Thesis (M.Com. (Taxation))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, School of Accountancy, 2014. / South Africa has the status of being the richest country based on mineral reserves. This status incentivised many offshore investors to invest in shares in South African mining companies which, in turn, hold mining rights and/or prospecting rights. This research evaluates, with specific reference to offshore investors, whether any South African capital gains tax implications would arise upon the disposal by non-residents of shares in a South African company holding prospecting rights or mining rights. The report focuses on paragraph 2 of the Eighth Schedule to the Income Tax Act 58 of 1962 (‘the Act’) as well as the legal nature of mining rights, prospecting rights and prospecting information to determine whether such rights and information would fall within the ambit of paragraph 2 of the Eighth Schedule to the Act. The report concludes on whether the disposal by non-resident shareholders of shares in a South African company which holds mining rights and/or prospecting rights would fall within the ambit of paragraph 2 of the Eighth Schedule to the Act.

Botswana acceded to the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol and entered a reservation on section 26 relating to the freedom of movement of refugees within its borders justified on reasons of national security. As such, Botswana adopts a restrictive detention policy which requires that asylum seekers, whether alone or accompanied by their children, be held at the Francistown Centre for Illegal Immigrants pending transfer to the Dukwi Refugee Camp if their application for refugee status is successful or deportation if unsuccessful. Botswana is therefore notorious for detaining asylum seekers including children for prolonged periods, in undesirable physical conditions, and in the process violating the asylum-seeking children's rights to among others, not to be unlawfully detained, the right to an adequate standard of living, family unity, the highest attainable standard of health, and basic education. The study therefore seeks to explore the laws safeguarding the right of asylum-seeking children not to be unlawfully detained in Botswana in an effort to assess the extent to which such laws comply with the standards set by the Convention on the Rights of the Child as the core international standard for the protection of children's rights, and other relevant international and regional instruments. In addition, the study will assess the extent to which such laws are given effect in practice. The study will also explore best international and regional practices on the protection of the right of asylum-seeking children not to be unlawfully detained with specific emphasis on the laws of Sweden and South Africa. The study concludes with recommendations based on standards set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other relevant international and regional instruments, and best practices in the laws of Sweden and South Africa which Botswana may draw valuable lessons in order to effectively safeguard the right of asylum-seeking children not to be unlawfully detained.

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 / Euthanasia is controversial topic that attracts conversations on grounds of fundamental human rights and freedoms. The opinions of legal scholars are inconsistent because while some view euthanasia as a gross violation of one’s human rights, others argue that it should be regarded as a fundamental human right. Extending the ‘right to die’ to children is more controversial because they are considered to be a vulnerable demographic and generally presumed to be legally incompetent to exercise their rights autonomously. The State aims to protect children by restricting their rights rather than enhancing their autonomy and including them in the discussion. To that end, children are often excluded from decision-making on the understanding that they are legally incompetent and cannot comprehend the consequences of their decisions.

Thesis advisor: Geoffrey Sanzenbacher / Oddly, as acceptance of LGBT+ individuals continues to rise in the United States, the number of reported anti-LGBT+ hate crimes also rises (McCarthy 2022, Author’s calculations from Uniform Crime Reporting data). Could this be the result of a violent backlash against the legalization of same-sex marriage? This paper investigates this love-hate relationship using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’s Uniform Crime Reporting system. Utilizing a collection of difference-in- differences regressions, this analysis compares the number of reported anti-LGBT+ hate crimes in a state before and after that state’s legalization of same sex marriage. The results suggest that states have a higher number of reported hate crimes per month after their legalization of same-sex marriage when controlling for population. A placebo regression shows that this effect is not found with other kinds of hate crimes. Two potential explanations for this finding are explored: firstly, that reporting of anti-LGBT+ hate crimes in a state becomes more reliable after that state’s legalization of same-sex marriage or, alternatively, that the number of hate crimes committed against LGBT+ individuals rises. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2023. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Economics.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the origins of the first women's rights convention held at Seneca Falls, NY during the summer of 1848. Taxation without representation was one of the foundations that the Continental Congress used as a basis for Independence from England. But when the revolution ended and the Republic was formed, the United States adopted many English laws and traditions regarding the status of women. Women, who were citizens or could be naturalized, were left civically invisible by the code of laws (coverture) once they married. They were not able to own property, form contracts, sue or be sued. In essence, they were "covered" by their husbands under coverture. Single women who owned property or inherited property were subject to taxation, though they had no voice in the elective franchise. Therefore, women, both married and single, who were counted for legislative purposes, were given no voice in choosing their government representatives. I conclude that there were three bases for women's rights: equity, Republican Motherhood, and women's organizations. The legal concept of equity, the domestic ideology of Republican Motherhood combined with the social model of women's organizations formed the earliest foundation of what would become the first feminist movement, leading directly to the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls in 1848. Through an analysis of the changes in women's property ownership to the enhancement of the female domestic role in the early nineteenth century, women challenged their place in the public sphere. The sisterhood that was created as a result of the new domestic ideology and improved female education led to the creation of organizations to improve women's place in society. Through an almost fifty year evolution, the earliest women's volunteer organizations became the mid-nineteenth century reform organizations, leading to a campaign for woman's suffrage.

This dissertation examines how conflicts between the Peruvian State and the indigenous Awajún people can be transformed and further escalation prevented by focusing on rights claims. This study analyses the Awajún’s main rights claims, their perspective on their relationship with the Peruvian State including the main causes of conflict and their views on what the key aspects of conflict transformation with the State should be. The research is focused on the perspective of the indigenous people, not only in the light of the research objectives but also because a decolonized approach that gives voice to the indigenous perspective is the most culturally appropriate approach for an outsider researcher to carry out research with indigenous people. In order to ensure a decolonized research design, one-on-one, in-depth interviews were selected for data collection since these allow a maximum input of the participants and provide the kind of detailed and rich information that is required for this study. Findings illustrate that a rights-based conflict transformation approach, which applies the typical aspects of a rights-based approach focusing on the specific collective rights claims of the Awajún as well as the main principles of conflict transformation focusing on improving relationships, offers the best prospects of preventing violent confrontations.

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This dissertation presents an analytical study of the evolution of the right of political selfdetermination and the influence of the principle of non-interference on promotion of this right. The intellectual and legal interests in democracy, good governance and social justice have contributed to the development of this right and its realisation for peoples lacking the least degree of good governance. The right of political self-determination is strongly associated with international intervention because governments facing popular demands for this right often resort to repression and military means to suppress such claims. Such interventions have also been driven by contemporary interest in supporting collective rights through international organisations that monitor and identify violations of various political rights. Thus, this dissertation focuses on the tension between the principle of non-interference and the modern legal trend to promote the political rights of all peoples. This research contributes considerable insights into the transformation of the principle of non-interference from an absolute obligation into a flexible concept by tracing the contributing legal changes both in international practices and in emerging rules and principles in international law. It is concluded that the promotion of the right of self-determination has resulted in international practices that have dramatically influenced and caused tension with the principle of noninterference. Keywords: right of political self-determination, democracy, statehood, the principle of noninterference, international intervention, sovereignty.