Includes bibliographical references.

This thesis evaluates Canada‘s compliance with human rights-based complementary international protection. Through an analysis of the roots of international refugee protection, it first links the evolution of the latter with the development of human rights law instruments. It then defines complementary protection as the corpus of legal bases for asylum claims outside of the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. It uses various human rights instruments to outline international protection obligations, which take three different forms of complementary protection. The first one consists in independent protection mechanisms outside of the Refugee Convention, the most important being the formulation of non-refoulement in the Convention Against Torture. The others are rights that expand the application of existing protection mechanisms, and protection mechanisms established by the UNHCR outside of existing international treaties. This thesis argues that Canada‘s application of these norms reflects partial compliance with its obligations, as it acknowledges important humanitarian concerns regarding international protection, while attempting to preserve its prerogative to exclude individuals based on national security.

No abstract available. / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / gm2014 / Centre for Human Rights / unrestricted

In this study, a legal analysis is presented of the responsibility of the RPA,1 FDLR,2and FAZ3 for military operations conducted by them during the two Congo Wars (Congo War I and II) in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.4 In particular, an enquiry will be undertaken into the lawfulness of the killing of Rwandan refugees during these military operations. This will be achieved by looking at the requisite International Humanitarian Law and International Human Rights Law governing the protection of refugees in relation to the conduct of hostilities. Specific emphasis will be placed on the prevailing facts and circumstances relevant to the killing of refugees during the wars, and evidence provided by key witnesses will be relied upon to shed light on the situation on the ground. The study will examine the legal implications of the actions of the parties involved. It will look at who should be held accountable for the violations of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in relation to the killing of refugees. Finally, certain recommendations will be made to address the deficiencies in the law in relation to the protection of civilian, especially refugees during armed conflict. Copyright / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Mercantile Law / unrestricted

The apparent normative and implementation gaps within the international refugee protection regime suggest the need to reform its implementation and accountability processes. Increasingly, the focus is being shifted to local or domestic actors to attempt to address the challenges faced in realising refugee rights effectively. Among the key domestic accountability actors for the realisation of rights, are national human rights institutions (NHRIs). NHRIs are considered a bridge between the international and domestic human rights systems. NHRIs act as entities that facilitate the diffusion of international human rights norms and standards, including those with respect to refugee rights, into the national spheres. Notwithstanding this, there is paucity in empirical evidence within the refugee rights discourse on the role that NHRIs can play to promote the effective realisation of refugee rights. This study explores the role that NHRIs in South Africa and Kenya play in promoting and protecting refugee rights. It utilises a non-doctrinal and qualitative research approach, to examine the extent to which the NHRIs engage with refugee rights and to explore their capacity to do so effectively. It situates NHRIs within the nexus between international human rights law and international refugee law to frame the understanding for their role within the refugee protection regime. The findings indicate that the NHRIs in South Africa and Kenya that are compliant with the Paris Principles display significant engagement with refugee rights promotion and protection. As accountability mechanisms, they have contributed to the development and implementation of domestic refugee law and policy in accordance with international norms and standards. This has occurred despite the lack of an explicit refugee rights' promotion and protection mandate, but they face barriers and challenges. Various underlying factors that impede their effectiveness to address refugee rights were identified. These included the sociopolitical contexts within which they operate, capacity constraints and invisibility within the refugee protection regime. The socio-political challenges included xenophobia and the securitisation of the asylum space. These compounded organisational and operational weaknesses such as scarce specialist skills in refugee law, limited financial resources, and the absence of strategic and sustained partnerships for refugee rights protection. The overall absence of norms for NHRI engagement with refugee rights was identified as a contributory factor for the lack of a coherent approach for promoting and protecting these rights. Possible avenues to enhance NHRI engagement with refugee rights were identified. For instance, NHRIs building partnerships for refugee rights promotion and protection with CSOs, the UNHCR and regional institutions based on a clear understanding of an NHRI's role as accountability mechanisms. For NHRIs, the imperative lies in building their capacity to address refugee rights to ensure a clear understanding of what the promotion and protection of these rights entails.

