Children’s Rights Project

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10566/1372

The Children’s Rights Project works towards the recognition and protection of children’s rights in all spheres of society, with a particular juvenile justice; children in especially difficult circumstances; the legal position of children in family life or alternative care; structures of governance relevant to children's rights; constitutional law and legislative law reform.

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Curative Measures in Law for Financially Distressed Municipalities
(University of the Western Cape, 2026) Denyssen, Shuaib
This search for curative measures was initiated by the need for a law that regulates how the national and provincial government levels intervene in municipalities that cannot or do not fulfil their executive obligations (section 139(8) of the Constitution of South Africa). However, informed by current South African and international scholarship, this study argues for sparingly using law and regulation to solve implementation problems. It investigates the current legal framework by comparing international research on how the problem is addressed in other multilevel governments. It uses emerging insights to develop analytical tools to analyse the intergovernmental fiscal system and to propose legal solutions to address financially distressed municipalities. Unpacking the South African intergovernmental fiscal system helped to refine the analytic tool and apply it to the Intergovernmental Monitoring, Support, and Intervention Bill (IMSI). The analysis assesses the extent to which the Bill could serve as a curative measure in law. It assists in identifying existing curative measures in the intergovernmental fiscal system. The analysis showed that a nationally coordinated monitoring system with early warning mechanisms already exists in the law on paper. However, fragmentation and coordination weaknesses in how the national level (specifically the National Treasury, the Department of Cooperative Governance (DCOG), and their provincial equivalents) use these critical aspects result in them emphasising intervention (often too late) rather than consistent monitoring and support. The study proposes an urgent shift in the intergovernmental fiscal and performance monitoring system across the three spheres of government. It proposes strengthening government-wide capacity for pre-emptive financial and performance monitoring. Having identified the fragmentation of financial and performance coordination as a weakness in the intergovernmental fiscal system, it proposes bringing the separated monitoring regimes for financial and performance management together by formalising closer collaboration between the National Treasury and DCOG. It further recommends that financial resilience and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles be key components of municipalities’ internal financial and performance regimes. Finally, it recommends that the intergovernmental fiscal system be strengthened by amending existing municipal finance and performancemonitoring legislation.
Children’s rights and climate action: Assessing the suitability of South Africa’s domestic normative framework
(Pretoria University Law Press, 2026) Nimrod Muhumuza
South Africa boasts one of the most progressive, elaborate and consultative climate governance frameworks in the Global South. However, children, who are among the groups most acutely affected by climate change, remain largely invisible to the country’s climate law, policy and decision-making architecture. This article examines South Africa’s normative framework to determine whether it adequately protects and promotes children’s rights in the context of climate action. The article argues that, despite robust constitutional guarantees and binding international and regional obligations, such as those under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the existing framework does not systematically integrate children’s rights into the country’s climate response. The article draws on these normative standards and the guiding principles of non-discrimination, the best interests of the child, child participation, access to information, impact assessment and the right to life, survival and development to assess South Africa’s domestic law and policy. The article concludes that significant normative and practical gaps persist and proposes targeted reforms to embed children’s rights at the centre of climate governance, thereby advancing equitable, effective and intergenerationally just climate action in South Africa.
The African children’s charter @ 30: A distinction without a difference?
(Brill, 2020) Mezmur, Benyam Dawit
I would like to start with three recent concerning developments on children’s rights in Africa that the media has highlighted. First, in Somalia the draft Sexual Offences Bill that allowed child marriage has ruffled feathers (UN News, 11 August 2020). In Cameroon, a video of soldiers executing two mothers and their children that went viral in 2018 almost came to a full circle when a military court conducted behind closed doors convicted four soldiers to a mere ten years’ imprisonment (Human Rights Watch, 23 September 2020). In Nigeria too, the sentencing of a 13-year old boy for 10 years, ‘in a Sharia court in Kano State in Northwest Nigeria after he was accused of using foul language toward Allah in an argument with a friend’ (CNN, 16 September 2020) has drawn condemnation from organisations such as unicef
The convention on the rights of the child, migration, and Australia: Repositioning the convention from being a ‘wish list’ to a ‘to do list’ the 2018 Australian human rights institute annual lecture
(Routledge, 2019) Mezmur, Benyam Dawit
I was not terribly sure how many people I could reasonably expect for this lecture, especially since the former Prime Minister, the Hon. Tony Abbort, has said that Australians are sick of being lectured to by the United Nations ' (Cox 2015). Thank for your presence and for the opportunity. A few disclaimers are in order. first, I am a migrant. Second, this lecture does not intend to engage in detail with the laws, processes, structures, and so on of Australia but rather offers an outsider's view of the obligations in the Convention on the Rights of the Child(CRC or the Convention).

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