September 26, 2023

The Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA) has been working with mining-affected communities by helping them to assert and claim their environmental, economic, social, and cultural rights within the natural resources and environmental sectors. This has been done to ensure that environmental and natural resources management policies, strategies, and legal frameworks respond positively to the needs of marginalized women, men, and youths living in urban and rural communities. The ZELA paralegal-community monitors’ program was established in 2017 to guarantee community self-reliance through awareness of laws and relevant procedures in cases of environmental rights violations.

The role of Environmental Human Rights Defenders (EHRDs), who are sometimes paralegals and community monitors, cannot be overemphasized. EHRDs peacefully strive to protect the environment, including water, air, land, flora, and fauna. They play a key role in protecting the environment and voicing the concerns of those disproportionately impacted by environmental harm. Paralegals and community monitors are generally more accessible than lawyers and can deal with environmental and human rights issues that emerge on the ground more promptly.

It is imperative to strengthen their basic knowledge of the law, the legal system, and its procedures so that they can meaningfully and effectively engage with duty-bearers, which include local authorities and service delivery agencies. Further, for effective access to remedies, there is a need to strengthen data collection. It is on this pretext that on Tuesday, September 26, 2023, ZELA managed to convene a capacity-building workshop to further enhance the skills of the EHRDs it works with in the various communities and to increase access to environmental justice by mineral host communities in Zimbabwe, which is proving to be beneficial in information dissemination and access to legal services in real-time.