Climate change poses major threats to human life in the form of food and water shortages, health issues, loss of property and more. Climate change amplifies existing environmental, social, economic and political challenges and has increased the risk of displacements, accelerates social injustices, inequalities, and threatens human rights, including the right to life itself. Consequently, States can no longer overlook their obligations to effectively address climate change to safeguard human rights. States have agreed to mobilize stronger and more ambitious climate actions. However, their pledges on carbon emission caps, adaptation practices and climate change funds under the Paris Agreement, are not as ambitious as they ought to be. The aim of this research to assess the value and effectiveness of climate litigation as a substantial form of climate action to safeguard human rights. This research reveals that there has been a significant increase in climate litigation procedures and outcomes which reflect multiple ways in which climate litigation has influenced States to enhance and adopt laws to increase climate action on mitigation and adaptation practices. This research also reveals that climate litigation is amplified through public and civil society mobilisation as well as collaboration efforts between lawyers, scientists and activists across the world, and it is recognised as a valuable tool for those who seek accountability and justice for climate-induced harms. / Mini Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2020. / Centre for Human Rights / LLM / Unrestricted

The 21st century has witnessed a radical change in the status of sexual minorities, the world over, with this change having a profound impact in the global North, in particular. A series of landmark United Nations, regional and national court decisions, inspired by the increasing effective lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual (LGBT) lobby, are progressively announcing the end of institutionalised discrimination which had been the lot of homosexual persons for centuries in many part of the world. However, while there has been a statutory shift towards the welcoming of homosexual persons in the West and in parts of Latin America, thus gradually recognising the injustice synonymous with discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, African states remain less likely to respect homosexual persons' rights. The Nigerian LGBT experience exemplifies the regressive position in many African states. Not only have laws been enacted that criminalise homosexuality in Nigeria; existing laws have in 2014 been strengthened by newer, ever more stringent anti-homosexuality legislation. The most notable anti-homosexuality law is the Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act, (SSMPA) 2013, signed into law in January 2014 by then President Goodluck Jonathan. Unlike the anti-sodomy provisions in the criminal and penal codes inherited from the British colonial rulers and the provisions of the Sharia legal codes in operation in some of the states of northern Nigeria, the controversial SSMPA explicitly criminalises same-sex marriage and goes further by also criminalising broader categories of homosexual related conduct throughout the territory of Nigeria. This thesis argues that Nigerian laws criminalising consensual adult homosexual conduct prima facie violate the human rights provision of the Nigerian Constitution and Nigeria’s international law obligations. The thesis takes a holistic view of the major cultural, religious and moral arguments proposed by opponents of sexual minority rights in their efforts to justify the continued discrimination of homosexual persons and same-sex consensual sexual conduct in Nigeria. The study aims to contest the validity of these arguments by presenting a case for the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in Nigeria through such instruments as judicial intervention, legislative enactment, executive action and sexual minorities’ rights activism. This study highlights the fact that people do not choose their sexual orientation and that consensual adult homosexual conduct is no more inherently harmful to others than heterosexual acts. Contrary to the widespread belief in Nigeria that consensual adult homosexual conduct is based on imported Western values, this study underlines that homosexuality has been an undeniable fact of human existence predating colonialism – also in what today is Nigeria. In this regard, by demonstrating the surprising tolerance toward homosexuals in pre-colonial Idomaland, this study further confirms the notion that consensual adult homosexual conduct is not a Western import. In the process, this study sheds new light on pre-colonial attitudes to homosexuality in Idomaland, North Central Nigeria, where no prior field research has been conducted. The study further discredits the religious objection to consensual adult homosexual conduct by adopting a contextual reading of Islam and Christianity, the two dominant religions in Nigeria, thus allowing for the co-existence of religious beliefs and the protection of sexual minorities. This study affirms that the moral objection to consensual adult homosexual acts fails for the very reason that such practices do not cause harm to either society or other individuals. This study fits Isaiah Berlin’s conception of liberty as individual autonomy into the argument for the liberalisation of Nigerian sexual minorities’ environment. The application of Berlin’s concept of negative liberty to the Nigerian homosexual environment supports the affirmation of sexual minority rights as fundamental human rights. / Thesis (LLD)--University of Pretoria, 2018. / Centre for Human Rights / LLD / Unrestricted

