Children born in foreign territories to parents who are non-nationals are being deprived of the right to nationality, which in turn affects them from exercising other rights which are articulated in human rights instruments. When their births are not registered it means that they do not have birth certificates and in future they will be unable to acquire documents like identity documents and passports. Sometimes even if their births are registered, it is difficult for them to enjoy the other rights because national laws do not accommodate them. Even though all children's rights should be equally protected, this research will focus on children born to at least one parent who is an irregular migrant, and will analyse how this affects their access to the rights to education and health.

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Includes bibliographical references. / The aim of the enquiry is to establish whether trafficking victims could find protection within a particular human rights framework - that of refugee law - and to assess any factors that may hinder qualification for such protection.

The main objective of the study is to investigate which policies are already in place pertaining to unaccompanied, separated and migrant children in South Africa. Children migrate to South Africa from neighbouring countries as Mozambique and Zimbabwe but also from countries as far away as the Democratic Republic of South Africa, without their parents or guardians. South Africa has developed legal and policy measures for securing the rights of children. Are these measures consistent with existing international frameworks and standards? Also, to what extent are these policies being used to resolve the problems unaccompanied children face? Related to this question is the issue of implementation. The thesis considers how the responsible departments and state officials such as Magistrates, social workers, police officials and the Department of Home Affairs implement these policies. This minor dissertation would then make some recommendations to the South African government.

Despite an international framework guaranteeing fundamental rights to all those who belong to the human family, nationality if often a prerequisite to accessing these rights and thus, a lack of nationality, or statelessness, often carries dire consequences. Furthermore, regardless of international, regional and domestic laws protecting the right to a nationality, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates that more than 10 million persons are stateless worldwide. In addition to not being able to vote or run for public office, stateless persons are often unable to access other fundamental rights, such as the right to education, housing or health care. Stateless persons are also vulnerable to abuse, exploitation and human trafficking. Furthermore, despite their close connection in history, the protection of stateless persons has, for decades, taken a backseat to that of refugees and asylum seekers. As a result, stateless persons are often forced to rely on the safeguards provided by the mechanisms designed to protect refugees and asylum seekers and, while these may be able to alleviate some of the consequences of statelessness, they will never be able to provide an absolute solution to statelessness – i.e. the granting of nationality. This reliance on the asylum system is evident in South Africa, where no specific laws or procedures protecting stateless persons exist. In examining the refugee law in South Africa, the manner in which these laws are implemented, as well as other legislation relevant to the protection of stateless persons, it is evident that the South African government’s policy decisions relating to the asylum system are aiming to shrink the asylum protection space in South Africa and are inadvertently leading to situations of both de jure and de facto statelessness. In addition, the conduct of the DHA is placing large groups at risk of statelessness and leaving vulnerable groups with little to no legal remedies. In a State which hosts an estimated 10 000 stateless persons, these policy decisions and implementation practices urgently need to be addressed in order to resolve existing situations of statelessness as well as to prevent future statelessness.

This dissertation will examine how an international and regional, legal and policy framework can be used to prevent continuing sexual exploitation and abuse by international and regional peacekeepers. It will examine what the different laws and policies contained within the framework currently articulate about sexual exploitation and abuse of women and children in peacekeeping settings, and evaluate their effectiveness at preventing this kind of misconduct. This dissertation will conclude by exploring how the effectiveness of the overall framework could be further improved.

