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Abby Buttle - 4th January 2020
On Thursday 12 December, the Makhanda High Court affirmed that all learners in South Africa have the constitutional right to a basic education and that the right cannot be denied because of a lack of identification documents. The High Court found that a policy and circular which made school admission and funding conditional on learners […]
Jade Weiner - 5th November 2019
On the 18th of September 2019, Chief Justice Mogoeng handed down a unanimous judgment declaring the common law defence of moderate and reasonable chastisement constitutionally invalid. Freedom of Religion SA (FoR SA) argued that parents should be able to use physical force upon a child as a means of corrective educational discipline. The state should […]
Sadaf Vafa - 21st July 2019
In February 2019, the news of an 11-year-old girl being married to a man who was almost 50 years old, caused severe criticism of the Iranian Civil Code, which allows for the marriage of children under the age of 18. According to the most recent statistics by UNICEF, 17 percent of girls in Iran are […]
Anneloes Hoff - 10th June 2019
On 14 May 2019, the Dutch Senate adopted the Child Labour Due Diligence Law [Wet zorgplicht kinderarbeid]. The law requires companies selling goods or services to Dutch consumers to identify and prevent child labour in their supply chains. In doing so, the Netherlands follows an international trend towards mandatory corporate human rights due diligence. Over […]
Eliana Barrera and Leonardo Cofre - 5th April 2019
878 deaths of children under the care of the Chilean National Children’s Service are currently under criminal investigation. This revelation was followed by the submission of a complaint under the communications procedure of the Committee of the Rights of the Child (CRC), resulting in a damming report in June 2018 on the serious and systematic violation of children’s rights by […]
Adilya Zhilgildina - 5th April 2019
Teenage pregnancy rates in Kazakhstan are high, with 3443 births in 2017, much higher than during the Soviet period. As a means to decrease the prevalence of teenage pregnancy, the Vice Minister of Healthcare has proposed a more liberal abortion regime by making abortions more accessible to teenagers, providing access to birth control and introducing […]
Aastha Malhotra - 30th November 2018
The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016, which was laid on the tables of both Houses in August 2017, no longer allows non-Indians to commission surrogacy in India. Only infertile Indian couples with at least five years of marriage and proved infertility are allowed surrogacy on altruistic grounds with a close female relative acting as a surrogate […]
Emilie McDonnell - 4th November 2018
The Australian government has confirmed plans to transfer all asylum seeker and refugee children from Nauru to Australia by Christmas. This news comes after mounting pressure from the public, medical and legal organisations, human rights and refugee advocate groups, thousands of doctors, as well as from within the government’s own party, calling on the government […]
Liz Curran - 22nd October 2018
Australia’s inquiry into childhood institutional abuse has lessons for other jurisdictions, especially the UK. International human rights provisions for children in institutional care include Article 13 of the Convention on the Rights or the Child (CROC) (1989), alongside protections for children with a disability (CROC Article 23), children in the care and protection system (CROC […]
Maja Davidovic - 10th September 2018
On March 26, 2013, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg declared that Serbia must provide a mechanism for individual redress to thousands of parents whose newborn babies went missing from maternity wards in the preceding decades. How was that to be done? Preferably through a lex specialis, per the Serbian Ombudsman’s recommendations from 2010, the Court stated: a new, special law that would target this […]
Pin Lean Lau - 8th August 2018
With the recent highlighting of yet another case of child marriage in Malaysia, where a 41 year old man married an 11 year old girl, the prevalence of child marriage in Malaysia has gained some international notoriety. Unfortunately, Malaysia’s dualist legal system, a unique constitutional mix of civil laws (applicable to non-Muslims, and with other […]
Sophia Salmore - 17th July 2018
On June 20, in the wake of public outcry, President Donald Trump issued an executive order intended to end the separation of families at the U.S.-Mexico border. Two months prior, the Trump administration began to implement a “zero-tolerance” policy, prosecuting as many people as possible that cross the border illegally. Since this policy applied only […]