IV. The Humanitarian Crisis and the State’s Failure to Respond Zimbabwe is in the midst of an all-encompassing humanitarian crisis that has seen an almost total collapse in the delivery of basic government sanitation, health, and welfare services. To date the Zimbabwean authorities have demonstrated neither the will nor the capacity to address the crisis and protect Zimbabweans from its consequences. Repressive government and extensive corruption have led directly to an interlinked economic collapse, a humanitarian crisis and growing public desperation. In doing so, the ZANU-PF government has violated the basic rights of Zimbabweans to food, health and clean water. Statistics from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) show that Zimbabwe has the world’s fourth-highest rate of HIV prevalence and has recently seen an unprecedented reversal of progress on child mortality. For example, mortality rates for children under the age of five have risen from 76 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 105 per 1,000 live births.1 UNICEF says that the hardest hit in Zimbabwe are: populations affected by serious food insecurity, HIV and cholera outbreaks as well as those displaced during the fast-track land reform program, Operation Murambatsvina (OM) and more recent re-evictions.2 The more chronic vulnerabilities include inadequate access to basic social services, lack of agricultural inputs and disrupted livelihoods.3 Maternal mortality has been steadily rising since the mid 1990’s, and was at an alarming 880 per 100,000 live births in 2005, the last year for which World Health Organization data is available.4 1 UNICEF country information on Zimbabwe, http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/zimbabwe_statistics.html (accessed January 14, 2009). 2 For more on the evictions see the Human Rights Watch report, Evicted and Forsaken: Internally Displaced Persons in the Aftermath of Operation Murambatsvina, November 2005, http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2005/11/30/zimbabwe-evicted- and-forsaken-0 3 UNICEF country information on Zimbabwe, http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/zimbabwe_1403.html (accessed January 9, 2009). 4 The Demographic and Health Survery reports a maternal mortality rate of 283 per 100,000 live births in 1994 and 695 per 100,000 live births in 1999, http://www.who.int/whosis/data/ (accessed January 13, 2009). Data referenced in the 2004 Zimbabwe Millennium Development Progress report, www.sarpn.org.za/documents/d0001702/Zimbabwe_MDGreport2004_goal5.pdf (accessed January 13, 2009). 9 Human Rights Watch January 2009