𝗤𝗨𝗢𝗥𝗨𝗠 𝗢𝗙 𝗔 𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗠𝗜𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗜𝗦 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗔 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗦𝗧𝗜𝗧𝗨𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗔𝗟 𝗥𝗘𝗤𝗨𝗜𝗥𝗘𝗠𝗘𝗡𝗧. 𝗧𝗛𝗨𝗦 𝗝𝗘𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗘’𝗦 𝗛𝗨𝗠𝗔𝗡 𝗥𝗜𝗚𝗛𝗧𝗦 𝗥𝗘𝗣𝗢𝗥𝗧 𝗜𝗦 𝗩𝗔𝗟𝗜𝗗.

Jessie Majome issuing human rights report against constitutional amendment process in Zimbabwe.

We are hearing that the Zimbabwe Human Rights Council’s report on CAB3’s consultative process is invalid because the commissioners did not reach a quorum in line with the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission Act.

1. However, can a commission that derives its powers from international law, international conventions signed by our government, peremptory human rights norms, and the supreme law of our land (the Constitution), be stripped of its powers to independently monitor, assess, and ensure the observance of human rights—through receiving complaints from the public and issuing reports—on the basis of there being no quorum according to an act?

Furthermore, can a Chapter 12 institution created by the Constitution be stripped of its mandate to protect rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights by the abrogation of duty by the same state it should be monitoring?

2. There is no clause in the Zimbabwean Constitution that states that a commission (ZHRC or any other) cannot do its job of protecting human rights by monitoring, assessing, and ensuring the observance of human rights and freedoms through reports due to a lack of quorum.

This means that the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission Act, which requires a quorum for the Commission to protect human rights through monitoring, assessing, and ensuring their observance, is inconsistent with the Constitution, as well as with the spirit and intention behind the establishment of Chapter 12 institutions in Zimbabwe, which are meant to be independent and free from interference.

3. Furthermore that question then arises: who is responsible for appointing the commissioners to the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission? It is the President.

4. So why did the President not appoint an adequate number of commissioners to the ZHRC to ensure that the organisation had a quorum in line with the Act, so that it could carry out its constitutional mandate of protecting human rights—a duty which the government cannot abrogate?

5. Was the non-appointment of commissioners by the President an intentional dereliction of duty, aimed at ensuring that there would be no quorum to prevent the organisation from protecting human rights that maybe infringed on by his government?

6. Does the lack of quorum appear anywhere in the Constitution as a basis to nullify the duty or function of a Chapter 12 institution tasked with protecting human rights? And can this requirement of a quorum be used as a means to deny the people of Zimbabwe their right to have the ZHRC protect their human rights by receiving reports of human rights abuses from the public, and in turn reporting them to Parliament and the multilateral bodies it is mandated to report to?

In other words, can the President effectively take away Zimbabweans’ right to report human rights abuses by ensuring that the Commission has no quorum? No!

7. According to international law, no peremptory human rights in international law, conventions, the Universal Bill of Rights, or the Constitution can be abrogated by a state, its leader or government. As such, the functions of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Council to monitor and protect human rights cannot be suspended or weakened due to the omissions or influence of those it is meant to oversee.

8. According to Section 235 of the Constitution, commissions must be independent, and no one should interfere with their work. Therefore, was the non-appointment of commissioners by the President not a way for the Executive to ensure that the Commission could not issue reports implicating the government to human rights violations, in a process tailored to benefit the President?

Is this not a form of interference and an abrogation of human rights treaties signed by our government and the Constitution which mandates him and his government to protect the independence of our commissions which include the Zimbabwe Human Rights Council?

9. It’s important to reiterate that nowhere in the Constitution—which is our supreme law— does it state that a commission’s failure to reach quorum strips it of its duty to protect human rights.

10. Finally, do the observations of abuses by ZHRC during the CAB3 process, now mean that those abuses did not occur simply because an act that is inconsistent with the constitution says that there was no quorum of commissioners? Where does the Constitution provide for such a conclusion?

10. And with this attempt to cripple our own Chapter 12 institutions, does this mean our government is now outsourcing the production of human rights reports to external agencies, since we as a nation no longer have valid internal institutions to do so because the President refuses to appoint commissioners to the Human Rights Commission?