6 Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women Pre-session working group – Zimbabwe and was seriously under-funded. Some victims who were beneficiaries of the programme were allocated unfinished houses with no access to water, sanitation, roads and other services. Most of the beneficiaries were allocated bare plots of land which were not serviced, on which they erected makeshift plastic shelters with assistance from humanitarian organisations. No other assistance has been offered by the government to the hundreds of thousands of victims. Six years on, the majority of the victims still live in these worn out structures. Amnesty International’s submission focuses on:
Violations of the right to work by the destruction of livelihoods (article 11); Violation of the right to health of pregnant women and girls in Operation Garikai settlements in Zimbabwe using the case study of Hopley settlement in Harare1 (article 12); and

The impact of arbitrary arrest and unlawful detention on women human rights defenders who engage in peaceful activism to highlight the negative impact of the economic decline on women in Zimbabwe (articles 2 and 7) 2. RIGHT TO WORK (ARTICLE 11) Operation Murambatsvina had a disproportionate effect on women’s right to work in Zimbabwe. The programme destroyed women’s sources of livelihood when markets and informal businesses were targeted for demolition, denying thousands of women their right to gain a living through work and their right to an adequate standard of living. Women trading on the informal markets were already amongst the poorest in Zimbabwe, they were thus driven deeper into poverty when the markets were destroyed during the mass forced evictions. The clampdown on informal traders continued even after Operation Murambatsvina ended. Rather than taking steps to restore women’s livelihoods destroyed during Operation Murambatsvina, Zimbabwean authorities to date continue to harass, arrest and seize the goods of vendors and other informal workers.2 As a result women are compelled to take on any income-generating activities that are available to them, including arduous physical labour, such as collecting firewood, even during the later stages of pregnancy, or in some cases engaging in commercial sex work to supplement their incomes, thereby exposing themselves to HIV infection. 1 Hopley settlement (also known as Hopley Farm) has an estimated 5,000 residents and is located about 10km south of Harare. Most of its residents are victims of Operation Murambatsvina. 2 Zimbabwe: No Justice for the victims of forced evictions, Amnesty International, 8 September 2006, pp24 -27 Amnesty International June 2011 Index: AFR 46/014/2011