Human Rights are Inherent to Every Human, or are They?

ANALYSIS Gift Mauluka 28 January 2022 Climate change has many impacts on children’s rights. In many cases of extreme vulnerability, such as situations of child labour, those impacts are even more profound. This blog piece attempts to unpack the connections between child labour and climate change. Having established these connections, I then look at the…

Access to Mining Rights in South Africa: Laying the Foundation of the Principle of Informed Consent

ANALYSIS Ange-Dorine Irakoze The regime of mining ownership in the South African Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act 2002 (MPRDA)[1] is founded on State’s custodianship rights. Under this custodianship, the State regulates mineral resources as common property for all South Africans. The Minister for Mineral Resources and Energy has the power to grant mineral licenses…

‘Good Order’ as Basis for Conducting Data Protection Impact Assessment during Transitional Periods

ANALYSIS Nelson Otieno 21 January 2022 Registration of Persons Act[1] is the legislation that provides for registration of Kenyans who have attained the actual or apparent age of eighteen years or over. The Act empowers registration officers to issue National Identity Cards as evidence of registration. Sometime in 2018, the Government of Kenya passed the…

Beyond Celebration – The Search for Possible Pathways in the Protection of LGBTQI+ Rights

COMMENT Isabelle Zundel 23 December 2021 It’s international human rights month! For sure, this is a reason to celebrate the hard-fought advancements of the last decades as well as the resultant international legal framework that aims to promote and protect human rights all over the world. However, it also opens up the possibility to have…

Curbing Illicit Financial Flows for Realization of the Right to Development in Burundi

ANALYSIS Ange-Dorine Irakoze 23 December 2021 Illicit financial flows (IFFs) are an international concern since they are inimical to the right to development provided in the UDHR, ICCPR and ICSECR. (1)  Further, IFFs run afoul the spirit of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development 1986, 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and UN Sustainable…

Women and their Access to Land – Gender Discrimination in Rwanda’s Land Law

ANALYSIS Lisa Strube 10 December 2021 In Rwanda, great progress has been made in recent years, especially in the area of gender discrimination policy. When it comes to land rights, however, gender discrimination still poses a problem. If we look at Rwandan land law, we realize that land ownership was predominantly reserved for men in…

Celebrating African Human Rights Day

COMMENT Prof. Dr. Thoko Kaime, Lena Scheibinger, Isabelle Zundel 21 October 2021 As we celebrate African Human Rights Day today; we look back at one of the most innovative human rights documents in the world: the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Whilst the standards laid out in this document have led to a…

Still Fighting for the Rights of all Women Worldwide

COMMENT Lena Scheibinger and Prof. Dr. Thoko Kaime 15 October 2021 Regular readers of this blog will know that women’s rights was the focus of last month. Nevertheless, the fight for women’s rights continues. One month is not enough to encapsulate the importance, development and barriers regarding women”s rights, therefore, we want to feature this…

Collective Human Rights in the Context of Decolonisation

ANALYSIS Prof. Dr. Bernd Kannowski 09 July 2021 What is decolonisation? By decolonisation we mean the processes of replacement that lead to the end of colonial rule, but above all the social, cultural, legal and economic developments that follow state independence. The process of decolonisation can be divided into five phases, with many considering the…

Entrenching the CRC’s ‘environmental rights’

COMMENT Prof. Dr. Thoko Kaime 30 June 2021 The CRC does not explicitly guarantee children a right to an ecologically healthy environment. However, within its environment-related children’s rights lies the core content of such a right. Both the interpretive as well as the monitoring functions of the Committee offer the possibility of better defining the…