Zimbabwean commission getting ready to handle complaints

The commissioners of the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission (ZHRC) were appointed in 2010 but only this year has the ZHRC been given the funds from the Zimbabwean state able to hire a secretariat, thus making the ZHRC operational.

With financial support from the EU as well as the Danish and Norwegian Embassies in Harare, the Danish Institute for Human Rights have been working closely with the ZHRC for more than a year to help make it operational.

– Complaints handling is high on the list of the priorities of the ZHRC. And even though the ZHRC does not have all the necessary systems in place to handle complaints, it already receives complaints from the public, senior adviser at the Danish Institute, Ulrik Spliid explains.

The offices of the commission are set in the absolute centre of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital. They are open and staffed Monday to Friday 8:00-16:30, and not a day goes by without somebody coming to see the Commission and make a complaint.

Training complaints
To give the ZHRC the necessary tools to develop a human rights complaints handling system in line with both the Zimbabwean Constitution and best practices, DIHR supported the ZHRC in recently organising a complaints handling workshop.

Five commissioners took part together with approximately thirty staff members and a number of national and international experts.

Two law professors from the University of Zimbabwe, Geoffrey Feltoe and Lovemore Madhuku, both emphasised the need for the ZHRC to push for the Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission Act to be amended to give the ZHRC the broad powers envisaged by the new Zimbabwean Constitution. They also stressed that the ZHRC must interpret its powers broadly to truly give complainants the redress and remedies envisaged by the Constitution.

Two representatives of DIHR spoke at the workshop, Senior Human Rights Adviser Robert Kirenga who is based with the ZHRC and Senior Legal Adviser Ulrik Spliid who is providing support specifically to the setting up of the complaints handling system.

The guests from the region, the Namibian Ombudsman, Advocate J.R. Walters, and the Chief Operations Officer of the South African Human Rights Commission, Ms Lindiwe Khumalo, explained in detail how complaints are handled in their institutions, and shared manuals and forms with the ZHRC.

– The Namibian Ombudsman and the South African Human Rights Commission are both well-respected and highly regarded National Human Rights Institutions, explains Ulrik Spliid.

– It is a testament to the importance awarded to the ZHRC even outside of Zimbabwe that these institutions were willing to share their time, expertise and knowhow with ZHRC, he continues.

Action plan in the making
Ms Khumalo stressed that even an institution as young as ZHRC has something to teach other National Human Rights Institutions. The staff component of ZHRC, consisting of not only lawyers but also social workers and development experts, gives the ZHRC the opportunity to take a more holistic approach to complaints than is possible for National Human Rights Institutions with only lawyers on the staff. Ms Khumalo and Advocate Walters both pledged the continued support of their institutions to ZHRC.

Advocate Walters started right away by spending an extra day in Harare to work with the ZHRC staff on how to solve complaints of maladministration already received.

– For a young National Human Rights Institution, constantly struggling to make ends meet and hence spending a lot of time discussing issues of resources, it was a jolt of electricity to discuss something as substantive and important as complaints handling, says Mads Gottlieb, who is currently placed within the ZHRC to handle the day to day management of the cooperation between DIHR and ZHRC.

On the basis of the very successful workshop, the ZHRC prepared an action plan for the steps necessary to have a complete complaints handling system in place.