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Rights Groups Criticize New Zimbabwean Law That Curbs Civic Space

Local and international rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, are concerned about the signing into law of a new legislation that empowers the government to deregister and seize the assets of nongovernmental organizations deemed to be acting in a ''politically partisan manner".

HRW has said the Private Voluntary Organisations Amendment Act sharply curtails the rights to freedom of association and expression. ''Zimbabwean authorities have long used domestic law as an instrument of repression, and this new law will allow them to target civil groups,'' senior HRW researcher, Idriss Ali Nassah, said in a statement.

The government has said the law was needed to curb groups from "financing terrorism and money laundering". Following the adoption of the law, the European Union announced that it had suspended its 2025 funding for the government's good governance initiatives

InFocus

New Zimbabwe

President Emmerson Mnangagwa at his inauguration ceremony, September 4, 2023.

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