SADC too would seem to have avoided the problem. As the SADC Treaty indicates, countries that act in a manner contrary to the treaty must be dealt with, and it seems obvious that allegations of crimes against humanity would be a reason for SADC to at least undertake some credible investigation of the allegations. However, SADC prefers, Botswana apart, to push for an all-inclusive government and ignore the problem completely. SADC has not even made public the report of the findings of the military mission sent by the “facilitator”, President Thabo Mbeki, and an important opportunity to come to some judgement about the violence of the past few months has been missed. In the absence of a credible response by the Zimbabwe government, SADC, and the AU, the Human Rights Forum thus makes the following call to the international community: • To immediately send an international investigatory team to Zimbabwe, headed by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and under the umbrella of the United Nations Commission for Human Rights; • to compile a report based on existing evidence as well as undertaking basis investigations of its own; • to make recommendations to the United Nations Security Council about the nature of the recent violence, and to indicate who has been responsible for this violence; • if the allegations that crimes against humanity have been committed are substantiated, to make recommendations for legal and political action against the perpetrators and those responsible. There are also the issues now related to the Global Political Agreement [GPA] signed on 15 September, and here the Human Rights Forum has outlined a number of minimum demands on its position on transitional justice [see Appendices 1 and 2 over]. It is noteworthy that the Agreement does indicate that there should be prosecutions for political violence, and certainly no formal amnesty has been declared, but the scale of the violations committed in the past 9 years requires a more robust approach than this mere recommendation of the GPA. Crimes against humanity require the most robust response possible, as was suggested by the Human Rights Forum previously [see again Appendices 1 and 2], but, failing this, then it is the responsibility of the international community to act. This can be no better put than in the words of Lord Millet in the Pinochet case: “Since the Second World War states have recognised that not all criminal conduct can be left to be dealt with as a domestic matter by the laws and the courts of the territories in which such conduct occurs. There are some categories of crime of such gravity that they shock the consciousness of mankind and cannot be tolerated by the international community. Any individual who commits such a crime offends against international law. The nature of these crimes is such that they are likely to involve the concerted conduct of many and liable to involve the complicity of the officials of the state in which they occur, if not of the state itself. In these circumstances it is desirable that jurisdiction should exist to prosecute individuals for such conduct outside the territory in which such conduct occurs.” [Millet, ex parte Pinochet (3)(1999)]54 54 Cited in SITO (2008), Defining violation: Political violence or crimes against humanity? Piers Pigou, Director, Southern African Historical Archives. [Paper commissioned by the Research and Advocacy Unit]. IDASA:PRETORIA.