inflation and chronic shortages in imported fuel and consumer goods.
Charged with committing numerous human rights abuses and running the economy of his own nation into the ground, Mugabe found himself beset with a wide range of sanctions imposed by the US government and European Union against his person and Zimbabwe at large.
In 2002, the nation was suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations due to the reckless farm seizures and blatant election tampering. The following year, Zimbabwean officials voluntarily terminated its Commonwealth membership.
Following fraudulent elections in 2005, the government initiated "Operation Murambatsvina", an effort to crack down on illegal markets and slums emerging in towns and cities. This action has been widely condemned by opposition and international figures, who attest to the fact that it has left a substantial section of urban poor homeless. The Zimbabwean government has described the operation as an attempt to provide decent housing to the population, although authorities have yet to properly substantiate their claims.
Zimbabwe's economic and food crisis, described by some observers as the country's worst humanitarian crisis since independence, has been attributed in varying degrees to the government's price controls and farm confiscations, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and a drought affecting the entire region.
Life expectancy at birth for males in Zimbabwe dramatically declined since 1990 from 60 to 42 years, among the lowest in the world. The amount of time a Zimbabwean citizen was expected to live in good health from birth was 39 years in 2010. Concurrently, the infant mortality rate has climbed from 53 to 81 deaths per 1,000 live births in the same period. As of 2009, 1.2 million Zimbabweans live with HIV.
On 29 March 2008, Zimbabwe held a presidential election along with a parliamentary election. The three major candidates were Robert Mugabe, Morgan Tsvangirai of
