Programme News
10 July 2013
(News)
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says an estimated 62 foreigners have been killed in South Africa this year between January and May.
This emerged during panel discussions at the annual Public Interest Law Gathering at the University of Witwatersrand.
UNHCR says an estimated 130 incidents of attacks on foreigners have been reported since the beginning of the year.
Seventy...
3 July 2013
(Press release)
Amnesty International opposes attempts by Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway to forcibly return people to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, and/or any other parts of south and central Somalia. The risk of human rights violations and abuses remains real in most areas of south and central Somalia, given limited government control, the significant continued presence of al- Shabab,...
26 June 2013
(Press release)
NGO Statement on International Protection
Extended Written Version
Agenda Item 3(a)
A. Thematic Concerns...................................................................................................... 3
1. Refugees.............................................................................................................................................................. 3
(i)...
24 June 2013
(Press release)
The Rohingya, a stateless minority of Myanmar, have endured decades of abuse, persecution and discrimination. One year ago, on 3 June 2012, the massacre of ten Muslims travelling in Rakhine State, following the killing and reported rape of a Buddhist woman, marked the beginning of a series of violent attacks against the Rohingya and other Muslim communities. The violence of June and October 2012...
22 June 2013
(News)
The United Nations Human Rights Council says it is difficult to record numbers of migrant children detained around the world including in South Africa.
“Documentation remains quite problematic because there’s a lot of under documentation of situations. There are countries that have detention, formal detention, that is more or less easy but is the kind of thing that many governments...
21 June 2013
(Press release)
As part of the End Child Detention Campaign and in commemoration of World Refugee Day on 20 June, Lawyers for Human Rights in association with the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa and the African Centre for Migration and Society will on Friday, 21 June, host the screening of the Invisible Picture Show which documents concerns about children in detention centres. The...
21 June 2013
(News)
Refugees living in Nelson Mandela Bay had reason to celebrate and enjoy World Refugee Day yesterday as they received news that the Port Elizabeth High Court had ordered that the Eastern Cape's only Refugee Reception Centre be reopened.
The centre was closed on October 20 2011 when, without prior warning, a notice was placed outside the Sidon Street, North End, office saying services...
20 June 2013
(Press release)
Lawyers for Human Rights on Thursday, 20 June 2013, scored a hard-fought victory in the case challenging the closure of the Port Elizabeth Refugee Reception Office in the Eastern Cape High Court.
The judge has ordered that the reception office be fully functional by 1 October 2013.
LHR and the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University’s Refugee Rights Centre challenged the closure - the...
8 June 2013
(News)
Up to 200 Somalis marched in Cape Town on parliament on Friday morning to deliver a memorandum urging the government to act against the ongoing xenophobia attacks on them around the country. "We need protection - simple as that," one of the organisers, Abdullahi Ali Hassan, told AFP. Amid widespread poverty and unemployment, frustration in South Africa's run-down neighbourhoods...
7 June 2013
(Press release)
The recent attacks against foreign nationals, particularly those operating shops in townships and informal settlements, have sent shivers down the spines of many in South Africa and across the continent. It has been five years since coordinated attacks exploded across the country and led to the deaths of 64 people and the displacement of hundreds of thousands more. We remember visiting police...