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Published by the government of Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe: Humanitarian Aid Must Be Well Meant

30 December 2008

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editorial

Harare — ZIMBABWE finds itself in a situation where a decade of illegal economic sanctions and years of intermittent drought have combined to drain the country's coping mechanism, exposing many of its people to disease and hunger.

This saw the Government declare the cholera outbreak and the state of hospitals a national emergency as it launched an appeal for assistance from the outside world.

The appeal was made because the illegal sanctions imposed by the United States, Britain and their Western allies have weakened the State's capacity to contain the epidemic.

Hence, donors and relief agencies have been called upon to play an auxiliary role of assisting the State with emergency humanitarian assistance.

We commend the donor community -- the World Health Organisation, the Zimbabwe Humanitarian Development Assistance Framework, set up by the Sadc, and a good number of countries too many to mention here.

Many continue to respond to the Government's appeal for emergency assistance.

However, the humanitarian aid is coming on the back of a political impasse, which has stalled the formation of an inclusive Government bringing together the ruling Zanu-PF and the MDC-T and MDC formations.

It is against this that we call upon all donors channelling aid to Zimbabwe to observe one of the pillars of humanitarian assistance, which is closely associated with the principle of impartiality, and stipulates that relief action must be neutral and should never integrate into a political process. The Geneva Conventions define humanitarian action as "neutral, independent and impartial".

This means that humanitarian actors should not take sides and should be free from political influence so they can go after their objective -- to help people based solely on criteria of need.

Therefore, it rests on demonstrating that the motives for helping are purely humanitarian and divorced from any ulterior political agenda.

We strongly believe that for humanitarian aid to be effective, it must not be encumbered by political motives.

When aid is subordinated to political objectives, it can no longer be called humanitarian, but interference in affairs of a sovereign state.

Zimbabwe, like all other countries, abides by the principle of sovereignty with respect to humanitarian assistance, as stated in the United Nations General Assembly's guiding principles on the strengthening of the co-ordination of humanitarian emergency assistance.

This clearly stipulates that humanitarian actors must fully respect "the sovereignty, territorial integrity and national unity of states in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations." And the reason for this is plain to see: humanitarian assistance must never be exploited to veil non-humanitarian ambitions.

We, therefore, remain vigilant over forces with non-humanitarian ambitions to ensure that the assistance must be well meant and should never be used for political aggrandisement and/or clandestine political agendas.

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