UN Authority Figures

UN Commission for Social Development: Zimbabwe

"Zimbabwe's children and their parents pick up single corn kernels spilled on the roadside by trucks ferrying maize corn." Malnutrition in Zimbabwe's children and the recent cholera outbreak that has claimed thousands of lives are largely blamed on the policies of President Robert Mugabe. (BBC, December 14, 2008)

Mission of the Commission for Social Development: "...the Commission has been the key UN body in charge of the follow-up and implementation of the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action....Each year since 1995, the Commission has taken up key social development themes as part of its follow-up to the outcome of the Copenhagen Summit. These themes are...Promoting full employment and decent work for all...Improving public sector effectiveness....National and international cooperation for social development...Integration of social and economic policy..." (Commission for Social Development web-site)

Zimbabwe's Term of office: 2011-2015 (elected April 28, 2010)

Zimbabwe's Record on Social Development:
"Women commonly faced workplace sexual harassment. Government enforcement was not effective, and there were no reports of any prosecutions during the year. .. Worker organizations were not independent of the government and/or political parties...Police continued to deny application by the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU)--an umbrella group of unions--to hold ZCTU-organized events... police and state intelligence services regularly attended and monitored trade union activities...An International Labor Organization (ILO) commission of inquiry confirmed in 2010 that the government was responsible for serious violations of fundamental rights, including the freedom to organize trade unions, the right to collective bargaining, the right to strike, and protection of trade unionists from discrimination. The commission found the violations to be both systematic and systemic, as evidenced by a clear pattern of acts of intimidation, including arrests, detentions, violence, and torture by the security forces against ZCTU-affiliated trade unionists' events nationwide...Forced labor occurred...Child labor remained endemic and was on the rise." (US State Department Country Report of Human Rights Practices in Zimbabwe, 2013)

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