The Municipal Demarcation Board has the important task of demarcating South Africa’s municipalities. The South African Research Chair in Multilevel Government, Law and Policy (Prof Nico Steytler), together with the Financial & Fiscal Commission (FFC) convened a colloquium to discuss recent proposals made by the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CoGTA) for amendments to municipal boundaries.
Described by experts as progressive, the ACJ Act covers the criminal process from arrest through bail, trial, conviction and sentencing, costs, compensation, damages and restitution as well as appeals.
On 20-22 May 2015 CSPRI hosted a workshop with partners from across Africa to discuss indicators for pre-trial justice in Africa.
Community Law Centre’s Prof Benyam Mezmur who is also the head of the Children’s Rights Project was elected as chairperson of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child during its sixty-ninth session this week in Geneva.
On 18 and 19 May 2015, CSPRI hosted a seminar in Cape Town with experts in constitutional law and criminal procedure law from Burundi, Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, Mozambique and Zambia.
Prof Jan Erk, who has strong ties with the Community Law Centre, is offering a free online course: Federalism & Decentralization: Evaluating Africa's Track Record with Leiden University. The course consists of 6 modules (each consisting of video-lectures and additional material). There are also a number of guest lectures on African case-studies. South Africa is one of the case-studies, Community Law Centre’s Prof Nico Steytler has a short guest-presentation in the duration of the course.
This issue of the ESR Review in 2015 issue includes an article by Usang Maria Assim that summarises South Africa’s initial report to the African Committee of Experts on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (ACERWC), reviewing South Africa’s progress towards the realisation of children’s socio-economic rights.
For most development issues, indicators are adopted both to measure progress and to galvanise action. For example, the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – which ranged from halving extreme poverty rates to providing universal primary education by the target date of 2015 – formed a blueprint which was agreed to by all the world’s countries and all the world’s leading development institutions, and succeeded in galvanising unprecedented efforts toward meeting the needs of the world’s poorest.
Prof Nico Steytler and Prof Jaap de Visser visited the School of Law of Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya.They were received by Dr Mutakha Kangu, Dean of the School of Law and former doctoral researcher with the SARChI Chair at the Community Law Centre.
Prof Nico Steytler and Prof Jaap de Visser addressed a group of Kenyan judges as part of a seminar, which was organised by Kenya’s Judiciary Training Institute in collaboration with the Katiba Institute (headed by Prof Yash Pal Ghai).
MLGI announces the release of the Capable Cities Index: The capacity of cities (by Dr DM Powell and M O’Donovan). The CCI is a composite index that ranks the 27 largest cities in South Africa on the basis of their consistency in maintaining high levels of capacity, performance and compliance over the period 2010 to 2014. A capable city is one that maintains consistently high scores in all three components of capability.
Civil Society Prison Reform Initiative (CSPRI) is seeking to appoint a full-time researcher, on a one year contract which is renewable subject to availability of donor funding.
