CSOs play critical role in UPR process

National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO), Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum and Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) on 31 May and 1 June 2018 capacitated 80 representatives from Masvingo and Manicaland civil society organisations, respectively, on the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) processes.

Representatives of Masvingo CSOs concurred that with regards to issues of national interest like human rights it is important for civil society organisations to speak with one voice. CSOs were urged to meaningfully participate in the UPR process, mobilize and ensure wide participation of key stakeholders during national consultations, ensure that government identifies all relevant stakeholders and partners with them, collaborate and monitor independent commissions and raise awareness, monitor and audit compliance by government with the UPR recommendations among other equally imperative roles.

The leadership from Manicaland appreciated the fact that CSOs are directly in touch with community members who are often the victims of human rights violations. Through this direct contact these CSOs are best positioned to express the concerns of citizens. Civil society was urged to take advantage of their position and produce a shadow report for lobby and advocacy and to make contributions through reporting on the state of human rights in their communities.

As part of their watchdog role, CSOs will mobilise and ensure wide participation of key stakeholders such as marginalized groups which include people with disabilities, youth, children and women at various UPR consultations.

During the trainings organisations from NANGO's children, youth, women, disability, economic, humanitarian, human rights, arts and culture as well as land and environment, health, HIV and AIDS clusters identified roles that they can play with regards to the UPR process and seeing to the implementation of recommendations made by other states.

With support from the United Nations Country Teams, the government analyzed and clustered recommendations, with a view of identifying priority issues and coming up with a National Plan of Action (NPA) for the implementation of the recommendations. The NPA distributes tasks among government ministries and departments and identifies the lead ministry or department for each action while stakeholders identify their role and come up with activities to support the implementation of the recommendations

Government and stakeholders adopted the NPA for the implementation of the UPR recommendations and created a monitoring mechanism, the UPR Steering Committee. The UPR Steering Committee is composed of government and stakeholder representatives, including CSOs. NANGO, the NGO Forum and ZLHR sit in the steering committee.

NANGO is mandated by its membership to coordinate the activities of NGOs, represent the NGO sector and strengthen the voice of NGOs in Zimbabwe. NANGO has taken on board the strategic objective of strengthening the voice of NGOs which speaks to the organisation's role as the representative institution of the sector to government, the private sector and other stakeholders.

In due course the conceptualisation of this mandate has metamorphosed in response to the demand for NANGO to operate at the helm of civil society through the coordination of various civil society responses to emerging issues in Zimbabwe.

While playing the role of coordinating, NANGO does not only represent the interests of the NGO sector but also mobilises the sector to speak on critical issues and in speaking to formulate consensus based pragmatic responses to emerging issues.