However, with the removal of Emergency Powers, there was flowering in human rights activity, and, in 1992, the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) was established, rapidly becoming a strong national voice for the promotion of human rights. This was followed in quick succession by the establishment of the Amani Trust, an organisation dealing explicitly with organised violence and torture, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) and Transparency International Zimbabwe (TIZ) in 1996, and thereafter the rapid growth of a very large and diverse NGO community in which virtually all aspects of human rights were being addressed. It is pertinent here to point out that the legal domain in human rights had earlier on been addressed by the formation of the Legal Resources Foundation (LRF), which rapidly became highly influential in the realm of legal reform, legal education, and legal aid. It also partnered with CCJP in the ground breaking report on Gukurahundi – Breaking the Silence -- in 1997 (CCJP & LRF.1997). The Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) also produced a significant, albeit less well-known report, on the same event (ZimRights.1998). The most significant development in the human rights field in Zimbabwe came in the aftermath of the Food Riots in 1998 with the creation of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, the “Human Rights Forum‖. Eight of the existing human rights organisations – Amani Trust, CCJP, TIZ, LRF, ZLHR, the University of Zimbabwe (Legal Advice Centre), Zimbabwe Women Lawyer‟s Association (ZWLA), and ZimRights – came together to support the victims of the food riots. This coalesced into a formal body, now with 21 member organisations, and began the extensive documentation of gross human rights violations that has earned it an international reputation. A first step was in bringing civil suits for the victims of the food riots, initially through voluntary support, and later with the creation of the Legal Unit, staffed with full-time members. The first unit of the Human Rights Forum was the Human Rights Research Unit, and both these two units were housed by the Amani Trust. In the aftermath of the 2000 General Elections, and the support for election petitions given by the LRF and the Amani Trust, a sub-project was set up for monitoring the court proceedings of the petitions. The interest here was in publicising the gross human rights violations that had taken place during the elections, but this initiative soon was expanded into monitoring the gross human rights violations ahead of the 2002 Presidential election. The Monthly Political Violence Reports began in July 2001 and, when these were ended in December 2008, the Human Rights Forum had published 84 monthly reports. These were supported by an enormous number of more detailed and analytical reports, over 40 reports by the end of 2009. Given the propensity for governments to apply impunity for their actions, the Human Rights Forum and ZLHR continued the process that began in 1998 of mounting civil actions for gross human rights violations (Human Rights Forum. 2006). To date, the Human Rights Forum has received 7 250 requests for civil actions, whilst ZLHR has received a similar number. The rationale here was that, in the absence of any state action to investigate and prosecute gross human rights violations, human rights organisations in Zimbabwe would use the courts, albeit in this slow and expensive fashion, to demonstrate the veracity of claims about such violations and to indicate culpability. These suits, and the many reports of the Human Rights Forum and its members, and the reports of regional organisations such as the Solidarity Peace Trust, and international organisations, such as Amnesty International (Amnesty. 2000; Amnesty 2002), Human Rights Watch (HRW.2006), the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT.2001), Physicians for Human Rights (PHR.2002), and the Redress Trust (Redress.2005), amongst many others, all combined to fill out the picture of on-going human rights violations in Zimbabwe. All of this documentation 9