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This year’s United Nations General Assembly, UNGA, was quite significant for our country, Zimbabwe. Against the shadow of other attention-grabbing, multi-layered global crises, our campaign and push for the unconditional removal of unjustified, illegal Western sanctions against our nation was heard loud and clear, and gained greater traction.
Alongside leaders and representatives from Africa, we made a forceful case for the removal of these heinous, punitive sanctions, unjustifiably slapped on us for taking back our land.
What gave fillip to the whole campaign was the tabling before the United Nations, UN, of the well-canvassed report on Zimbabwe by Madame Alena Douhan, the UN Special Rapporteur on unilateral coercive measures. This report, which was compiled by the Rapporteur after her visit last year in 2021, pronounced itself in no uncertain terms that sanctions against Zimbabwe are both hurtful and illegal.
Hurtful to our economy and our people, and illegal in that they were legislated for, and declared against us in flagrant violation of international law, and outside the resolutions or decisions of the United Nations Security Council. They, thus, do not stand the test of legality in international law.
That the report was tabled a few weeks before this year’s General Assembly gave greater visibility and impetus to our stance against the iniquitous sanctions, which should never have been taken against us in the first place, and whose continued renewal and application compounds the hurt and the prejudice to our people, to our economy and to our nation. They are a brazen attempt to defend racist colonial rights. They show might trashing right!
Anticipating Africa’s Anti-Sanctions Day
If the Rapporteur’s report anticipated this year’s General Assembly debate, forceful statements of solidarity with us, all of them ventilated to the whole world from the podium of the United Nations, in large measure anticipated the commemoration of the forthcoming Anti-Sanctions Day of 25th October each year, which the SADC Summit set in Dar es Salaam in 2019.
This is the day SADC chose to dedicate and concentrate focus on the campaign against these illegal sanctions. That day has since become continental, with many African countries under the aegis of the African Union using it to show and express their aversion of, and opposition to, these illegal sanctions.
Thank you United Republic of Tanzania!
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