Submission by the ICJ to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on South Africa’s compliance with its obligations

Submission by the ICJ to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on South Africa’s compliance with its obligations

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) made a submission to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in view of the Committee’s examination of the Combined Ninth to Eleventh Periodic Reports of South Africa under Article 9 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). The submission focussed primarily on the treatment of non-citizens with reference to the 2019 National Action Plan and on South Africa’s violations of the right to access health care and treatment, the right to work, as well as on concerns around residence and humanitarian protection for Zimbabweans.

The following are among some of the recommendations featured in the submission, which ICJ addressed to the South African government, to tackle a number of violations of the ICERD:

  1. Enact legislation that permits trained attorneys who are non-citizen/non-permanent residents to be admitted into the South African legal profession. Remove unequal practices and policies that discriminate against non-citizens and deny or undermine their ability to work in their chosen profession. Promote and advance the rights to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work, to protection against unemployment, to equal pay for equal work, to just and favorable remuneration;
  2. Acknowledge that, based on the demographics of South Africa’s migration trends, discrimination based on national origin and citizenship status carries a quality of xenophobia and racial discrimination and should be recognized as unconstitutional and a violation of South Africa’s obligations under the Convention;
  3. Halt the termination of the ZEP programme and institute a pathway toward permanent residency for the 178,000 Zimbabweans who have lived and worked in South Africa for over a decade under the ZEP programme; and
  4. Extend the ruling that found denying access to public healthcare for non-citizen mothers, lactating mothers and children under the age of six is unconstitutional so as to ensure that denial of access to public healthcare to any individual in South Africa is unconstitutional;
  5. Formalize the informal economy by ensuring that informal economy workers are catered for under labour, occupational health and safety, social protection and non-discrimination laws;
  6. Ensure that by-laws and regulations comply with the right to work and the right to non-discrimination in the South African Constitution and under the Convention.

The following organizations have endorsed this submission:

  • Lawyers for Human Rights
  • Section 27
  • Centre for Applied Legal Studies
  • Health Justice Initiative
  • Kopanang Africa Against Xenophobia
  • Solidarity Centre
  • The Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in Southern Africa.
Download the submission
NGO statement on meeting of UN treaty body chairs

NGO statement on meeting of UN treaty body chairs

A Joint NGO Statement was issued on the occasion of the Twenty-ninth meeting of UN treaty body chairs 27-30 June 2017, New York

This statement includes some reflections and recommendations, by the undersigned organisations (see list on p.6-7), in relation to the programme of work for the 2017 annual meeting.

Some of the comments and recommendations stem from a two-day consultation involving representatives of NGOs, States, treaty body members, OHCHR and academics, which took place in Geneva on 23-24 May 20171.

The consultation focused on developing a strategy for the Treaty Body strengthening process.

A report will shortly be made public.

The comments and recommendations below are structured around the substantive treaty body chairs meeting agenda items.

Universal-MeetingTreatyBodies-Advocacy-2017-ENG (full text in PDF)

Elements for a general recommendation on racial discrimination in the administration of justice

Elements for a general recommendation on racial discrimination in the administration of justice

Racial discrimination remains a pervasive problem in criminal justice systems. While some countries are starting to recognize the deeply rooted nature of the phenomenon and to compile date in order to counter it, there is still little awareness for it in many countries.

Also, Government reports are often incomplete.

In order to give guidance to States on the issue, a General Recommendation by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is timely and useful.

This paper seeks to gather some ideas of recommendations from national reports, reports of the UN Special Rapporteurs and experts, NGO reports and other material. The recommendations are organized according to the different stages of the criminal justice system: police conduct, courts and prisons. It also gives some elements to be taken into account in more structural manner: access to justice, methods of structural, institutional change and data collection.

CERD Racial discrimination administration of justice-recommendations-eng (full text in English, PDF)

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