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South Africa Neighbors In Need Zimbabweans Seeking Refuge in South Africa
HRW Index No.: 1-56432-343-9 June 19, 2008 Download PDF, 451 KB, 119 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book “Keep Your Head Down” Unprotected Migrants in South Africa This 115-page report documents how state officials arrest, detain and deport undocumented foreign migrants, particularly those from Zimbabwe and Mozambique, in ways that contravene South Africa’s immigration law. The report also details how commercial farmers ignore basic employment law protections even when they employ documented foreign migrants and South Africans. HRW Index No.: A1903 February 28, 2007 Download PDF, 1200 KB, 115 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book Unprotected Migrants Zimbabweans in South Africa’s Limpopo Province
HRW Index No.: A1806 August 8, 2006 Download PDF, 470 KB, 54 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book Living on the Margins Inadequate Protection for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Johannesburg This 66-page report documents how refugees and asylum seekers in South Africa’s largest city often encounter abuse by police and other obstacles throughout the refugee-status determination process. Asylum seekers and refugees in Johannesburg are often subjected to harassment, mistreatment and extortion by the police. Police officers required to verify the immigration status of a person are often unfamiliar with the specifics of refugee and asylum law and procedures. Police often question the validity of the array of official identity documents which increases the risks of deporting a refugee or asylum seeker to a place where they may face persecution. HRW Index No.: A1715 November 17, 2005 Download PDF, 389 KB, 66 pgs Purchase online Download E-Book Letting Them Fail Government Neglect and the Right to Education for Children Affected by AIDS This 55-page report is based on firsthand testimony from dozens of children in three countries hard-hit by HIV/AIDS: South Africa, Kenya, and Uganda. It documents how governments fail children affected by AIDS when they leave school or attempt to return. Churches and community-based organizations provide critical support to these children, but these groups frequently operate with little government support or recognition. HRW Index No.: A1713 October 11, 2005 Download PDF, 372 KB, 59 pgs Purchase online Forgotten Schools Right to Basic Education for Children on Farms in South Africa This 59-page report found that the government’s failure to negotiate contracts with farm owners impedes children’s right to basic education. In the worst cases, farm owners have deliberately obstructed children's access to the schools. The report documents cases where farm owners or managers prevent learners and teachers from getting to school by locking school facilities or obstructing access otherwise, generally due a lack of contractual arrangements. While the police and authorities from the provisional departments of education intervene on occasion to ensure access, such intervention has not prevented further interference at the same schools. HRW Index No.: A1607 June 3, 2004 Download PDF, 395 KB, 60 pgs Purchase online Deadly Delay South Africa's Efforts to Prevent HIV in Survivors of Sexual Violence This 73-page report documents how government inaction and misinformation from high-level officials have undermined the effectiveness of South Africa’s program to provide rape survivors with post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) — antiretroviral drugs that can reduce the risk of contracting HIV from an HIV-positive attacker. HRW Index No.: A1603 March 4, 2004 Download PDF, 568 KB, 73 pgs Purchase online Unequal Protection: The State Response to Violent Crime on South African Farms The South African government is failing to adequately protect residents of commercial farming areas from violent crime, Human Rights Watch charged in a report released today. Black farm residents are most severely affected by this failure, and black women are most vulnerable of all, Human Rights Watch said. The 230-page report, Unequal Protection: The State Response to Violent Crime on South African Farms, is being published in advance of next week’s United Nations conference on racism, to be held in Durban. It is based on research carried out by Human Rights Watch in rural areas of South Africa during 2000. The state response to violent crime against white farm owners and managers could and should be improved, Human Rights Watch said, but black farm workers and their families have much more difficulty getting help from the criminal justice system. In South Africa, where land ownership was restricted to whites for most of the twentieth century, most farm owners are still white, whereas farmworkers are mostly black. Since the early 1990s, there has been a marked increase in assaults and murders of the owners and managers of commercial farms and their families. HRW Index No.: 2637 August 1, 2001 Purchase online South Africa: Child Soldiers Global Report 2001 From the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers Recruitment into the armed forces is voluntary