•HRES 409 IH 
gram, unplanned cash handouts to appease war veterans, 
the costly military intervention in Congo, and persistent 
drought; 
Whereas before Operation Murambatsvina, unemployment in 
Zimbabwe was between 70 and 80 percent, the HIV/ 
AIDS prevalence rate was 24 percent, and the inflation 
rate was 164.4 percent (but was as high as 522.8 per-
cent), and currently Zimbabwe has the world’s fastest 
shrinking economy, there is an ongoing fuel crisis in the 
country, and the Zimbabwean economy had contracted 7 
percent; and 
Whereas the staggering suffering brought on by Operation 
Murambatsvina has been added to the already large-scale 
humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe: Now, therefore, be it 
Resolved, That— 
(1) it is the sense of the House of Representa-
tives that— 
(A) through Operation Murambatsvina, the 
Government of Zimbabwe has created a human-
itarian disaster that has compounded the al-
ready existing humanitarian food and economic 
crises in the country, and the Government of 
Zimbabwe has insufficient resources to address 
such crises; 
(B) the Government of Zimbabwe has a 
duty to protect the economic, social, and polit-
ical rights of its citizens as guaranteed by the
•HRES 409 IH 
Constitution of Zimbabwe and the African 
Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights; and 
(C) the Government of Zimbabwe also is 
subject to the International Covenant on Eco-
nomic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which 
Zimbabwe is a party, which states in part that 
‘‘forced evictions are prima facie incompatible 
with the provisions of the Covenant and can 
only 
be 
carried 
out 
under 
specific 
cir-
cumstances’’; and 
(2) the House of Representatives— 
(A) condemns Operation Murambatsvina 
as a major humanitarian catastrophe caused by 
the Government of Zimbabwe’s callousness to-
ward its own people, disregard for the rule of 
law, and lack of planning to move families and 
businesses to more desirable locations; 
(B) calls on the United Nations, the Afri-
can Commission for Peoples’ and Human 
Rights, and the African Union to continue ef-
forts 
to 
investigate 
the 
impact 
of 
the 
demolitions of housing structures and premises 
from which informal businesses operated and to 
provide the international community with a via-
ble strategy to address the problems;
•HRES 409 IH 
(C) calls on the Government of Zimbabwe 
to allow international humanitarian organiza-
tions access to those affected by the operation 
who are in need of food, medicine, shelter, sani-
tation, and water; 
(D) calls on the Government of Zimbabwe 
to hold accountable those responsible for this 
egregious injury to the Zimbabwean people, 
both the decisionmakers of the operation and 
those who carried out the operation; 
(E) calls on the Government of Zimbabwe 
to immediately and aggressively implement poli-
tics to promote the private sector and create 
jobs and build housing to accommodate those 
displaced by the operation; 
(F) calls on the United Nations and the 
international community to stand by the people 
of Zimbabwe who have been victimized by their 
government in this operation and to help them 
with relief and reconstruction of their lives; and 
(G) calls on the President of the United 
States to instruct the United States Executive 
Director to the International Monetary Fund 
(IMF) to use the voice, vote, and influence of 
the United States to support the IMF review of