The influence of the Nation Credit Act should not be underestimated as it has shifted the focus from contractual freedom between parties to protecting consumers. The Act changed the entire approach when contracting parties enter into credit agreements from initially doing so spontaneously, to now contracting with the utmost care whilst taking the protection of consumers into account. The Act provides specific protection for consumers by enabling those who seek debt relief measures, to apply for a debt review order to restructure their debt by means of a court order or negotiation talks with credit providers. Although protection of consumers is much needed in today’s economic climate the reality of the matter is that a valid agreement came into being between the consumer and the credit provider and by protecting the consumer and not enabling the credit provider to enforce its rights against a consumer brings an imbalance in the contractual relationship between the two parties. This dissertation focuses on the balancing of rights between the consumer and credit provider in the event where the consumer applies for debt review and the credit provider terminates the debt review in order to enforce the agreement. Initially two schools of thought, with contradicting viewpoints, were formed with regards to this issue by means of case law and addressed the question whether the consumer or the credit provider’s rights should be the determining factor when it comes to the enforcement of a credit agreement. The Supreme Court Appeal gave legal certainty on how the rights of the two parties need to be balanced by focussing on procedural correctness, good faith and honouring the agreement between the parties and giving absolute discretion to the courts in weighing the parties’ rights and bringing them into balance. Debt review is an improvement on previous debt relief measures in South Africa and especially in today’s economic climate the debt review procedure enables consumers to financially survive over-indebtedness, however, the relief brought to consumers by the debt review process is not absolute as credit providers’ rights need to be taken into account to balance the financial relationship between the two parties and will always have to take into account that a valid agreement came into being between a credit provider and consumer. Although the Act assists consumers who find themselves in an over-indebted situation by possible restructuring of obligations, the credit provider’s rights will have to be taken into account. Although protection of the consumer is priority section 3(d) of the Act states that one of the purposes of the Act is to promote equity in the credit market between the credit provider and consumer and balancing their respective rights and responsibilities. Only by means of balancing the rights of consumers and credit provider’s we will establish a sound credit market. Copyright / Dissertation (LLM)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Mercantile Law / unrestricted

No abstract available. / Dissertation (MDiplomatic Studies)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Political Sciences / unrestricted

The case study documented in this dissertation emerged in response to the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education, and it promoted the participation rights accorded all children in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. A unifying theme of this research was listening to the children's voices during their participation in a Primary-level curriculum for children's rights education entitled The World Around Us. This research was conducted within one Grade 3 classroom of nineteen students over a three-month period, when qualitative data were systematically collected via interviews, narratives, and observations. The purpose of this qualitative research was to explore how curricular experiences influenced the child participants' emerging conceptions of their participation rights and responsibilities, with a view to benefiting future curriculum materials for children's rights education. This research led to identifying learning and teaching strategies, which promoted the children's emerging conceptions, in light of the research goal of informing educational practice. In addition, this research led to devising a framework of participatory indicators, which reflected the child participants' emerging conceptions of their participation rights and responsibilities, in light of the research goal of building educational theory. / Graduate

Despite a progressive constitution lauded as one of the best and most forward-looking in the world, with an advanced Bill of Rights, instances of human rights violations have been detected at all levels of the South African society. The most disturbing revelations have been associated with situations in many farming communities in South Africa. On the basis of a comprehensive nationwide study initiated in June 2001 and documented in 2003, the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) confirmed widespread human rights violations on South African farms. Through the efforts of the South African Human Rights Commission, many of these violations have been brought to the attention of the authorities and there are already numerous actions being taken to contain and possibly eliminate them. Among these is the Child Labour Programme of Action which was adopted in 2003 by the large number of government departments that constitute the stakeholders, particularly those that have responsibility for labour, education, provincial and local government, water services, justice, policing, prosecution, and social development. However, the SAHRC study had limited coverage due to constraints of time and funding and did not pay adequate attention to the former independent homelands. In addition to this significant shortcoming, recent international experience reveals other forms of violations that may not be immediately obvious and therefore go undetected for a very long time. Among these, the International Labour Organization (ILO), together with various non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and other bodies have drawn attention to existence of what are termed “worst forms of child labour”. The latter involves a wide range of abuses to which under-age individuals are subjected against their will and often exposed to hazards that may leave them permanently excluded from formal educational and economic opportunities. The fact that national definitions differ complicates the situation. As a result, systematic investigation is needed to see to what extent local practices compare with international norms and standards. Similarly, the fact that the former independent homelands were not adequately covered in such an important study that aimed to inform policy on the optimal direction of the transformation process also raises serious questions that must be addressed. This mini-dissertation documents evidence based on a rapid appraisal of farm and non-farm environments in two polar regions of the province, namely the Port St John’s Municipality in the Oliver Tambo District Municipality of the former Transkei homeland and Alice in the Nkonkobe Municipality of the former Ciskei homeland. Descriptive and content analysis methodologies were employed to analyze the data obtained from interviews of employers of labour, the labourers themselves, as well as community members and “bystanders” who had opinions about the insertion of children into the labour market. Correlational analysis and logistic regression were performed to draw inferences about the determinants of child labour in the farming system. The indication is that child labour is an established phenomenon whose discussion is however quite sensitive and elicits a wide range of emotions. The role of socioeconomic factors in influencing the decision to engage child labour seems to be quite extensive. For instance, monthly income of household has important practical implications for national and global policy on the use of child labour are foreseen and form the basis for the recommendations put forward to address the associated concerns.

