Programme News
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...
19 November 2014
(News)
On a cloudy Monday afternoon, an imposing group of watchful, youthful men and women in bright yellow bibs religiously congregate along Thabo Sehume street in central Pretoria. They do so almost every day, in different streets.
Their work is partly inscribed on their bright yellow bibs - Pretoria central community policing forum (CPF). Some in the group are wearing police issue black boots, some...
13 November 2014
(Press release)
Following its recent mission conducted in South Sudan, FIDH raises serious concerns over the risks of a further deterioration of the human rights and humanitarian situation in the country if no effective measures are taken to break the cycle of violence and impunity which currently prevails.
Almost a year after the outbreak of the conflict between the forces loyal to the President Salva Kiir and...
13 November 2014
(News)
SANDF chief of acquisitions during the 1999 arms deal period Shamin “Chippy” Shaik did not hand-pick the particular suppliers, the Seriti Commission of Inquiry heard on Tuesday.
“I merely would like to place it on record that I did not in any way influence the technical terms to select or de-select any products that were offered to the various prime contractors,” Shaik...
11 November 2014
(News)
The long-awaited appearance of Shamin “Chippy” Shaik at the arms deal commission on Monday is likely to bring some renewed interest to the beleaguered inquiry. Shaik, government’s head of acquisitions during the 1999 arms deal, is set to give evidence for four days this week.
Previous high-profile government leaders involved in the deal have proved to be something of a damp...
10 November 2014
(News)
In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Alice mutters bitterly that the game played in the kingdom run by the Queen of Hearts does not "seem to have any rules in particular; at least, if there are, nobody attends to them". Similar murmurs could be heard in a courtroom in Swaziland on Monday, as the Supreme Court heard two appeals in the series of litigation cases emanating from...