LHR established the Refugee and Migrant Rights Programme in 1996. Walk-in law clinics provide legal advice and representation, to ensure due process for asylum seekers and refugees. The programme also builds networks and is part of the social justice movement to combat xenophobia through engagement and education at community level. We advocate for the prevention of xenophobia, and work to promote access to protection for asylum seekers and refugees.

This LHR programme is the largest legal service provider to refugees and asylum seekers in South Africa. Our Refugee and Migrant Rights walk-in clinics can be found at our offices in:

• Pretoria
• Johannesburg
• Durban

To get in touch with the Head of the Refugee & Migrant Rights Programme, call the Johannesburg LHR office on 011 339 1960.

The Programme’s objective is to use the law as a positive instrument for change and to deepen the democratisation of South African society. To this end, it provides legal services free of charge to vulnerable, marginalised, and indigent individuals and to communities whose constitutional rights have been infringed.

The Programme has achieved many successes since its inception in 2003. It focuses much of its attention on ensuring just administrative action for indigent persons and communities. A considerable amount of time is also spent on refugee law and labour matters, as well as combatting unfair discrimination.

The Programme features four distinct units:

• The Labour Rights Unit
• The Detention Monitoring Unit
• The Right to Protest Unit
• International Criminal Law Unit

Labour Unit

LHR has a long and successful track record as an advocate for human rights in the workplace. The Programme’s labour unit specialises in litigating on behalf of workers, focusing primarily on the rights of low-income workers in vulnerable employment settings. To strengthen protections for to low-paid and precarious workers, we have been involved in the national campaign against labour broking. As a part of this campaign we seek to improve workers’ access to justice, to prevent employers from escaping their legal responsibilities, and to ensure that all workers are treated fairly.

LHR has represented groups of workers at various arbitrations and Labour Court reviews. LHR has also intervened in several strategic matters that have set out the proper interpretation and application of laws enacted to protect labour broker workers.

Protest Unit

At LHR, we believe that the right to protest lies at the heart of South Africa’s modern democracy. The right to protest is an essential element of a free society, a sword with which to attack unjust systems and a shield against unfair treatment. LHR stands for everyone’s right to protest in South Africa.

LHR’s protest unit uses litigation and public education initiatives to guard protesters against unfair treatment. In 2015, LHR, together with other organisations in the sector, convened to form what is now known as the Right 2 Protest entity (R2P). LHR continues to play a key role in the Right 2 Protest network’s steering committee. The network seeks to help communities overcome the obstacles faced by those exercising their right to protest.

International Criminal Law Unit

International criminal law deals with the criminal responsibility of individuals for the most serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. The main categories of international crimes are war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and the crime of aggression. LHR recognises that criminal accountability for the most heinous crimes is critically important to providing victims with redress and justice, as well as to deterring future violations. These types of crimes not only affect a considerable number of victims, but they also destabilise regions and economies. We are committed using litigation as tool towards ensuring South Africa’s judicial system plays its part in upholding International Criminal Law.

To get in touch with the Head of the Strategic Litigation Programme, call the Johannesburg LHR office at 011 339 1960.

The programme’s objectives and interventions are shaped by the needs of the those it serves. And when necessary or required we represent the experience, needs and concerns of those in custodial settings in the public sphere.

Some of the PRP’s objectives include:

• Promoting and protecting inmates’ rights to dignified conditions of detention and to be free of torture and ill treatment
• Assisting inmates to challenge policies or practices that amount to infringements of the rights to health, education and just administrative action.
• Facilitating access to justice where an offender wishes to lodge a criminal complaint or requires the assistance of a police official.
• Working to strengthen the oversight bodies mandated to inspect prisons and investigate complaints.
• In very limited circumstances the PRP engages in criminal appeal work for those who have been wrongly convicted.

To get in touch with the Head of the Penal Reform Programme, call the Johannesburg LHR office at 011 339 1960.

The Land and Housing Programme assists in addressing historical property and land injustices of previously disadvantaged communities in South Africa, particularly women and their housing rights.

The programme also works to protect the rights of residential tenants, and to prevent unfair banking practices which may result in the loss of a home.

Our work involves the protection of both existing land rights, and tenure:

• In the realm of land reform, one of the country’s most critical areas for analysis and debate today, the programme has a long history of representation of rural communities after the 1998 deadline for the institution of land claims by individuals and communities dispossessed of their land under apartheid. The programme engages with rural communities that have encountered problems with various regional land claims commissions, particularly in relation to competing claims, and claims opposed by current landowners.
• The programme has represented mining-affected communities in the critical challenge to the Mining Charter, with the effect that the High Court of Johannesburg identified these communities for the first time to be essential stakeholders in the negotiation of the Mining Charter.
• The programme also represents other mine affected communities, in cases that raises pertinent issues relating to land tenure reform, and informal land rights. Here, it is argued that power over communal land in the hands of traditional authorities represents another form of land dispossession.  Rather than empowering rural Black communities by securing their land rights, it leaves them vulnerable to mining companies riding roughshod over their land rights.
• The LHP deals with a number of cases in urban areas, the current focus is on evictions both of large groups and individuals, to protect poor people’s property rights when it is destroyed or confiscated by the municipalities, the integration of reclaimers in the formal waste management systems of municipalities, rights of traders who experience difficulties with when they must make way for malls.

To get in touch with the Head of the Land and Housing Programme, call the Pretoria LHR office on 012 320 2943.

The Environmental Rights Programme seeks to counter the fundamental injustice that communities living in poverty frequently experience, in bearing the burdens associated with development: environmental degradation, negative socio-economic impacts, and limited ability to participate meaningful in the decisions that affect their well-being.

This programme aims to contribute to the realisation of rights through public interest litigation, policy advocacy, and education and support for community coalition-building to promote meaningful participation by disempowered parties in decisions related to development.

The programme’s strategic interventions reflect the close connection between environmental and other socio-economic rights, and we are guided in this by the communities we serve.

Several key objectives guide the efforts of the Environmental Rights Programme, including:

• Promoting and protecting the rights of communities experiencing disproportionate, negative environmental and socio economic burdens associated with development, including with respect to public participation and access to information;
• Working to ensure adequate implementation and enforcement of mining and environmental legislation, including developing and promoting better policy in these areas; and
• Promoting respect for human rights by corporations, particularly in the extractive space, where the myriad negative impacts and scope for human rights violations of this industry continue to be borne by the communities that host these operations

To get in touch with the Head of the Environmental Rights Programme, call the Johannesburg LHR office on 011 339 1960.

The Gender Equality Programme uses a combination of strategic impact litigation, advocacy, and policy and law reform efforts. The programme serves women and girls, because they are disproportionately affected by sexual, domestic, and other violence. The programme also serves LGBTIQ+ communities who are often subject to violence and discrimination, because we understand that “gender” is diverse and non-binary.

We approach gender-based violence and discrimination from a systemic perspective, and take on cases, projects, and activities that:

• Promote access to information for women, girls, and the LGBTIQ community about how the justice system works;
• Hold state institutions accountable for their legal duty to prevent and combat gender-based violence and discrimination;
• Advocate for the ongoing availability of support services for victims of violence and discrimination;
• Ensure that government role-players coordinate and collaborate properly with each other, and civil society, for better implementation of important laws and policies;
• Ensure access to well-functioning complaints mechanisms, for when systems fail.

Our Gender Equality Programme forms part of our strategic litigation work. To get in touch with the programme, call the Johannesburg LHR office at 011 339 1960.