Temporary Exclusion Orders and the Right to a Fair Hearing in the UK
In QX v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020], the UK High Court reached a landmark preliminary decision that ECHR Article 6 applies to the judicial review of...
Access to Justice
South African court rejects petition to award constitutional damages and extend emotional shock and grief claims in pit-latrine drowning case
In 2014, 5-year old Michael Komape tragically drowned in a sludge of human excrement when the pit-latrine at his rural school in the Limpopo province collapsed. While the Supreme Court...
Tanzania’s Withdrawal of Access to the African Court: Further Retrogression in Human Rights Protection in East Africa
The Tanzanian government has withdrawn its special declaration to the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (African Court), and as a result, individuals and NGOs cannot directly file cases...
Historic South African Silicosis Class Action Settlement Approved
On 26 July 2019, the High Court approved a settlement between 20 goldmining companies operating in South Africa (including African Rainbow Minerals, Anglo American, AngloGold Ashanti, Gold Fields, Harmony Gold)...
Innovative remedies under a flexible Constitution: A view from South Africa
As an undergraduate, the focal point of interest in a case was what happened in court. The judgment, and specifically the ratio; the facts, maybe the arguments from time to...
Cuts to the UN Human Rights Bodies? We Know What This Leads To
The global populist backlash against multilateralism and rights is reaching the UN treaty bodies. These reactionary politics are manifesting in States’ refusal to pay their dues to the UN (the...
Kimathi and Others v Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Kimathi and Others v Foreign & Commonwealth Office [2018] EWHC 2066 (also known as the ‘Mau Mau litigation’, after the Mau Mau rebellion that was instrumental in Kenya’s independence movement)...
African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights Affirms the Right to Access Documents Necessary for Appeals
On 7 December 2018, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights delivered its judgment in the case of Mgosi Mwita Makungu v. Tanzania. This judgment affirms states’ obligations to...
The 40th Session of the Human Rights Council: Some Observations on State Behaviour
The UN Human Rights Council, which was created in 2006, is currently holding its 40th Session. The HRC is the UN’s main human rights body, and is a political body...
Diminishing Accountability, Corruption, and C.Y. Leung
The Hong Kong Bar Association formally issued a statement on 21st December 2018, regarding the Department of Justice’s choice to not obtain independent legal advice in its decision not to...
And then there were none: the decline of the right to access a lawyer?
On 9 November 2018, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) ruled in Beuze v Belgium that withholding a suspect’s right to legal assistance during police...
Parent Company Liability for Human Rights Abuses in the UK? We Need Clarity
The liability of parent companies for the extraterritorial human rights abuses committed by their subsidiaries has increasingly become a critical topic for both corporate and human rights litigators. The absence...
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