since a decision was taken in 1994 to end conscription. The Defence Act adopted in 1999 provides that the minimum age for recruitment into the armed forces is 18. June 12, 2001 Scared at School: Sexual Violence Against Girls in South African Schools In schools across South Africa, thousands of girls of every race and economic group are encountering sexual violence and harassment that impede their access to education, Human Rights Watch charged in a report released today. School authorities rarely challenge the perpetrators, and many girls interrupt their education or leave school altogether because they feel vulnerable to sexual assault, Human Rights Watch said. The 138-page report, "Scared at School: Sexual Violence Against Girls in South African Schools," is based on extensive interviews with victims, their parents, teachers, and school administrators in KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng, and the Western Cape. HRW Index No.: 2572 March 1, 2001 Purchase online South Africa: Government Human Rights Commissions in Africa The South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), operating since 1995, is a key player on human rights issues in South Africa. It is one of the best-funded and most active state commissions in Africa, benefiting from a generally supportive political environment and a strong human rights community. Often acting in collaboration with local nongovernmental human rights groups, the SAHRC has held high-profile public hearings on a range of issues, carried out in-depth studies of particular problems, and issued public reports that have brought unpopular issues to media and political attention. It played the lead role in the development of a national plan of action on human rights. Yet the SAHRC needs to ensure more follow-through where it has taken up issues, deploy its funds and human resources more effectively, and set its priorities more strategically. January 1, 2001 Queston of Principle: Arms Trade and Human Rights South Africa is not living up to its own high standards with respect to arms exports, Human Rights Watch charged today. In this report, "A Question of Principle: Arms Trade and Human Rights," Human Rights Watch charged the South African government with selling weapons to countries with serious human rights problems, where an influx of weaponry could significantly worsen ongoing abuses. Human Rights Watch noted that after 1994, South Africa announced more restrictive policies on arms transfers. But the report charges that those policies are not always being followed. In 1994, a scandal erupted involving the sale by Armscor, the apartheid-era governmental arms export agency, of weapons to Yemen for probable on-shipment to the former Yugoslavia, then under U.N. embargo. The Human Rights Watch report cited examples of weapons sales since 1994 to governments engaging in repression against their own people or to countries involved in their own or others' civil wars. These sales clearly violated South Africa's own stated policies. Purchasers of South African arms include Algeria, Angola, Colombia, the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville), India, Namibia, Pakistan, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe. HRW Index No.: A1205 October 1, 2000 Purchase online South Africa: Landmine Monitor Report 2000 Key developments since March 1999: South Africa served as co-chair of the Standing Committee of Experts on the General Status and Operation of the Convention. It continued to play an important role in promoting universalization and effective implementation of the Mine Ban Treaty. South Africa is emerging as a leader in the field of mine detection and mine clearance equipment and technology. August 1, 2000 "Prohibited Persons" Abuse of Undocumented Migrants, Asylum Seekers, and Refugees in South Africa Unpunished attacks on foreigners in South Africa are disturbingly common; and foreigners are regularly victimized by the South African police,the army, and by guards at detention facilities. Detention conditions for migrants awaiting deportation are substandard and overcrowded. South Africa's treatment of refugees is also troubling, and fails to conform with international standards. South Africa still lacks refugee legislation. The current ad-hoc system for deciding asylum cases is characterized by pervasive bribery and corruption, arbitrary decisions, an inadequate appeals process, and long waiting periods. HRW Index No.: 1-56432-181-9 March 1, 1998 Purchase online South Africa: Violence against Women and the Medico-Legal System This report focuses mainly on one aspect of the criminal justice system and its handling of violence against women: the performance of those involved in the provision of medical expertise to the courts when it is alleged that women have been abused. Medical evidence is often a crucial element in the investigation and prosecution of a case of rape or sexual assault. Many rape cases result in acquittals simply because, if the only evidence before the court consists of the differing accounts given by the woman and man, the man will be given the benefit of the doubt; medical evidence, where it is available, may provide the only corroboration of the woman's