Micro country-level research on why Ghana continues to hold on to a colonial-era law that criminalises sex between consenting adults of the same sex is critical to understanding the unique phenomena of homophobia and violations of sexual minority rights in Ghana. Ghana has not decriminalised the offence of ‘unnatural carnal knowledge’, a law that targets homosexual sex, which it inherited from British colonial administrators in 1892, despite calls by international human rights bodies and Ghana’s own admission that such laws fuel violations of sexual minority rights. The fundamental barriers to the decriminalisation of consensual same-sex sexual acts between adults in private in Ghana are religion, culture, and politics. Through the lens of decolonisation, Sankofa, as well as purposive and transformative constitutionalism theories, the thesis argues that the current religious, cultural and governance architecture in Ghana are colonial legacies that subjugated indigenous religious, cultural, and governmental institutions and replaced them for more than a century with Victorian-era structures and institutions of the colonial administrators. In order to overcome this colonial-era law, structures, and barriers to decriminalisation, which many Ghanaians unknowingly or mischievously claim as their own, there is a need for the decolonisation of colonial-era thinking and structures. The 1992 Constitution of Ghana provides for a Bill of Rights, an independent judiciary, and the Supreme Court of Ghana, whose jurisprudence upholds the rights of individuals to non-discrimination, dignity, privacy, and association. Apart from religion, culture, and politics, a major obstacle to decriminalising sodomy law in Ghana is the legal culture and socio-political environment in Ghana. The judiciary is part of a society that abhors homosexuality and proclaims that because most Ghanaians oppose same-sex relationships, Ghana should not amend its Constitution to embrace sexual minority rights. The Supreme Court has declared laws that are inconsistent with constitutional rights to non-discrimination, association, dignity, and privacy as unconstitutional. Although the Constitution of Ghana does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, the Supreme Court can overcome the barriers of religion and culture by extending its jurisprudence on the right to non-discrimination, association, dignity, and privacy to include sexual minority rights. Through a broad, purposive, and transformative approach to interpreting the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court can draw a line between Ghana’s colonial past and the present era of constitutionalism and constitutional rights by declaring sodomy law as unconstitutional. The Supreme Court may also overcome the negative limitations of the current Ghanaian legal culture and socio-political pressure by looking to pre-colonial Ghanaian cultures that embraced same-sex sexuality for guidance. Like the proverbial Sankofa bird, the Supreme Court may, besides looking back to pre-colonial Ghanaian cultures, also fly forward to adopt decisions of foreign domestic and international courts of this modern era to endorse constitutional morality over majority morality in a Ghanaian secular state. / Thesis (LLD)--University of Pretoria, 2021. / University of Pretoria, Postgraduate Merit Award (Academic Associate) / Centre for Human Rights / LLD / Unrestricted

Magister Legum - LLM / The Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) provides that „everyone has the right to nationality.‟1 Nationality2 refers to the legal relationship between a State and an individual.3 The consequences are that this legal relationship gives rise to obligations and rights conferred by the State on these individuals. Statelessness occurs when an individual has no nationality of any country; a stateless person is someone who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its laws.

The aim of this thesis is to get a better understanding of the United Arab Emirates’ unclear position on its international commitments regarding exploitative employment practices that target migrant workers in the country. This is carried out by researching the present regulatory framework, which includes the kafala sponsorship system, fundamental labor legislation, and international human rights conventions. For this thesis, the key theories are theories on migration and human rights and analysis on the rights of migrant workers. Also, thesis utilizes a qualitative research method to assess, interpret, and examine the rules and guidelines found in both international and domestic legal systems related to the mistreatment of migrant workers in UAE. Based on the findings, I was able to confirm that the kafala sponsorship system in the UAE has a negative impact on migrant workers and the main reason why exploitation against migrant workers occur lies in the kafala sponsorship system.