Includes bibliographical references. / As Rashida Manjoo, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women, suggests, women who are empowered “understand that they are not destined to subordination and violence; they resist oppression; and they develop their capabilities as autonomous beings and they increasingly question the terms of their existence in both public and private spheres.” By altering stereotypes and empowering women, GBV could be prevented from occurring in the first place, and discrimination and inequality could be mitigated or, hopefully, eradicated. Women’s human rights, and women in general, have been consistently marginalized in international and regional binding documents. This, in many ways, is a product of the stereotype that women are less important than men, and that their rights should therefore be accorded less significance – a twisted logic that only leads to women being further marginalized. The hypothesis of this dissertation is that in order to eradicate GBV in times of so-called peace, it is essential that discriminatory stereotypes of women be altered. This dissertation will examine stereotyping as an underlying cause of GBV, and whether the international and regional normative frameworks provide sufficient protections for women in regards to GBV. There will also be discussion about whether or not States comply with the obligations that do exist, and how States have (or have not) altered the behaviours and attitudes which characterize a stereotyped view of gender roles.

For many people their ease of access to a private home toilet means that when and where they go to relieve themselves is rarely a deliberation in their minds. In South Africa's rural and peri-urban spaces there are many poor people for whom this is not the case. For these people the inadequacy of their access to sanitation compromises their health, safety and ability to live a dignified life. Without an explicit right included in the Constitution, litigating on access to sanitation poses a formidable legal challenge. However, a critical analysis of South Africa's socio-economic and administrative law jurisprudence reveals that a fundamental right of access to sanitation is not exactly necessary. Outlining South Africa's vast network of service delivery legislation and policy, this thesis submits that there is a principled basis in our law to enforce a right of access to sanitation. It illustrates that this legal basis extends beyond merely protecting a person's existing access to sanitation, but includes positive duties imposed on the state to provide certain services as well.

Prior to the advent of the Constitution and constitutional democracy land policies of the apartheid state secured resource ownership and control of land exclusively for the white minority, whilst dispossessing large communities of black, coloured and Asian people and banishing them to designated "native reserves". Shortly before the transition to democracy liberation groups together with the old apartheid regime, sought to negotiate on land policies which not only constitutionalized property rights but which also constitutionalized a priority to land reform in order to redress the injustices of the past. This paper examines whether the law, as captured in s 25 of the bill of rights, stood in the way of government inn unfolding a progressive programme of land reform. As a contribution to the debate surrounding issues on the appropriateness of the expropriation of land as a means of accelerating the pace of land reform, this papers offers a critical lens through which the state's current land reform policies are evaluated against the Constitution's transformative agenda of facilitating for an equitable system of land rights that provide development opportunities for black and coloured South Africans. Through an analysis of constitutional jurisprudence-including academic literature and legislation- this paper aims to investigate whether section 25 by reason of a lacking of sufficient expropriation and redistribution, as mechanisms for accelerating land reform, is anti-transformation. By deconstructing section 25 (the property clause) my paper offers insight into the controversial and rebuttable presumption that it is in fact not the Constitution but the state, that is responsible for frustrating and impeding the pace of transformation via constitutionally permissible land reform.

Includes bibliographical references. / Transnational land acquisitions (TLA) are promoted by international development agencies such as the World Bank as part of a ‘win-win’ process whereby profitable investment stimulates much needed agricultural and rural development in low-income countries.4 However, there has been widespread opposition to TLA from international and national NGOs, UN agencies, rural peoples associations and other groups, who question the developmental benefits of TLA on a number of grounds, the most common of which is the threat they pose to food and tenure security.5 Though exact numbers are not available, due in large part to the secrecy in which many land acquisitions are conducted, evidence suggests that many thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of rural farmers and other land users have been dispossessed of their land (often without compensation) or otherwise had their human rights violated as a consequence of TLA. The global land rush is a complex phenomena that cuts across the fields of development, international trade and investment, global governance, and international struggles for the protection and promotion of human rights. Scholars are beginning to shed light on these different aspects; in particular, the agro-economic impact of the global land rush has been widely discussed.6 However, the legal and governance questions raised by TLA have received less attention. This paper responds to this knowledge gap by responding to the legal and governance (as opposed to the wider developmental) questions raised by TLA. It will show that the current international, regional and domestic legal frameworks that govern TLA provide excellent security for foreign investments in land but fail to adequately protect the human rights of the rural land users affected by those investments.