allegations. While the absence of medical evidence does not indicate that no assault occurred, it is essential that medico-legal examinations be carried out promptly, expertly and objectively, to ensure that crucial evidence to support the case is not passed over. Police and court officials must be equipped to evaluate that evidence and to ensure that it is properly used. The report concludes that the medico-legal system in South Africa is deeply flawed, with problems of inaccessibility, prejudice and lack of training at all levels. HRW Index No.: A904 August 1, 1997 Purchase online Violence Against Women in South Africa State Response to Domestic Violence and Rape The new South African government has pledged to ensure women a full and equal role in every aspect of the economy and society. Yet South African women continue to face extraordinarily high levels of violence which prevent them from enjoying the rights they are guaranteed under the new dispensation. Domestic violence and sexual assault are pervasive and are directed almost exclusively against women. South African women’s organizations estimate that perhaps as many as one in every three women will be raped and that one in six women is in an abusive domestic relationship.South African women victims of violence continue to face a judicial and police system that routinely denies them redress. Women, regardless of race, complain of indifferent or hostile treatment from the criminal justice system; and black women in particular face lingering racial prejudice in their interactions with the authorities. Police are frequently ignorant of the laws protecting women from violence and, within the courts, judges often discount rape survivors’ testimony and give lenient sentences to rapists. HRW Index No.: 1-56432-162-2 November 1, 1995 THREATS TO A NEW DEMOCRACY Continuing Violence in KwaZulu-Natal For the last decade South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal region has been troubled by political violence. This conflict escalated during the 4 years of negotiations for a transition to democratic rule, and reached the status of a virtual civil war in the last months before the national elections of April 1994, significantly disrupting the election process. Although the first year of democratic government in South Africa has led to a decrease in the monthly death toll, the figures remain high enough to threaten the process of national reconstruction. In particular, violence may prevent the establishment of democratic local government structures in KwaZulu-Natal following further elections scheduled to be held on November 1, 1995. HRW Index No.: A703 May 1, 1995 Impunity for Human Rights Abuses in Two Homelands: Reports on KwaZulu and Bophuthatswana Researched and written prior to the 1994 elections in South Africa, this report describes how the former South African government failed to fulfill its obligations to protect its citizens from violence and guarantee the exercise of their political rights in two homelands. HRW Index No.: A602 March 1, 1994 Prison Conditions in South Africa While visiting over twenty prisons as well as lockups in at least five different cities throughout South Africa, we found significant improvements had been made since the political climate began to change in 1990. Nevertheless, South Africa’s prisoner-to-population ratio is among the highest in the world, and many aspects of prison life remain depressingly unchanged from the years of official apartheid. South African prisons are places of extreme violence, where assaults on prisoners by guards or fellow inmates are common and often fatal. Beginning in the 1960s, ever-larger numbers of political prisoners were added to the South African prison population. Their writings and legal challenges to the authorities contributed to an international outcry, and as opposition to apartheid outside the prison system became steadily more effective during the 1970s and 1980s, the response of the authorities also affected the situation inside prison walls. In 1990, President F. W. de Klerk announced the end of the state of emergency, the unbanning of the African National Congress and the release of Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners. Since then, the prison system has been part of the general movement to reform government institutions that has accompanied the negotiations, and significant amendments to the Prisons Act of 1911 have been introduced. This report details the successes and failures of these reform efforts. HRW Index No.: 1-56432-126-6 February 8, 1994 "Traditional" Dictatorship One Party State in KwaZulu Homeland Threatens Transition to Democracy In examining the human rights record of the government of the KwaZulu homeland in Natal province of South Africa, we found that it does not support Chief Buthelezi’s claim that he is a democrat. KwaZulu is a one-party state, in which the institutions of Inkatha and those of the homeland administration are virtually indistinguishable. Only Inkatha has freedom to organize within the homeland, and freedom of expression, assembly, and association for other groups is routinely denied. HRW Index No.: A512 September 1, 1993 |
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