The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) has filed an application at the High Court seeking an order to declare some "repressive" provisions of the Private Voluntary Organisations (PVO) Amendment Act as unconstitutional and set them aside.

The ZLHR said some of the provisions criminalise legitimate critical development and human rights work and over-regulate PVOs.

The PVO Amendment Act, which was enacted and published in the Government Gazette on 11 April 2025, according to the application, "constitutes a fundamental encroachment of rights of members of their organisation, which is an independent universitas established by law."

"ZLHR opines that the impugned amendments contained in the PVO Amendment Act constitute unconstitutional over-regulation, over-legislation and criminalisation of innocent important charitable, developmental and human rights work.

"The provisions of the PVO Amendment Act, ZLHR argues, overreach by violating the freedom of assembly and association guaranteed under section 58(1) of the Constitution, the freedom of expression under section 61 of the Constitution, the right to administrative justice guaranteed under section 68(1) and (2) of the Constitution, the right to a fair hearing under section 69(1), (2) and (3) of the Constitution and section 71 of the Constitution, which provides for property rights. ZLHR further argues that the impugned provisions of the PVO Amendment Act were vague and badly drafted and contained arbitrary powers and over-regulation of PVOs," said ZLHR.

ZLHR also said the PVO Amendment Act has the effect of concentrating arbitrary powers in the Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare and the Registrar's office and contains excessive executive interference in the internal affairs of PVOs.

It said the impugned provisions of the PVO Amendment Act have the net effect of effectively allowing the Executive to run PVOs and to deregister those that authorities dislike on very nebulous grounds.

To this end ZLHR is seeking a High Court order of constitutional invalidity, declaring section 4, section 5 as read with section 9(5), section 6, section 13A, section 14, and section 21, of the Private Voluntary Organisations Act (as amended by the PVO Amendment Act) to be ultra vires the Constitution and to be set aside.