Publications
LHR 's submission to the Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of Migrants on the situation of immigration detention in South Africa.
LHR has drafted a briefing paper outlining the need for South Africa to sign and domesticate both the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness. This briefing was presented to the Department of International Relations and Cooperation on the 11th August 2011.
LHR has considered the legal position as well as South Africa's obligations when rejecting asylum seekers who have passed through another safe country without applying for asylum in that country.
The Public Protector has compiled a report based on her investigation on allegations of failure to register the birth of a child and the naturalisation of the mother by the Northern Cape Department of Home Affairs.
Birth registration refers to the permanent and official recording of a child's existence by an administrative branch of the state. Birth registration is a human right. It represents the starting point for the recognition of a person’s legal existence and is thus the key to the realisation of nearly all other fundamental rights and practical needs. Amongst these are the right to a nationality, education, healthcare and protection from child labour and trafficking. Human rights are universal. They are afforded to all human beings without discrimination. Birth registration ought to occur, without discrimination, as a result of birth on a state’s teraritory. Children born to asylum-seekers, refugees and undocumented foreigners hold this right equally to children of citizens. South Africa has made a clear commitment to these principles through ratification of the relevant human rights treaties, as well as through constitutional and other legal standards (outlined below). To be sure that we honour this commitment, it is important that all children born on the territory are issued with a birth certificate without discrimination as to their or their parents’ legal status in this country.
LHR’s Detention Monitoring Programme has been monitoring the arrest, detention and deportation of foreign nationals at local detention centres, primarily the Lindela Holding Facility and the Musina Detention Centre (SMG), for the past decade. In certain instances, the organisation also intervenes in detentions occurring at police stations, prisons, or at the OR Tambo International Airport. The Detention Monitoring Programme operates mainly from LHR’s Johannesburg and Musina offices. LHR’s law clinics in Pretoria and Durban also assist asylum seekers who are detained at police stations or at the refugee reception offices.
Lawyers for Human Rights is the only organisation that regularly visits Lindela and provides pro bono legal representation to detainees. Through these consultations, we are able to identify immigration trends and legal issues confronting detainees, as well as shifts in the policies of the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) and the South African Police Services (SAPS). Our consultations with detainees also provide us with information about conditions at the facility and the treatment of detainees—an important window into the detention experience given the lack of any independent monitoring.
This report is based on LHR’s findings through its consultations with detainees, and its ongoing litigation brought against the Department in the period from January 2009 to August 2010.
A report released by the Forced Migration Studies Programme (FMSP) at Wits University titled “Protection and Pragmatism: Addressing Administrative Failures in South Africa’s Refugee Status Determination Decisions” identifies serious flaws in South Africa’s refugee status determination process.
The review of 324 negative status determination decisions from all of the country’s permanent Refugee Reception Offices shows that these offices are unable to perform their primary function—investigating the validity of asylum claims and distinguishing those individuals who need protection as refugees from those who do not. The quality of status determination decisions has been severely affected by efforts to process hundreds of asylum applications daily. As a result, individuals with valid asylum claims are being returned to life threatening situations, in violation of South African and international law. In one instance, a woman who fled civil war in the DRC after being kidnapped and brutally raped by rebel forces was told that she suffered no harm.
According to Roni Amit, a researcher with FMSP and author of the report, “The problems are leading to significant human rights violations. Individuals are being denied refugee status without having their asylum claims properly considered, which is what the system is set up to do, and what it is required to do by law. Apart from the rights violations, taxpayer money is being devoted to a system that is not carrying out its core function.”
The report recommends several measures that can be implemented immediately, while broader immigration policy reforms are being developed. For the full report, please see: www.migration.org.za
For more information, contact Dr. Roni Amit, Researcher, Forced Migration Studies Programme, Cell: 076 779 2118 / roniamit [at] gmail [dot] com (roniamit [at] gmail [dot] com)