Full preliminary findings of the UN special rapporteur on sanctions to Zimbabwe

In terms of access to credit, the price of loans for Zimbabwe is reportedly 7% due to risk perceptions and over-compliance; the average is 0.5% in other countries. Most commercial loans are for less than 10 years. The IMF classifies Zimbabwe “in debt distress” with large and longstanding arrears to international financial institutions and commercial creditors. By the end of 2018, Zimbabwe had accumulated more than 8 billion USD in foreign debt and about 6.9 billion ZW dollars in domestic debt. In August 2021, the IMF allocated 961 million USD in special drawing rights, of which 500 million will be used to support its currency and the rest for Zimbabwe’s COVID-19 response. No funds will be used to alleviate its debt. It is reported that since 2001, Zimbabwe might have lost access to more than 100 billion USD in bilateral donor support, international commercial loans, and grants and loans from the IMF, the World Bank and the African Development Bank. Due to this, Zimbabwe had a reported 34 billion USD funding gap in infrastructure financing in 2017. The inability to generate additional revenue and the country’s poor economic performance has limited the government’s ability to provide basic social services.

Humanitarian aid is reported to be provided by a number of interlocutors including the United Nations agencies, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Japan and other international actors in cooperation with the Government of Zimbabwe and aimed in the first instance at humanitarian relief.

Assessment of the legal basis for imposition of sanctions:

The Special Rapporteur stresses that under international law unilateral measures without or beyond authorization of the UN Security Council may only be taken when they comply with states’ international legal obligations (retortions) or in the course of countermeasures in accordance with the rules of law of international responsibility: to be applied against states for violations of international legal norms, to aim to restore the fulfillment of international obligations, to be proportional to the breach occurred, to be necessary, and to not violate fundamental human rights.

Unilateral sanctions imposed against natural and legal persons in Zimbabwe as well as secondary sanctions and extensive over-compliance by banks and third-country companies raise serious concerns about their correspondence with international legal standards.

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