THE STATE OF HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT |ZIMBABWE I 2017 facilities. The same is true of the passport office. The High Court of Zimbabwe showed readiness and capacity in all three categories. Rotten Row Courthouse and the Master of High Court checked one out of three. Harare City Council’s main facilities of service showed lack of readiness and capacity to assist the deaf and mute. These results show that it is difficult to survive in Harare if you are a person living with a disability. A special report will be released with more details on this aspect. Specific Cases As the country prepares for the 2018 elections (expected between 22 July and 21 August), PWDs remain excluded from voting with privacy. The Electoral Act requires that assistance be granted to visually handicapped persons in voting essentially denying such persons of their privacy and exposing them to harassment after the vote. Many buildings in cities remain inaccessible to persons with disabilities.These include Cleveland House, the service centre for the city of Harare. The Forum noted that all the country’s major banks did not have disability friendly service points making their services inaccessible to persons with special needs. At policy level, Zimbabwe has not yet ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) 52 Section 193 of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act provides for different conditions for the detention of accused persons proven or suspected to be deaf or mute in a manner that shows unconstitutional discrimination and unnecessarily causes suffering on such persons. On 26 April 2017, a group of persons living with disabilities were evicted from a flat run by Leonard Cheshire Disability Zimbabwe Trust in the Avenues of Harare. 52 On 23 June 2017 268 people (67 households) in Kings-dale had their houses demolished under a directive from Cuthbert Mupame. The reason surrounding the demolition was the failure to pay inflated monthly instalments from $5 to the $27. It is alleged that Mupame destroyed these structures with the help from the Zimbabwe Republic Police. The people who included children, women and the elderly were left homeless and in desperate need for shelter. Violation of the right to access to information for example the national budget was not translated into sign language Right to a fair hearing continued to be violated because of the lack of sign language translators and Braille services in courts and the differences between official sign language and other variants Deaf people are not represented in parliament and major political platforms. Violation of the right to health - there is communication breakdown in health care systems as nurses and other hospital staff have no training in sign language. https://www.newsday.co.zw/2017/04/evicted-people-disabilities-refused-help/ 39