Extra-judicial killings, kidnappings and torture continue unabated in Zimbabwe despite a 22-month power-sharing agreement between the country’s two main political parties, a delegation of legal bodies reported this week.

The delegation's report, A Place in the Sun, looks at the state of the rule of law in Zimbabwe since president Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party and Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change reached a power-sharing agreement in 2008.

According to the report, human rights abuses continue to occur and go uninvestigated by the authorities. The culture of impunity on the part of the police, army and intelligence services persists. The majority of the senior judiciary is still compromised by state patronage, grants of land and other inducements. And magistrates, the ‘unsung heroes of recent years’, remain subject to threats, intimidation, arrest and prosecution when their rulings displease the government.

The law faculty of the University of Zimbabwe is in a ‘dilapidated state’. The student body has been infiltrated by the intelligence service, making it difficult for lecturers and students to be candid, for fear of reprisals. The report’s authors, however, praise the dedication of the teaching staff.

Access to justice is virtually non-existent, the legal aid system so starved of funds that the Legal Aid Directorate is on the ‘verge of collapse’, and there is ‘no properly articulated or coherent policy’ for addressing failures in the rule of law.

The report, prepared by the Bar Council, Bar Human Rights Committee, Commonwealth Lawyers Association, Avocats Sans Frontieres and other bodies, makes 11 key recommendations to the government of Zimbabwe. These include: permitting lawyers to practise their profession ‘without hindrance, harassment or intimidation’; introducing a code of conduct for judges; ending ‘forthwith’ the culture of impunity for the police and state security forces; and making provision for ‘indigent persons’ subject to criminal proceedings to receive free representation by a properly qualified lawyer.