STATUTES REQUIRING CONSTITUTIONAL ALIGNMENT __________________________________________________________________________________ There are many other inconsistencies between the existing Act and the Constitution, though most of them are fairly minor. For example: • Section 5 of the Act does not state that the gender of the Commission’s deputy chairperson must be different from that of the chairperson, as required by section 320(4) of the Constitution. • Under section 8 of the Act the Commission must submit its annual report to the Minister within 60 days after the end of each year. Section 323 of the Constitution, on the other hand, gives the Commission 90 days. • Paragraph 4 of the First Schedule to the Act sets out the circumstances in which commissioners must relinquish their office. These are inconsistent with section 237 of the Constitution. By the same token, the disqualifications for appointment as commissioner, set out in paragraph 2 of the same Schedule, are probably also unconstitutional. By virtue of sections 331 and 46 of the Constitution, all constitutional provisions, including those establishing the Commission and conferring functions upon it, must be interpreted in the light of international law and all treaties and conventions to which Zimbabwe is a party. Hence any legislation which supplements those constitutional provisions must conform to international law and the treaties and conventions which bind Zimbabwe. The standards to which the Commission should conform are embodied in a document known as the Paris Principles, which were adopted by the United Nations Human Rights Commission in 1992 and by the United Nations General Assembly in 1993. The ZHRC must comply fully with the Paris Principles if it is to take its place internationally in the field of human rights. In particular, compliance will give it access to the UN Human Rights Council and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights: • only fully compliant national human-rights institutions (NHRIs) are recognised by the UN Human Rights Council and permitted to make statements or submit documents to the Council; • the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has made conformity with the Paris Principles one of the conditions that must be met by an NHRI seeking special observer status with the African Commission. This status entitles an NHRI to be invited to sessions of the African Commission, to be represented in its public sessions, to participate in its deliberations on issues which are of interest to it and to submit proposals to the Commission. The Co-ordinating Committee has drawn up a set of “general observations” to guide it in deciding whether or not an NHRI conforms to the Paris Principles. Although the existing Act complies with quite a number of these general observations, it fails to comply with several important ones, in particular the following: • An NHRI must be given as broad a mandate as possible, and be able to monitor any situation of violation of human rights which it decides to take up. The existing Act does not meet this requirement. The only human rights violations which the Commission is empowered to investigate are those which infringe the Declaration of Rights in the Constitution or an international convention which has been “domesticated” as part of Zimbabwean law. Most such conventions and treaties have not been domesticated and probably never will be: examples are the International Convention on Civil and Political 25