No description available.

No description available.

Le système juridique français est très protecteur des libertés de la personne et il dispose de nombreux instruments de protection en la matière. Parmi ceux-Ci, la notion de droits fondamentaux n’est apparue en France que récemment et sa définition ne fait pas consensus. S’inscrivant dans la lignée des droits de l’homme et des libertés publiques, les droits fondamentaux apparaissent de prime abord comme des normes visant à la protection de la liberté juridique et dotées d’une valeur juridique supérieure. Le but de notre étude est de comprendre quel est le sens de ce concept en droit public français. Pour atteindre cette finalité, nous avons opéré plusieurs choix épistémologiques. Le domaine de notre travail est volontairement restreint au droit public interne, ce qui nous a conduit à nous concentrer sur l’étude de la jurisprudence du Conseil constitutionnel et du Conseil d’ Etat, excluant de notre approche de la fondamentalité les jurisprudences tant de la Cour de cassation que celles des cours de droit externe. Face à l’absence de définition normative de la fondamentalité, seule l’analyse de la jurisprudence peut nous apporter des éléments de réponses sur ce que recouvre ce concept. Nous avons également fait le choix de traiter ces données jurisprudentielles sous l’angle de la détermination possible d’une stratégie du juge mais en refusant l’idée de la mise en oeuvre d’une politique jurisprudentielle sur la base la fondamentalité La complexité de cette notion réside dans le fait que la fondamentalité n’est pas uniforme, elle se décline sur une pluralité de supports normatifs, droits, libertés, principes, garanties ou règles ce qui rend la compréhension de ce concept difficile. Aussi, nous avons cherché à comprendre les points de convergences entre ces occurrences distinctes puisque toutes peuvent répondre au qualificatif « fondamental. » Notre volonté est d’étudier la réalité du droit, c’est-À-Dire déterminer à quelle réalité juridique correspond le concept de fondamentalité en droit public français. / The French legal system is very protective of freedom and it disposes of manyinstruments of protection in this area. Among these, the concept of human rights has emergedonly recently in France and there is no consensus about its definition. In the tradition ofhuman rights and civil liberties, fundamental rights appear at first glance as standards for theprotection of legal freedom and with a higher legal value. The aim of our study is tounderstand what is the meaning of this concept in French public law. To achieve this goal, wehave made several epistemological choices. Our work’s framework is deliberately restrictedto public law. It led us to focus on the study of jurisprudence of the Constitutional Counciland the Council of State. We excluded from our approach the interpretation of fundamentalrights by the Supreme Court (Cour de cassation) and by Europeans Courts. Given the lack ofnormative definition of the fundamentality, analysis of case law is the only way to getanswers about this concept. We also chose to determine if case law about fundamentalitycould be a strategic tool for the judge and not a political instrument. The complexity of thisconcept lies in the fact that the fundamentality is not uniform. It comes on a plurality ofnorms, rights, freedoms, principles, guarantees and rules which makes difficult theunderstanding of this concept. Therefore, we sought to understand the points of convergencebetween these different occurrences because all these occurences can be qualified by the word"fundamental". Our ambition is to study the reality of law, to determine what is the legalreality of the concept of fundamentality in French public law.

