1.0 Executive Summary This report is a collaborative effort between the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) and the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum (The Forum) to have a competent, national and collective human rights appraisal of Zimbabwe that can be an addition and alternative to external Zimbabwe human rights assessments. The idea of producing a locally generated human rights situation assessment and consolidated report was born out of a realization that the work of national and grassroots organizations that compile first-hand information is often subordinated to international assessments, which depend on secondary data sources, usually official, that can be subject to manipulation and unavailability. This will be the first Zimbabwe Human Rights Report compiled by and through the efforts of local human rights organizations. The report covers the human rights situation in Zimbabwe in 2009. Information contained herein was collected from the findings of local human rights organizations and desktop reviews of source documents. Data collection and validation was done with the participation of twenty-six collaborating human rights organizations. Efforts were made to validate and authenticate the independent findings of these organizations, and to compile valid cumulative totals of statistics provided and narrative assessments. The main findings of the report are as follows: • The year 2009 saw a marked improvement in, but not the cessation of, human rights violations compared to 2008 as a result of the formation of the inclusive government (also called a Government of National Unity, GNU). • A culture of impunity persisted, and perpetrators of rights violations were not made to account for their transgressions. • The monitoring of rights violations was enabled by the opening up of political space. Not all human rights NGOs in Zimbabwe contributed to the production of this report. It is hoped that in future more organizations will make contributions deriving from their organizational mandates for the production of regular annual reports. Zimbabwe Human Rights Report – 2009 5