ZimRights indaba set for Bulawayo

News
THE Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) is due to hold a one-day human rights indaba in Bulawayo today to facilitate citizen participation to ensure the country adhere to human rights as enshrined in the Constitution.

THE Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights) is due to hold a one-day human rights indaba in Bulawayo today to facilitate citizen participation to ensure the country adhere to human rights as enshrined in the Constitution. NQOBANI NDLOVU STAFF REPORTER

“The purpose of the indaba is to increase citizen participation in the attainment of socioeconomic rights which are important in the fight against poverty, inequality and marginalisation,” ZimRights director Okay Machisa said in a statement.

He said the indaba would seek to tackle how language could be used as a tool to foster human rights and socioeconomic development, the role of the media in promoting accountability, twining the Bill of Rights and ZimAsset, constitutionalism and challenges and opportunities for women and children in the socioeconomic development agenda.

Amnesty International late last year said Zimbabwe still had a bad human rights record, citing arbitrary arrests of human rights activists and the eviction and demolition of people’s homes in Harare.

In a report titled: Human Rights Agenda for the New Government — 2013 to 2018 Amnesty International urged the government to take significant steps to improve the country’s rights record by aligning existing laws to the new Constitution.

However, the Zanu PF government denies as untrue the findings that Zimbabwe has a bad human rights record.

Instead, the government used the findings to accuse the West and the European Union of gross human rights violations against ordinary Zimbabweans by imposing sanctions.