The CAP notes the lack of comprehensive assessment of the scale and nature of the humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe. Human Rights Watch, in their December report, challenges the UN on their failure to have adequately assessed numbers of those affected by the demolitions, and listed various techniques by which the UN could have improved their knowledge in this regard.10 Human Rights Watch was also very critical of the failure of the UN to respond more effectively to the crisis, and puts forward the view that while Zimbabwe government obstructiveness has indeed been an impediment, more could still have been done.11 However it appears that in the last few months there has been a shift both in the government’s attitude and in the attitude of the international community. The authors are informed that the government is now promising improved access to those affected, and there is a movement within the donors to go ahead and begin to provide more permanent or robust transitional housing for people, and to try and obtain safeguards for tenure as part of this. Issues addressed in the current report It is of general concern that more than a year after the demolitions, there are no reliable data on numbers affected and their current status. The current authors do not have the resources to undertake research on a massive scale and this report does not claim to fill this gap, but will provide some insight into the impact of the demolitions in localised contexts, in the four western provinces of Zimbabwe. Discarding the Filth, released by Solidarity Peace Trust (SPT) in June 2005, provided an unfolding chronicle of events and an assessment of the motives behind them. Crime of Poverty, SPT, October 2005, remains the only civil society report to follow back into their rural contexts, some of those forcibly displaced from the towns. Crime of Poverty analysed the status of “Operation Garikayi/Hlalani Kuhle” (OGHK), or “Operation Live Well” as at the end of September 2005. 12 The current report builds on the documentation of the two previous SPT reports on OM, and further explores issues raised by them. • Update on informal sector: OM began with an assault on the informal trading sector. We overview events in this sector since September last year. • Update on status of OGHK: the massive housing scheme promised under OGHK has, as predicted, dwindled almost to nothing by June 2006 – apart from continuous outcries over the corrupt allocation of the few houses built. • Random survey on outcome of backyard demolitions in Bulawayo: survey of two suburbs in Bulawayo to find out where a sample of the estimated 45,000 affected by the over 10,000 backyard demolitions here have gone. Our findings are in keeping with other surveys: 90% of urban dwellers in this survey have merely moved from the demolished backyard structure into the main house, or into another urban dwelling, causing massive over-congestion. 10 Human Rights Watch, “Zimbabwe, evicted and forsaken: internally displaced persons in the aftermath of Operation Murambatsvina”, December 2005: this report extensively documents the failures of the international community to adequately coordinate their relief effort and assessment techniques in relation to OM. 11 Ibid. Practical instances of the lack of UN coordination and interest in responding to specific situations are given. 12 The government in July 2005 belatedly insisted that the demolitions were in fact phase one of a massive new housing programme in Zimbabwe, that would be the biggest in Africa. 300,000 houses were allegedly planned in terms of this programme, and 25,000 were promised by the end of August 2005: by this date, fewer than two thousand houses were at roof level nationwide. 14