The 50th African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights ended recently in Banjul, Gambia with Amnesty International voicing its concern over the continuing struggle that victims of Operation Murambatsvina face. AI said it was concerned about the failure of the government to provide effective solutions to the problems faced by those who were forcibly evicted from their homes in 2005. A few of the victims were allocated incomplete housing structures or un-serviced plots of land under the government’s re-housing programme, known as Operation Garikai.The majority of the victims were forcibly settled in rural areas while those who remained in urban areas moved into existing housing set ups, leading to overcrowding.

The controversy over Marange diamond fields in Zimbabwe has received much global attention. This new report by Sokwanele brings together a wide-ranging overview of events, meetings, human rights abuses and environmental degradation rampant in the mineral-rich area.

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai has told journalists that the national executives of all three political parties in the inclusive government will meet to discuss the worsening political violence in the country. ZANU PF Central Committee members and their counterparts from the national executive councils of the MDC-T and MDC-N are expected to attend. The meeting follows the violent disturbances witnessed when members of the notorious ZANU PF Chipangano gang attacked MDC-T supporters preparing for a rally at Chibuku Stadium in Chitungwiza.

Poverty, abuse and cultural practices are preventing a third of Zimbabwean girls from attending primary school and 67 per cent from attending secondary school, denying them a basic education, according to a recent study which found alarming dropout rates for girls. 'Sexual harassment and abuse by even school teachers and parents, cultural issues, lack of school fees, early marriage, parental commitments and early pregnancies are some of the contributing factors to the dropout by the girl child,' said the authors of 'Because I am a Girl' by Plan International, a nonprofit organisation that works to alleviate child poverty.

Women say that ceremonies among ethnic groups to bring the spirits of the dead back to the family and settle their estates block them from inheriting property. Lawyers say that federal laws enable girls and women to inherit property, but that the number of them denied it is on the rise. Witnesses say that relatives use customary practices as an excuse to steal property because of high levels of poverty. Law organizations have launched awareness campaigns as well as offer legal services to women to help them receive the property they're entitled to.

Young supporters of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe stoned and beat backers of Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Sunday, blocking a planned rally of his Movement for Democratic Change party. 'Unfortunately we are unable to do this rally because of incredible acts of wanton violence, malicious violence that we have suffered at the hands of ZANU-PF this morning,' Tendai Biti, MDC secretary general, told a news conference. Biti said seven MDC activists were admitted to hospital, while five party vehicles were damaged.

The discovery of massive diamond deposits in Zimbabwe has led to hundreds of media reports exploring the abuse of human rights and grandscale corruption. It can be difficult to keep up to date with events as they unfold, or to tease out the key story as it unfolds. Activist group Sokwanele has produced a full report that aims to synthesise this glut information into a single report providing an accessible and wide ranging overview of events, meetings, human rights abuses, environmental degradation, and the network of the people involved in the story.

On Wednesday 26 October 2011, the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum’s Public Interest Unit (PIU) successfully applied for a default judgment on behalf of its client, Mr. Weston Katiyo. Mr. Katiyo is a victim of Organised Violence and Torture (OVT). He was awarded compensatory damages for shock, pain and suffering, loss of amenities of life, unlawful detention, loss of property and contumelia in the sum of US$12,168.00 by the High Court of Zimbabwe.

Earlier this week, Kimberley Process experts meeting in Congo agreed to allow Zimbabwe to sell diamonds from the controversial Marange fields. Khadija Sharife writes about documents which reveal the conditions that Zimbabwean diamond miners operate under.

The global diamonds watchdog, the Kimberley Process, has cleared Zimbabwe to sell alluvial diamonds from the controversial Marange fields, despite documented evidence that top military and political chefs are involved in massive looting and that human rights abuses continue.

As concerns deepen about the quality of education in Zimbabwe, parents can expect an indefinite extension of subsidising teacher salaries as the cash- strapped government struggles to meet the bloated civil service wage bill. Teacher incentives - a stipulated amount of usually between two to five dollars, which is paid by parents directly to teachers on a monthly basis - were introduced two years ago by the government to supplement teacher salaries. But many parents say the situation has become untenable and that they can no longer afford to contribute to teachers' salaries.

Zimbabwe police Tuesday 01 November raided Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's MDC party headquarters, fired tear gas at staff and beat up people in the central business district, witnesses said. Police 'blocked Harvest House (MDC headquarters) staff from leaving, but also threw tear gas at them. This is a deliberate attempt by the police to harass and decimate the MDC,' Movement for Democratic Change spokesman Douglas Mwonzora told AFP.

The team drafting the constitution, the Constitution Select Committee (Copac) has said that the final phase of the drafting process will start next month. Copac co-chairperson Munyaradzi Paul Mangwana said that the document would be put to a referendum early next year, paving the way for harmonised elections.

A $430-million fund which will give Zimbabwean children and pregnant women free medical care at public hospitals was launched on Monday with the help of the European Union and Unicef. 'The issue of user fees is one of the biggest barriers to poor women and children's access to life-saving and critical health care in Zimbabwe,' said Peter Salama, the Unicef country representative. The Zimbabwe health care system, which has collapsed from years of economic crisis, requires $436-million over the next five years to improve capacity, particularly the delivery of maternal care, according to Unicef.

Zimbabwe's Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa has rejected calls by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to enshrine gay rights in a new constitution. Chinamasa told the BBC that gay rights could not be 'smuggled' into the constitution because most Zimbabweans opposed it. Earlier, Tsvangirai told the BBC that gay rights were a 'human right' that should be respected.

Doreen Sibanda, 27, was among the first undocumented Zimbabwean nationals to be deported in early October 2011 after South Africa apparently lifted its more than two year moratorium on expulsions imposed following widespread xenophobic violence in 2008. 'I was on my way to the shops to buy porridge for my four-year-old son when I was stopped by the police [in the inner city Johannesburg suburb of Berea] who asked for my passport and residence permit. I lied to them that I had forgotten them at home but they never gave me a chance,' Sibanda told IRIN.

The Zimbabwean government through its Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Hon. Patrick Chinamasa has only accepted 81 recommendations to improve the country’s precarious human rights situation and to improve compliance with international human rights instruments and obligations out of 177 recommendations which were tabled following Zimbabwe’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) held on 10 October 2011 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Minister of Justice and Legal Affairs Patrick Chinamasa on 12 October 2011 said the draconian Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and the Public Order and Security Act will not be amended. In his concluding remarks in Geneva, Switzerland, on the occasion of the adoption of Zimbabwe's Universal Periodic Review (UPR) report by the working group of the Human Rights Council (HRC), Chinamasa defended the two laws saying they were there to stay.

Senior officials of the Hawks and the South African Police Services are conducting an illegal 'rendition' with their Zimbabwean counterparts, the Sunday Times has reported. The newspaper reported that the government agencies arrest 'suspects' and illegally send them across the Beit Bridge border to be murdered. Rendition is the illegal kidnapping and transfer of prisoner from one country to another.

Charles Nhamo Rupare discusses xenophobic attacks in South Africa and the concept of ubuntu. 'We are all children of Afrika and our future is in our actions and relations,' he writes.