• Human Rights in South Africa

    Despite South Africa’s strong constitutional protections for human rights and its relative success at providing basic services, the government is struggling to meet demands for economic and social rights. Financial mismanagement and corruption—especially at the local government level—have contributed to this issue. The killing of 34 miners at the Lonmin Platinum Mine in Marikana, North West Province in August of 2012 shocked South Africans and highlighted increasing concerns over police brutality and underlying grievances over the government’s failure to fulfill basic economic and social rights. Bills have been proposed that, if enacted, would negatively affect media freedom and access to justice.

  • (From Left to Right) Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, former Chinese President Hu Jintao and South African President Jacob Zuma wave during a group photo for the BRICS Summit in New Delhi on March 29, 2012.
    © 2012 Reuters
    Time for Brics to stop sitting on the fence over Syria atrocities
    Brics should call for the Syrian government to permit the delivery of humanitarian aid across its borders, including from Turkey
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South Africa

  • Africa: Obama Visit Should Stress Media Freedoms
    Jun 25, 2013

    United States president Barack Obama should use his visit to Senegal, South Africa, and Tanzania, beginning June 26, 2013, to support besieged media outlets and independent groups across the African continent.

  • Encouraging stronger engagement by emerging powers on human rights
    Jun 21, 2013
    Resentment of the west is making emerging powers hold back when they could be using their strengths and experiences to challenge the world’s abusive regimes.
  • Put a Spotlight on African Women’s Reproductive Rights
    May 19, 2013
    Victoria J. married in 2009 at age 14, and became pregnant shortly after. “I started labour in the morning on a Friday …. The nurse kept checking and saying I would deliver safely. On Monday she said I was weak.
  • South Africa: ‘Secrecy Bill’ Improved But Still Flawed
    Apr 29, 2013
    South Africa’s “secrecy bill,” adopted by the National Assembly on April 25, 2013, lacks essential protections for whistleblowers.
  • Syria: Allow UN Aid Directly Over Borders
    Apr 19, 2013
    South Africa should respond to the stark new picture of Syria’s humanitarian crisis by working with Brazil and India for improved access to humanitarian aid, including over Syria’s borders.
  • What Are the BRICS Building?
    Mar 30, 2013
    The Chinese call it jin zhuan, or golden brick. The Russians have suggested calling it briuki, an acronym meaning trousers in Russian. And what about the ambiguous S? It originally was just a plural for the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, places where a Goldman Sachs analyst was urging greater investment. Now it stands for South Africa, which joined in 2010 despite having an economy roughly on the order of China’s sixth-largest province.
  • Russia wants BRICS partners to ignore its transgressions
    Mar 26, 2013

    Official communiqués on the BRICS summit in Durban are promising new initiatives on trade, economic development and technical co-operation. But Russia wants more from its partners than just trade. With concern rising in Europe over the worst crackdown on Russian democracy since the Soviet Union collapsed more than 20 years ago, Vladimir Putin is coming to Africa to find supporters of its world view.

  • BRICS: Take Concrete Steps to Help Syria’s People
    Mar 26, 2013
    The BRICS countries should call for an end to indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian-populated areas in Syria, and insist that cluster munitions and incendiary weapons should not be used. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa are meeting in Durban for the annual BRICS summit on March 26 and 27, 2013.
  • Time for Brics to stop sitting on the fence over Syria atrocities
    Mar 22, 2013
    Brics should call for the Syrian government to permit the delivery of humanitarian aid across its borders, including from Turkey
  • An end to violence against women starts with SA’s boys and men
    Feb 10, 2013
    It’s an occupational hazard when you work on women’s rights, to routinely face women who have been subjected to unspeakable violence, horrible beyond anything you could imagine. As a young lawyer in South Africa in the 1990s, one of first my clients was stabbed by her estranged husband. I held her hand as she bled to death on the pavement. When I worked as the director of the Tshwaranang Legal Advocacy Centre to End Violence Against Women in Johannesburg, I, and the other lawyers who provided legal advice at the centre, saw women every day looking for help to protect themselves from rape, beatings and other violence. Many of our clients arrived at the office with the signs of violence clearly visible on their bodies and their faces.
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