Over a billion people — 15 percent of the world’s population — live with a disability. These numbers should confer power and authority in decision making about all aspects of their lives, including to HIV and AIDS. Yet people with disabilities have been largely ignored in the global response to HIV.
To limit the violations by both sides and ensure justice for victims, South Africa and other key members of the international community should support the referral of Syria to the International Criminal Court.
Busisiwe's story was only one of many tragic stories we heard while researching a report about maternal mortality. But it is a prime illustration of why the National Health Amendment Bill, published in January last year, needs to become law, and quickly. The Bill is designed to address key shortcomings in the monitoring and oversight of the health system. Among other things, it would make several changes to the office of standards compliance, tasked with developing quality standards for the health sector and monitoring them.
It would be a wonderful gift for the many domestic workers if a treaty, which could signal better protection of their rights, was signed before Christmas.
Despite the withdrawal of the charges on Sunday by South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to charge 270 arrested mine workers for the killings of their colleagues, the initial decision to charge them in respect of the doctrine of common purpose is a perverse application of the law and that may have had the consequence of exacerbating tensions at Lonmin Mine in Marikana, North Western Province.
The new Malawi government took an important step in June when it indicated it could not host the African Union summit if it meant welcoming President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan to its territory, given that he is an International Criminal Court suspect for crimes committed in Darfur. This is a key acknowledgment of the court’s work 10 years into its existence and takes a firm stand at a time when many Africans are criticizing the court for what is seen as an anti-Africa bias in its attempts to bring to trial government leaders and others allegedly responsible for the gravest crimes — genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity
Since the end of apartheid in South Africa, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities have made unprecedented legal gains under the rubric of the bill of rights. In 2004, 10 years after South Africa's transition to democracy, I undertook a year-long research project on the impact of the 1996 constitution on the lives of sexual and gender minorities living outside urban centres. Existing discriminatory laws had been scrapped, and new legislation put into effect. The question, though, was what the constitution actually meant to LGBT communities in small towns and rural areas.
Giving life is a leading cause of death of women and girls in Africa. And in the last 20 years, few African countries, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa, have made enough progress in bringing down the number of maternal deaths.
Liesl Gerntholtz, the Director of the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, says one of the major problems they have found in their latest research (mainly in Asia and the Middle East) is that labor law does not recognize domestic workers as workers so they are therefore not well protected.
To limit the violations by both sides and ensure justice for victims, South Africa and other key members of the international community should support the referral of Syria to the International Criminal Court.
It would be a wonderful gift for the many domestic workers if a treaty, which could signal better protection of their rights, was signed before Christmas.
Liesl Gerntholtz, the Director of the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch, says one of the major problems they have found in their latest research (mainly in Asia and the Middle East) is that labor law does not recognize domestic workers as workers so they are therefore not well protected.