declined—has also led to an increase in the number of people operating in the informal business sector.16 The increased movement of people into the urban areas began in the late 1980s and continued into the 1990s.17 Those in the rural areas originally moved to urban areas to improve their livelihoods. The land reform program in 2000 and 2001 also accelerated the influx into the urban areas due to an increase in rural unemployment, uncertainty over tenure for a large number of people, and lack of access to productive land leading to an increasingly desperate food security situation not only for former farm workers but for most of those living in the rural areas.18 Thousands of ex-farm workers moved to the urban areas. Political violence during elections in 2000 and 2002 in the rural areas also increased the influx of people to the urban areas.19 Over the past ten years, the huge demand for housing in cities such as Harare, and expensive city council rental rates, has led to the spread of unplanned (and thus illegal under national law) cottages behind legal dwellings, including small cottages and cabins in the poor high density urban areas of Zimbabwe.20 Instead of waiting years for the local city council to allocate accommodation to them, many of the urban poor built their own unplanned cabins and cottages behind legally recognized and approved dwellings. Many of those affected by the recent evictions were lodgers renting these small cabins behind main houses. In many cases, divorced and widowed women built and rented out cottages and cabins in the backyards of their houses to earn a living. Many residents of all these areas worked in the informal economic sector.21 They owned market stalls and sold fruits, vegetables and other wares. Others owned small businesses such as salons and carpentry shops. Other informal settlements were also formed when in 1993, the government of Zimbabwe forcibly removed up to 20,000 people from a farm called Churu on the outskirts of Harare and resettled them on Porta Farm and in 16 op cit. 17 Human Rights Watch interviews with members of housing associations and local city council housing officials, Harare, June and July 2005. Human Rights Watch report, “Fast track land reform in Zimbabwe, March 2002; S.Moyo and P.Yeros, “Land Reform in Zimbabwe: Towards the National Democratic Revolution,” February 2004; United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator, “An Overview of vulnerability within the newly resettled former commercial farming areas,” November 2003. 18 19 Human Rights Watch interviews with local city council housing officials, Harare, June 25, 2005 20 Zimbabwe State Party Report on the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, September 25, 1995 21 IMF Country Report No: 04/297, September 2004. 8