Zimbabwe

Analysts say that proposals to have all funding and assistance to Zimbabwe from humanitarian organisations channelled through government would present administrative and operational problems.

The National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO) communications manager, Farai Ngirande, points out that it is too early to have the government controlling the funds as there is a serious need for institutional change.

Tens of thousands of children in Zimbabwe have been sexually assaulted over the past 10 years. This is according to Betty Makoni, founder of the Zimbabwean NGO Girl Child Network (GCN).

Makoni, a leading children’s rights campaigner who has been forced to flee the country, points out that the country’s political and economic collapse has created a climate in which its children have become increasingly vulnerable.

The Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) has called on Southern African Development Community (SADC) leaders to send a monitoring force into Zimbabwe, until a free and fair election to be held in 2011.

OSISA director, Ozias Tungwarara, says the call was motivated by the surge of reports of violent crackdowns against Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) opponents.

United Nations human rights expert, Manfred Nowak, has been deported from Zimbabwe on 29 November 2009 after being detained by security officials on arrival overnight.

Nowak says he had been invited to that country by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai whose power-sharing deal with President Robert Mugabe is under severe strain.

Nowak points out that, “I had not anticipated this. This is a serious diplomatic incident."

The heads of the umbrella organisation for all of Zimbabwe's NGOs have arrested amid worsening signs of the disintegration of the country's fragile coalition government.

Spokesperson, Farai Ngirande, says that chief executive of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO), Cephas Zinumhwe, and NANGO chairperson, Dadirai Chikwengo, were arrested at the small airport in the northern resort town of Victoria Falls after a NANGO meeting.

Zimbabwe's adult HIV prevalence rate is continuing its downward trend, showing a drop from 14.1 percent in 2008 to 13.7 percent in 2009, according to new estimates released by the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare.

The 2009 Antenatal Clinic (ANC) Surveillance Survey, based on blood specimens collected from 7,363 pregnant women anonymously screened at 19 clinic sites throughout the country, estimated that 1.1 million Zimbabweans in a probable population of around 11 million were living with HIV.