Harare(ZimEye)-The visiting UN human rights chief Navi Pillay on Friday requested that Western countries should suspend sanctions on Zimbabwe and its President Robert Mugabe in order to give the country a chance to implement reforms.
Concluding her five day visit, Pillay said sanctions should be suspended until election time.
“I would urge those countries that are currently applying sanctions on Zimbabwe to suspend them, at least until the conduct of the elections and related reforms are clear,” she stated.
Pillay said in full:
“Finally, I would like to turn to a highly controversial issue that has come up again and again during my visit here, namely the various limited sanctions regimes that some countries have imposed on Zimbabwe over the past decade or so. The continuation of sanctions is now opposed by all three parties that make up the Inclusive Government, and I have yet to hear a single Zimbabwean inside the country say they definitely think sanctions should continue. The reason for this is a perception that sanctions, which were targeted at various named individuals and companies, are in fact having a wider impact on the general population. While it is difficult to disentangle the specific causes of Zimbabwe’s major social and economic ills, there seems little doubt that the existence of the sanctions regimes has, at the very least, acted as a serious disincentive to overseas banks and investors. It is also likely that the stigma of sanctions has limited certain imports and exports. Taken together, these and other unintended side-effects will in turn inevitably have had a negative impact on the economy at large, with possibly quite serious ramifications for the country’s poorest and most vulnerable populations who have also had to cope with the political instability and violence as well as a severe drought.
“The issues relating to the individuals targeted by the sanctions will I hope – assuming there is sufficient evidence – one day be sorted out in a court of law, which is the proper place to deal with serious crimes. In the meantime, I would urge those countries that are currently applying sanctions on Zimbabwe to suspend them, at least until the conduct and outcome of the elections and related reforms are clear.”
Pillay who is the highest ranking UN official to visit the country to date, stated that dispite her  five day visit, camped in the capital, she would not be drawn into making many conclusions since all she saw of Zimbabwe was just the capital city Harare.
Read more on Pillay’s closing speech . (ZimEye, Zimbabwe)