Programme News
23 January 2012
(News)
Asylum-seekers entering South Africa are no longer being issued with the necessary documents to apply for refugee status. Without a so-called section 23 permit, they are being turned away from Refugee Reception Offices (RROs) and denied the opportunity to legalize their stay in the country.
“We keep coming back here but they won’t help us without those papers,” said Abdul, a...
12 January 2012
(News)
The Constitutional Court has ruled that parents of children who have been removed from their care by the state will now have access to an automatic review of that decision.
Child rights advocates say this will help fill a "lacuna" or loophole in the Children's Act that has in the past made it difficult for disenfranchised families to challenge state officials who have wrongfully...
22 December 2011
(News)
The Constitutional Court is to be asked to shed some legal certainty on the question whether our government can deport “undesirable” people facing a possible death penalty if sent back to the country from which they fled. Home Affairs will ask the court to review a Johannesburg High Court order which earlier this year ruled that the minister of home affairs may not deport...
15 December 2011
(News)
In recent months the judiciary has come under attack for being anti-transformative. Yet the Constitutional Court’s most recent judgments reveal its true transformative credentials. They also reveal the transformative potential of the judiciary generally. The violent dispossession wrought by colonialism and apartheid left millions of people without secure access to land. We continue to...
14 December 2011
(Press release)
The North Gauteng High Court has handed down judgment today setting aside Department of Home Affairs' decision not to open a refugee reception office in Johannesburg and directing the Director-General to reconsider his decision.
Lawyers for Human Rights was representing the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants and the Coordinating Body of the Refugee Communities. These groups challenged...
13 December 2011
(Press release)
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) and the Refugee Rights Centre at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, on behalf of the Somali Association of South Africa (SASA) and the Project for Conflict Resolution and Development (PCRD) was granted an order by consent today, Tuesday 13 December 2011 in the Eastern Cape High Court in Port Elizabeth regarding the closure of the Port Elizabeth Refugee...
10 December 2011
(News)
REFUGEE lobby groups were in court yesterday challenging what they claimed was a decision by the Department of Home Affairs not to open a new refugee reception office in Johannesburg, after the Crown Mines office was closed by a court order. Yesterday’s case may be the first in a series of challenges on refugee reception offices. Accessibility to these offices is essential for the rights of...
9 December 2011
(News)
by Pierre De Vos
It is not surprising that section 26 of the Bill of Rights has become one of the sections most often invoked in cases being argued before the Constitutional Court. In a country in which many people do not have access to formal housing, one in which the property rights of some force many poor and destitute people to act in an unlawful manner, one in which such people often have...
9 December 2011
(News)
THE Constitutional Court yesterday ruled in favour of the occupiers of private land near Pretoria who would have been rendered homeless had their evictions been carried out without the City of Tshwane being ordered to provide alternative accommodation.
The cases involved two appeals against eviction judgments by the North Gauteng High Court. In the first judgment, the court ordered...
7 December 2011
(Press release)
Today the Constitutional Court delivered two unanimous judgments in favour of the occupants of Mooiplaats and Skurweplaas, located adjacent to the Itireling informal settlement in Pretoria. Lawyers for Human Rights acted on behalf of the occupiers who were to be rendered homeless, as a result of an eviction order granted by the North Gauteng High Court. Leave to appeal the High Court judgments...