Programme News
1 March 2015
(Press release)
“There are Mozambicans overseas who say ‘I have a business here but I want to invest in my home country, I want to come back to my home country’. Our goal is to find a way to help them do this.”
These are the words of Armando Chissaque, Deputy Director of the National Institute for Mozambican Communities Abroad (INACE) – an arm of Mozambique’s Ministry of...
27 February 2015
(News)
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...
27 February 2015
(Press release)
Human rights groups and organisations affirmed their commitment to advocating for human rights and constitutional compliance within the criminal justice sector in South Africa.
The Detention Justice Forum (DJF) comprises of civil society organisations concerned with the rights of detainees. It was established in March 2012 with the aim of ensuring that the rights and well-being of those who are...
25 February 2015
(Press release)
In the wake of worrying reports this morning on Eyewitness News that a heavily pregnant Zimbabwean woman was supposedly denied medical assistance unless she paid R10 000 and alleged statements by the Department of Health that “all foreigners should be treated as private patients”, LHR would like to clarify the legal provisions regarding access to health care for foreign nationals....
24 February 2015
(News)
“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
(News)
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
(News)
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
(News)
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...
13 February 2015
(Press release)
Lawyers for Human Rights has launched the Promoting Citizenship and Preventing Statelessness in South Africa: A Practitioner’s Guide that will assist practitioners in dealing with the growing phenomenon of statelessness in South Africa.
A stateless person is someone who is not recognised as a citizen by any state under the operation of its laws.
LHR began the Statelessness Project in 2011...
12 February 2015
(News)
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...