General/political background

For detailed background the International Crisis Group is a useful place to look. The site also has good reports on land reform, past elections as well as the current crisis.

If you want to dig deeper into Zimbabwe's politics, two starting points are the websites of the ruling party Zanu PF and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. (The Zanu PF site wasn't working when we last looked.)

For information about upcoming parliamentary bills and Hansard reports of parliamentary debates, visit the Zimbabwe Parliament website.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International track human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.

Humanitarian needs

International agencies working in Zimbabwe must tread carefully to ensure they do not offend the government, but they still have useful information on their websites.

If you want to find out about food issues, Human Rights Watch has an excellent report on the politics of food aid (2004).

The World Food Programme website has information about food needs.

Our maps show regions affected by food shortages and drought, as well as humanitarian access.

For the latest information about displacement check out the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

On health, the best place to look is the World Health Organisation - particularly its database of health statistics for Zimbabwe. The U.N. Children's Fund also has good statistics as well as general information about the status of children.

Finally, for information about food security, health, sanitation and so on, visit the website of the U.N. Development Programme in Zimbabwe.

AIDS charity AVERT has information on HIV in Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwean civil society

To find out what local non-governmental organisations are saying, check out the website of the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations, the voice of civil society in Zimbabwe.

The Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum is an umbrella group of national NGOs which helps victims of organised violence. Its site contains lots of good reports and useful links to each of the organisations.

Kubatana.net is an online community for Zimbabwean activists and has blogs on the 2008 elections.

Media

The main government-owned newspaper is the Herald.

There are several independent media outlets. These include:

• The Zimbabwean, edited by former Daily News chief Wilf Mbanga. The Daily News was closed by the government in 2003.
• SW Radio Africa is an independent Zimbabwean radio station broadcasting from London.
• ZimOnline, which describes itself as Zimbabwe's independent news agency, carries analysis and opinion pieces as well as news.
• The U.N. news agency IRIN has regular reports from Zimbabwe.

2008 elections

The independent monitoring group Zimbabwe Election Support Network has updates on the election.

There are reports on the International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch sites. The Open Democracy website also carries analysis.

2005 shantytown evictions

Lots of international agencies produced reports in 2005 on the evictions that forced up to 700,000 from their homes and businesses. Here's a selection:

• The official U.N. view can be found in a July 2005 report

• Human Rights Watch has several reports on rights abuses connected with the crackdown

• International Crisis Group offers a briefing on the humanitarian fallout