In July, Professor Nico Steytler, the South African Research Chair in Multilevel Government, Law and Policy, based at the Community Law Centre was appointed by the United Nations Department of Political Affairs as a short term expert to support Yemeni Constitution Drafting Committee.
Researchers at the Community Law Centre’s Children’s Rights Project were part of the experts who presented at the second installment of an advanced short course on Children's Rights in Africa hosted by Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria. The course which ran from 21 to 25 July brought together over 50 child rights researchers, practitioners and policy makers from across Africa.
The Batho Pele (people first) principles should form the fundamental elements in the delivery of housing as a public service, said , community members during two roundtable discussions on housing demand and allocation in South Africa held in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
On 8 and 9 July, the Article 5 Initiative (A5I) hosted its fourth consultative workshop on the prevention and eradication of torture in South Africa. CSPRI is one of the four partners of A5I, a four-year project aimed at developing monitoring tools for the domestication of the UN Convention against Torture (UNCAT).
The data in the Auditor-General’s reports on local government can be used, not only as an annual scorecard of how many municipalities complied with their audit obligations, but as a measure of the resilience of local government as a public institution.
The vast majority of the 300 000 officials in local government fall outside the regulations. This is according Prof Jaap de Visser and Phindile Ntliziywana, researchers at the Community Law Centre’s MLGI project in their latest article on Talking Good Governance blog.
African Children’s Charter Project (ACCP) partners (including Community Law Centre) met in Nairobi (Kenya), last week to come up with timelines and agree upon specific activities to be delivered within the remaining time of the implementation of the ACCP. Drs Maria Assim and Aquinaldo Mandlate from the Children’s Rights Project of the Community Law Centre were part of this 3 day workshop for the mid-year review of the ACCP.
Prof Lukas Muntingh, a project head at Community Law Centre’s Civil Society Prison Reform Initiative,has written an interesting opinion article in today’s Mail&Guardian on the assault case against former SAPS warrant officers David Gunn and Gerrit Januarie.
To discuss and debate constitutional and legal challenges stifling cities, especially those in federal and quasi-federal states such as Ethiopia and South Africa, Research Chair in Multilevel Government, Law and Policy at the Community Law Centre and Centre for Federal Studies at Addis Ababa University organised a seminar in June.
During the 2014 annual general meeting, the Community Law Centre bid farewell to its board member, Professor Renfrew Christie as he retires from the University of the Western Cape as the Dean of Research.
Last week, a researcher at the Community Law Centre’s Children’s Rights Project, Dr Aquinaldo Mandlate delivered an expert paper on the protection of children’s rights in the African regional system. The paper focused on the normative framework and the institutional mechanisms to advance children’s rights in Africa. It was presented during a children’s rights seminar hosted by the Law Faculty at the Universidade Agostinho Neto in Luanda, Angola.
A discussion meeting on measuring criminal justice and criminal justice interventions took place in Dakar, Senegal, on 10 and 11 June 2014. Participants provided input on the ways in which measurement is occurring in the African context.