Strong private property rights to land are recognised as fundamental to the economic growth of a country's legal system. Legal reform of inadequate and inefficient property rights laws is therefore essential. My thesis aims to address the lack of legal reform of the laws governing property rights to land in Nigeria. It does this by critically examining the Land Use Act set up as the primary body of legislation governing property rights in Nigeria.The thesis seeks to offer meaningful insights by proposing an institutional analysis of the limitations to reform of existing laws governing property rights to land in Nigeria. Several approaches of new institutionalism are explored in analysing identified constraints which exist within formal and informal institutions. Explanations of the absence of legal reform are addressed through themes examining formal and informal institutional structures which limit reform. Analyses of institutional structures highlight the significant role played by institutions in the etablishment and development of property right laws in Nigeria. An in-depth look at Nigerian private property laws and legally recognised interests on land exposes fundamental limitations to private property rights protection of individuals within the Nigerian state. The thesis provides valuable insights and addresses institutional limitations through consideration of strategies which would enable and assist legal reform of Nigeria's property rights laws. The study concludes by exploring three aspects. First, it offers reform proposals and analyses the functionality of the proposed reform suggestions. Second, it highlights principles of policy-making redesign within formal institutions. Finally, it offers strategies to assist reform within informal instituional structures.In short, the thesis focuses on enabling legal reform of Nigerian property rights laws to ensure the amendment, modification or excision of bad, inefficient laws in order to offer better protection of individuals' property rights to land.

When exploring the interplay between drug policy and human rights, commentators tend to adopt a harm reductionist approach, and centre their research on rectifying the vast amount of human rights violations carried out in the name of drug control. These violations include the use of the death penalty, the infliction of torture, and the denial of basic healthcare, to name but a few. Though this approach ameliorates some of the worst effects resulting from prohibition, a harm reductionist approach can only ever perpetuate the current regime. The thesis puts forth an alternative human rights perspective, one which explores the human rights of individuals to consume psychoactives, to challenge the moral hegemony of the global drug regime and prohibitionist logic. Part I (Chapters 1-3) comprehensively challenges the value of ‘human rights’ on a philosophical, political, legal and institutional basis- to appreciate their capacity to provide a new perspective on drug control. Part I concludes that: human rights are conceptually broad living instruments, capable of reflecting the complex reality of human psychoactive usage; human rights can better address the State/individual binary which is identified to be at the crux of drug policies and; human rights and drug control regimes are legally compatible. This bona fide human rights perspective is then applied to Part II (Chapters 4-5), which employs health and religious rights as conceptual starting points, to demonstrate how human rights could improve the drug control framework, and how the lens of human rights can point to different ways of regulating drug consumption. The broader regulatory implications resulting from this unique perspective call for an application of human rights which moves beyond medical and traditional prohibitive paradigms, to integrate broader categorisations such as ‘human flourishing’. This broader perspective accounting for pleasure, well-being and spirituality etc. would more thoroughly appreciate the often interconnected nature, and significance an individual accords their drug use. The thesis also concludes that drug policy is inherently political, and through centring upon the relationship between the State and the individual, a human rights perspective can comprehensively unpack the moral arguments involved. By introducing normative thinking in this sphere, as well as presenting the empirical evidence when weighing up the benefits and harms from psychoactives, a more open-minded, transparent approach to the issue of drug control can be adopted. Analysing (predominately) domestic and international case law which explores the conflict between the human rights and the drug control regimes, finally demonstrates that human rights have a transformative capacity to alter the drug control system, even while operating within the prevailing prohibitionist paradigm. The medical cannabis cases, and the religious exemptions for peyote and ayahuasca particularly demonstrate this, and give credence to the notion that the global regime of drug control is beginning to fall apart. Ultimately, this thesis uses the lens of human rights to provide a new perspective and direction to the issue of drug control.

This thesis is an analytical study of the League of Arab States regional human rights system. It involves an examination of the League's concept of human rights as represented in the League's two draft instruments - the draft Arab Declaration of Human Rights and the draft Arab Convention on Human Rights - as well as its machinery of implementation as represented in the Permanent Arab Commission on Human Rights. Our analysis of the League's human rights is conducted in the light of the political, cultural and ideological factors prevailing in the Arab world. The League's failure to establish an effective regional human rights system is due largely to its inherent limitations and to the constant negative attitudes of Arab States toward human rights protection. Unless some drastic changes in these determinate factors take place, the situation is likely to remain the same in years to come. / Law, Peter A. Allard School of / Graduate