Programme News
3 December 2012
(Press release)
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) on Monday briefed Parliament’s portfolio committee on home affairs on the escalating number of stateless people in South Africa.
Statelessness is caused by state succession, gaps in various countries’ law (both internally and as states relate to one another), denationalisation, dual nationalities, unaccompanied minors and mixed migration, a...
3 December 2012
(News)
The government has drawn up plans to build refugee “camps” along South Africa’s borders. This was revealed in papers submitted to the high court in Cape Town - and has prompted an outcry by human rights groups. The current policy is that refugees or asylum-seekers may live freely among local residents. But now it appears the government is revising this policy, with at least 52...
5 September 2012
(News)
Press Release: Illegal immigration detention of children on the increase in South Africa
Johannesburg, 4 September 2012 – The Global Campaign to End Child Immigration Detention, launched on 21 May, is focusing on South Africa during the month of September. South Africa is one of the six states that the Campaign is targeting during 2012. South African law prohibits the detention of...
29 August 2012
(Press release)
ICAED Statement on the International Day of the Disappeared
30 August 2012 – The international community commemorates the International Day of the Disappeared.
On this day, the International Coalition Against Enforced Disappearances (ICAED) and its 41 member organizations, pay tribute to all the victims of enforced disappearance throughout the world in various ways.
The...
26 July 2012
(Press release)
Court Orders Cape Town Refugee Reception Office to Accept New Asylum Applicants Judge Dennis Davis of the Western Cape High Court decided in favour of continued access to the Cape Town Refugee Reception Office (CT RRO) for new asylum applicants. The
Judge found that the decision by the Department of Home Affairs was taken without the legally required consultation with the Standing Committee for...
22 July 2012
(Press release)
On Tuesday, the North Gauteng High Court will hear arguments against the discriminatory targeting of foreign traders in Limpopo by police and the Department of Home Affairs.
In the case of Somali Association of South Africa and others v Limpopo Department of Economic Development, Environment and Tourism and others, Lawyers for Human Rights is challenging the unlawful practice preventing...
20 July 2012
(Press release)
CORMSA PRESS RELEASE:The struggle to keep Refugee Reception Offices open continues across the country with another litigation effort on the closure of the Cape Town Refugee Reception Office. The Department of Home Affairs has been implementing (an unofficial) policy which has seen the closure thus far of the Crowne Mines RRO (Johannesburg) in May 2011; the Port Elizabeth RRO in...
19 June 2012
(News)
SOUTH Africa is getting two-thirds fewer applications for asylum than a few years ago, but researchers say officials make such bad decisions that the whole system is now meaningless. Department of Home Affairs (DHA) officials are so biased and administratively unfair that asylum-seekers are systematically rejected, resulting in an asylum system which “functions solely as an instrument...
19 June 2012
(Press release)
World Refugee Day was established by the United Nations to honour the courage, strength and determination of women, men and children who are forced to flee their homes under threat of persecution, conflict and violence. On the eve of World Refugee Day in South Africa hundreds of refugees, asylum seekers, citizens and residents alike converged on the Marabastad refugee office to show their...
13 June 2012
(Press release)
Violent riots further affirm the need to protect the right to health at Lindela—yet Home Affairs idles. On 28 May 2012, a group of organisations wrote to the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) to request that it urgently investigate the state of health and health care service provision at Lindela Repatriation Centre (Lindela). Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF),...