Programme News
2 December 2014
(News)
In 2010, Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a transgender woman, was imprisoned in Malawi for getting engaged to a man. Pardoned and freed, she now lives in exile in South Africa. Mark Gevisser reports on an uneasy triumph for the global LGBT rights movement
“Gays Engage!”
This was the headline on the front page of Malawi’s Nation newspaper, on 28 December 2009, beneath a photograph of...
28 November 2014
(News)
Ethiopian refugee Badesa Fokora has died in a Johannesburg hospital after suffering double kidney failure and being refused treatment for it, despite the fact that he had been lying in a hospital bed for a month. Although doctors at Helen Joseph Hospital in Johannesburg were aware of his life-threatening condition, they refused him treatment on the basis that he was not a South Africa...
28 November 2014
(News)
Lack of mattresses, a leaking roof, lack of hot water and insufficient access to medical treatment: Pollsmoor’s facility for awaiting trial prisoners has been slammed by civil society organisations for what they call “several concerns regarding conditions of detention at the facility.”
The Visitors Committee for Pollsmoor, the Treatment Action Campaign, Sonke Gender...
28 November 2014
(Press release)
The below organisations stand in solidarity with the family and loved ones of Michael Brown and those bereaved, angered and in danger in Ferguson and across the United States. The shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson and the reported mishandling of the prosecution of his killer, Officer Darren Wilson, are the most recent in a history of failures of the legal system to do justice when...
26 November 2014
(Press release)
In a hard-hitting judgement handed down on 26 November 2014, the Supreme Court of Appeal ordered ArcelorMittal South Africa Ltd (AMSA) to release various environmental records to the Vaal Environmental Justice Alliance (VEJA), and to pay the communities’ legal costs.
The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) refused AMSA’s appeal against the September 2013 High Court judgement ordering...
25 November 2014
(News)
Potentially life-saving treatment came too late for a 27-year-old Ethiopian refugee to South Africa, who was due to ask the high court on Tuesday to force health authorities to give him dialysis.
Badesa Fokora died shortly before Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) could fight the system on his behalf.
Fokora had been refused dialysis at the Helen Joseph Hospital – he did not qualify for a...
25 November 2014
(News)
Lawyers For Human Rights says it's outraged at a law that prevented a foreign national who's a refugee in the country, from receiving life-saving medical treatment.
The organisation will have to withdraw it's urgent application on the North Gauteng High Court on Tuesday morning, after their client, 27-year-old Ethiopian refugee, Badesa Fokora, died while waiting for the matter...
25 November 2014
(Press release)
Lawyers for Human Rights has been forced to remove an urgent medical matter from the urgent roll in the North Gauteng High Court after Ethiopian refugee Badesa Fokora passed away before the matter could be heard.
The 27-year-old was taken to Helen Joseph Hospital in Johannesburg after he fell gravely ill a month ago where he was diagnosed with double kidney failure. The hospital confirmed that...
21 November 2014
(Press release)
Lawyers for Human Rights welcomes the Department of Home Affairs’ promise to address the deplorable situation at the Marabastad Refugee Reception Office in Pretoria.
Positive changes are already evident with the appointment of a new security company (after LHR observed multiple human rights abuses such as whippings and beatings committed by the previous Mofoko Security Company). ...
21 November 2014
(Press release)
Twenty-five years ago the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) was adopted, and with it the world made a promise to children: to uphold their fundamental rights, to promote their human dignity, and to safeguard their best interests in all actions. Today, the CRC remains the most widely and rapidly ratified international human rights treaty in history. Only two countries, Somalia and the...