It is necessary that the United Nations, as the sole global political unifying body, not recognize the Mugabe regime whatsoever, for the very nature of recognition gives the authoritarian de facto legitimacy.
Zimbabwe's electoral outcome is not a given, though President Robert Mugabe would like to think so. While he insisted that the "people [of Zimbabwe] are going to vote tomorrow," that is obviously not the case; the people of Zimbabwe, at the expense of their own will via gunpoint, checkmarked a ballot that, regardless of the checkmark, resulted in the "election" of Mr. Mugabe as president. The world community must react to this election not by physically interfering with the country (i.e. by ousting Mugabe through brute force), for it is irremediable at this point, but by not recognizing its outcome.
There is no statute in international law that requires any nation or body of nations to recognize the outcome of a foreign presidential election, the foreign president-elect or any of the like. Governments or international bodies (i.e. NATO, etc.) recognize governments on the basis of international consensus.
The advent of the Kosovar nation, whose government is widely recognized by the international community but not recognized by a select few, namely Serbia, Russia, China and several other dissenting Baltic states, is a perfect example of how nation-state recognition works. A nation’s sovereignty is initially recognized by several other nations. Once other governments take note, they strategically join the recognition group. In the case of Kosovo, only the United States, Italy, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Australia initially recognized the independence. Now recognition has proliferated to 20 of 27 members of the European Union and a total of 43 nations worldwide.
Though the above scenario particularly regards recognition, it can be applied in reverse in order to regard the derecognition, if you will, of a nation.
Economic means of paralyzing the regime, such as sanctions for human rights violations and the freezing of financial assets, only provide fodder to Mr. Mugabe’s soaring rhetoric that the nation as a whole is being demonized by the rest of the world. Only by cutting off funding which, oddly enough, comes in part from Barclays, and weapon imports, which have served to kill no less than 85 people, can one stop the Mugabe regime from inflicting more harm upon its pseudo-constituents.
By not giving global legitimacy to the regime, nations worldwide will be able to deal with Mr. Mugabe under a different rule book.
Thus, it is necessary that the United Nations, as the sole global political unifying body, not recognize the Mugabe regime whatsoever, for the very nature of recognition gives the authoritarian de facto legitimacy.
On a lighter note, Queen Elizabeth II annulled Mr. Mugabe’s honorary Knight Grand Cross a few days ago, citing his "revulsion at the abuse of human rights and abject disregard for the democratic process in Zimbabwe" as her reasons for doing so.
I’m not sure why the Queen made the audacious political move of knighting him back in 1994, after he had already murdered some 10,000 to 20,000 people. Luckily she corrected her grave error, albeit 14 years late.