Ban foreign funding of NGOs, Chinamasa tells UN Human Rights Council

GENEVA – THE ZIMBABWE government has appealed to the new United Nations Human Rights Council to come up with a framework that prohibits the funding of local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) operating in the field of human rights and governance saying they are being used to further the policies and interests of foreign governments that fund them.

In a speech that has shocked the Zimbabwean human rights movement and proved the Zimbabwe government is far from turning a corner on human rights issues, Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Minister, Patrick Chinamasa, said the Council should set up mechanisms to monitor the way human rights and governance NGOs in developing countries are operating with a view of stopping foreign funds being channelled through to them.

He said NGOs involved in such work should be funded locally and if there was any need for assistance, it should be channelled through the United Nations system in a transparent and open manner.

“Our sad experience with NGOs operating in our country in the area of human rights and governance issues is that they are set up and financed by developed countries as instruments of their foreign policy,” Chinamasa told the inaugural session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, which is the successor of the international Human Rights Commission.

“They are wholly funded from foreign government coffers or through quasi-government institutions of foreign governments. None are funded locally. Their objective include destabilisation and interference with the evolution of our political processes, undermining our sovereignty, creating and sustaining opposition groups that have no local support base and promoting dissatisfaction and hostility among the local population against popularly elected governments.”

He continued: “In short, across the board, NGOs in the developing countries operating in the field of human rights and governance issues are not home-grown and are used invariably as conduits by developed countries to channel dirty money to destabilise governments of the Third World, especially those that dare take an independent line in international affairs.”

A Zimbabwean activist attending a meeting in Vienna said: “It is sad that Chinamasa and the Zanu PF government continue to blame everyone else but themselves for the crisis we find ourselves enmeshed in, in Zimbabwe. We as the civic groups or the so-called NGOs did not embark on the violent land reform programme, we did not kill white farmers and their farm workers, we did not embark on the brutal Operation Murambatsvina, we did not torture Gabriel Shumba and others nor did we persecute the opposition and the media. It is pure madness to make such a speech at an international forum. Someone somewhere must be deluded.”

She added the speech was meant the attack and demean human rights and governance NGOs in Zimbabwe.

In an apparent reference to the United States, Chinamasa said the reality facing the world today was that of big countries placing themselves above the strictures of international law and committing acts of genocide and other crimes against humanity. “Such impunity must come to an end,” he said.
“We should neither recognise nor accept their role as self-appointed world policemen when they are in effect the worst violators of human rights,” said Chinamasa. “All countries big or small should have their human rights records fall under the watchful and impartial oversight of this Council. Violations remain violations whether committed by big or small countries and the consequences in the event of such violations occurring should be the same for everybody.”

“There should be no sacred cows in the manner countries are brought to book or made accountable for their actions. The practice of selective persecution or condemnation or the raising of spurious allegations of human rights violations should be a thing of the past.”

An angry Chinamasa said the new Commission should depoliticise the human rights issue and do away with “the tendency of the past to falsely allege against targeted countries, violations of human rights and to use such fabrications as pretexts for hegemonic control and interference in the internal affairs of those countries”.

The Zimbabwe government, which has been taken to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights to answer to a number of human rights abuse charges, blames the political and economic crisis in the country on Britain, it’s former colonial master, the United States and other western countries. The West denies the charge saying bad governance and corruption have been the major reasons for the country’s declining fortunes.

To read Chinamasa’s full speech, please go to our Downloads section.