Publications
This legal review looks at strategic interventions for upholding the constitutional rights to water and sanitation and a better use of the law in improving the delivery of water services. Of course, use of law is not the only way of reaching such goals. The review also looks at interventions that use public participation and social mobilisation to ensure that communities are actively involved in asserting their rights inside and outside the legal environment.
This report highlights serious human rights concerns in South Africa's immigration detention facilities, in particular the private operated facility at Lindela in Krugersdorp and the detention centre operated by the SAPS in Musina. The report reveals that despite South Africa's obligations in domestic and international law to comply with basic minimum standards of detention, there are serious violations of these most basic rights ranging from lack of access to drinking water to the most serious violations of torture in detention, which occur with little oversight or legal recourse.
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), together with several interested organisations commissioned a survey of Zimbabwean asylum seekers and refugees living in South Africa. The aim of the study was to make a submission to the Minister of Home Affairs to provide a platform for meaningful engagement with the DHA and national institutions such as the South African Human Rights Commission, in order to raise critical awareness and make practical recommendations on specific human rights problems faced by the asylum and the refugee community in South Africa.
On 26 - 27 February 2008 Lawyers for Human Rights, in collaboration with Aim for Human Rights, hosted a conference on the newly adopted UN Convention for the Protection of All Person from Enforced Disappearances. The conference sought to facilitate an initial dialgue between the SA government and civil society organisations from SA and the region. This report gives a detailed account of the conference's proceedings.
This background paper is intended to contribute to the discussion by presenting a summary of key issues and response options, on the basis of expert analysis of international experiences. Without prescribing a specific governmental response, this document argues that some kind of coherent response is necessary at this point in time, and sets out a framework for evaluating the appropriateness and potential impacts of different responses.
Issued annually in commemoration of World Refugee Day (20 June), this report represents research by members of the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA), a national network of service providers and research bodies. The findings have been compiled over a six-month period using surveys, in-depth interviews and a review of relevant documents, legislation and policies. In-person and telephone interviews were also conducted with officials and service providers in Johannesburg , Pretoria , Durban , Cape Town , and Port Elizabeth , and in border areas near Mozambique and Zimbabwe
The 2008 CoRMSA report is dedicated to promote the rights of foreigners in SA. The findings of the report have been compiled over a six month period using surveys, in-depth interviews and a review of relevant documents and policies.
The Security of Farm Workers Project has contact every day with farm workers. Through this, we have found that there is a misconception by occupiers that the Extension of Security of Tenure Act 62 of 1997 (ESTA) grants occupiers ownership rights to their residences which they occupy on farms. A farm worker does not receive ownership of a house that has been allocated to him on a farm. In the past, prior to November 1997, farm workers had no protection regulating their rights of residence on a farm. As a result, farm workers were unfairly evicted without any court processes being followed by a land owner.
8-9 September 2004, Harare, Zimbabwe