter registration exercises so as to raise awareness amongst the electorate and build confidence in electoral processes. Heal Zimbabwe through its resident human rights monitors in all the country’s 10 provinces monitored the environment during the mobile voter registration exercise. This was done with the objective of monitoring the environment and report on any cases of human rights violations as well as making referrals where necessary for redress. In 2016, Heal Zimbabwe established an early warning and early response system for easy detection and response to cases of human rights violations. 1

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