Programme News
22 October 2013
(News)
Ali Omar Mohamed fled Somalia’s civil war two years ago to seek a better life in South Africa. Now after being robbed at gunpoint and seeing scores of his countrymen murdered in xenophobic violence, he’s ready to leave.
Mohammed, a 21-year-old shopkeeper, is part of a growing tide of immigrants who say they prefer returning to a war zone rather than face the hatred and jealousy they...
22 October 2013
(News)
More than 170 foreign nationals in Limpopo whose spaza shops have been closed by police in the past few months - as they do not have trading licences or say they have found it impossible to obtain these from local authorities - have failed in their bid to get the Pretoria High Court to come to their aid.
Judge Natvarlal Ranchod turned down the application by the Somali Association of South Africa...
11 October 2013
(News)
The home affairs department will visit farming communities across South Africa to inspect the immigration status of workers, Minister Naledi Pandor told an Agri SA summit on Thursday.
The presence and employment of illegal and undocumented people poses a grave national security risk, Pandor said in Pretoria.
"One of the things I have always argued for is that everyone in South Africa should...
11 October 2013
(Press release)
A mental health and HIV pilot project has been launched by the UNHCR in partnership with Lawyers for Human Rights and the Centre for the Study of Violence and Torture to provide a holistic support to refugees and asylum-seekers with mental health illnesses.
The project, aiming to address the needs of people with mental health problems and improve the mental well-being of refugees in Gauteng, will...
7 October 2013
(News)
Herbert Baluku spent six years of his adult life in jail and was released from a South African deportation centre only after two urgent court applications. His only “crime” was not being able to prove citizenship of any country.
His plight is but one example of the tribulations faced by over 12 million people worldwide who are forced to live their lives as stateless persons.
The...
7 October 2013
(News)
South Africa would make bigger strides in securing its population register and protecting national security if it focused its attention on preventing statelessness, Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) has said.
Stateless people – those who are not recognised as nationals by any country and can often not be deported because of this – form a shadow population of millions of people in South...
3 October 2013
(News)
Identity theft has once again reared its ugly head after it emerged that terror accused Samantha Lewthwaite fraudulently used a South African travel document when planning the deadly Nairobi Mall attack.
The Department of Home Affairs is due in court next week to oppose a challenge against their decision to cancel all suspected fraudulent identity documents.
Lindiwe, who does not want to give her...
27 September 2013
(News)
Home Affairs Minister Naledi Pandor has vowed to defend in court her decision to invalidate duplicate IDs by the end of October and multiple IDs by December — a decision that is being challenged by Lawyers for Human Rights.
The human rights organisation has brought a court application to declare "unlawful and unconstitutional" efforts to block any citizen’s duplicate...
23 September 2013
(News)
Tendai Takawarasha spends his days hawking sunglasses and phone chargers to motorists at traffic lights in an affluent neighborhood of Johannesburg. For him, and many of the estimated 1.5 million mainly undocumented Zimbabwean immigrants in ...
23 September 2013
(News)
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) has warned that government steps to block duplicate identity numbers could lead to a potential nationality crisis.
Attorney Liesl Muller of the rights watchdog’s Statelessness Project said a blocked identity number equated to someone being deprived of nationality and denied access to basic rights while their status was investigated.
Acting Home Affairs...