One year on, the impression on the ground is that there has been no sustained effort by any group, including the Zimbabwe government, the United Nations, or international or local NGOs, to provide more than token assistance with shelter to victims. The reasons for the lack of visible response are different in each case: • • • • the Zimbabwe government has to date never publicly acknowledged that the demolitions resulted in a humanitarian crisis and cannot respond to what they refuse to accept exists; government continues to insist that the demolitions were in fact part of a structured programme aimed at improving housing – yet this programme has failed to materialise in any useful way, as this report shows. the UN was for a long time unable to get beyond an impasse with the Zimbabwean government who would not agree on the terms of UN assistance; general lack of security of tenure raises concerns that any structures built by donors may be usurped by government supporters in due course, once more displacing the most vulnerable; this has further created international reluctance towards providing permanent housing. International NGOs over the last year have been to some extent immobilised by the government’s refusal to allow them access to those most affected by the demolitions, or to render assistance to those who will not return to rural areas. Furthermore, attempts to build temporary camps have met with active interference from government.7 Local NGOs are under resourced in both human and material ways to deal with a calamity on the current scale. It is the belief of the current authors that much more could have been done, and could still be done to alleviate the plight of hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans whose lives were seriously damaged by the illegal actions of their government. UN Consolidated Appeal Process (CAP) In their revised mid 2006 Consolidated Appeal for Zimbabwe, United Nations agencies seek to raise US$ 257 million for relief before the end of this year. Since the appeal first was launched in November 2005, around US$ 142 million has been committed. The appeal identifies: “decreases in the quality of and access to basic services; deepening of urban poverty; continued difficulty for people previously employed in the informal sector in re-establishing their livelihoods; continued emigration, both legally and illegally; and deepening overall vulnerability to natural disasters”.8 The CAP refers to the intention to provide 23,000 shelters for the displaced during 2006. There are extensive budget lines for shelter (US$ 20 million) and also for sanitation and water (US$ 15 million). Yet by the end of July 2006, fewer than one thousand temporary shelters had been built for those displaced by Murambatsvina, according to interviews with international NGOs in Harare. This is a 4% delivery rate to date, with 2006 half gone! Obstructive behaviour by government, which has routinely denied access to the displaced, and which refused to cooperate bureaucratically in the supplying of help, have been major problems in getting relief, in particular shelter, to those who need it.9 7 For example, in October last year, the destruction by police of the tented community established by the International Organisation for Migration in Headlands. 8 UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA); website, accessed 22 August 2006. 9 This issue is dealt with in the final section of this report. Other forms of support, such as food and blankets have been distributed through World Food Programme and International Organisation for Migration and have reached around 30,000 families directly affected. 13