All news items
5 March 2015
Lawyers for Human Rights have urged the National Department of Health to ensure that staff at all hospitals are properly trained on the law around foreign nationals who need treatment in South Africa.
It’s made the appeal after officials at the Tambo Memorial Hospital in Boksburg turned away a woman in need of urgent medical care, allegedly because she's a foreigner.
Eyewitness News...
4 March 2015
Small Business Development Minister Lindiwe Zulu has condemned an instruction to foreigners by the SA Civic Organisation (Sanco) to leave Snake Park in Soweto.
Sanco has reportedly sent a letter to residents saying foreign-owned shops will be closed. But Zulu says Sanco has not right to instruct foreigners to leave.
The minister confirms that her office is engaging with the community, adding that...
27 February 2015
Two important decisions just delivered by courts at opposite ends of South Africa illustrate some of the serious difficulties experienced by refugees and the often “deplorable” way they are treated by officials.
Last week, Abdul Akanakimana, who fled Burundi in 2008 after his family was murdered by rebels, was finally officially given asylum. But it was granted only when the high...
24 February 2015
“The back of a police van is the only place that feels like home.”
This is the plight of a young man, Singejeje Adel, who has no family and no country that regards him as theirs. He is stateless.
Adel, 23, was born in a refugee camp in Tanzania in 1992 and has never been recognised as a citizen of any country. His mother, his only known relative, died when he was 10 and left him with...
23 February 2015
One of the biggest properties that will go under the hammer next month is Plastic View informal settlement, bordered by red. The yellow line borders vacant land also set to be auctioned.
Pretoria - Woodlane Village – the so-called Plastic View informal settlement – in Moreleta Park is among the first batch of municipal land that will go under the hammer next month.
Another prime...
17 February 2015
Nelisiwe Mathe does not have a South African ID and her one-year-old baby cannot get a birth-certificate, so, as a result, together they are two stateless people born in South Africa, living in Tembisa.
The 23-year-old has been frequenting Home Affairs offices for the past four years, before her child was born, to try to get her ID document, only to be told that her ID number had been issued...
16 February 2015
She lost her ploughing fields to a mining company for R5250.
Now 96-year-old Raesetja Magongoa from GaMagongoa village in Mokopane, Limpopo, wants answers from Platreef Resources, the company which she claims seized her fields.
People from more than 15 Mokopane villages are expected to march to the Platreef offices today to submit a memorandum of demands.
This will be one of numerous attempts by...
12 February 2015
Police in unmarked cars are going to "clean up" Johannesburg, evicting beggars, traders and pamphlet distributors from traffic intersections throughout the metro.
And in the near future motorists giving money to beggars or hawkers at intersections could fall foul of the law and be fined.
Johannesburg yesterday launched Operation Ke Molao(It is the law), which involves uniformed metro...
5 February 2015
LHR's Kayan Leung addressed the issue of xenophobic violence across South Africa on the Voice of Wits' programme Law Focus.
The show is aired across four community radio stations including in Alexandra (Gauteng), Phalaborwa (Limpopo), Alfred Nzo Community Radio (Eastern Cape) and Radio Riverside (Northern Cape).
To hear Kayan Leung's interview listen here:
5 February 2015
Liesl Heila Muller
Attorney, Head of the Statelessness Project, Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme
What does Lawyers for Human Rights’ work on statelessness look like?
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) is an implementing partner to the UNHCR for statelessness. We focus on advocacy for the protection of stateless persons and solutions to statelessness in South Africa, including...