Description of research: Small-scale fishers depend for their livelihoods on resources that are fast depleting, and it is increasingly being recognised that fisheries managers must take into account the human element of fishing when deciding how best to manage fish stocks, for both ecological and development reasons. The international community has a number of agreements and voluntary codes regulating fishing capacity, illegal fishing and small-scale fisheries, and international trade agreements are also beginning to include provisions on fisheries. However, there is little mention of small-scale fisheries in those trade agreements that have been concluded, and those that are ongoing, such as the World Trade Organization negotiations, are fraught with disagreement and a focus on national interests, to the detriment of fish stocks and small-scale fishers. Kathleen’s research aims to find ways in which small-scale fisheries can be represented appropriately in international trade agreements, taking into account the need for development and poverty reduction, while simultaneously ensuring that sustainability of fish stocks is not compromised.

Description of research: Carina’s research looks at transnational organized crime at sea and explores responses to ivory and heroin trafficking to and from Eastern Africa and the Swahili coast.  Potential responses are considered by drawing from the international counter-piracy response to Somali piracy. Africa is increasingly becoming a major role player in illicit organized criminal activities undertaken to supply demand in other world regions. This is having an increasingly adverse impact on security, governance and development in the implicated regions. To counter this, there needs to be a concerted international effort pooling together resources, expertise and political will of both public and private stakeholders. The highly effective international response to Somali piracy provides valuable insights into such a multi-stakeholder approach a transnational threat at sea. This inter-disciplinary research project explores the subjects of criminality, governance, development, state failure, law and law enforcement and is informed by interviews and participant observation, undertaken in East Africa and elsewhere, in order to compliment the secondary data.

Description of research: The aim of this research is to explore the relationship between xenophobic violence and policing practices in South Africa. The issue of xenophobic violence in both urban areas and townships stems from well-documented and widespread xenophobic sentiments and high levels of violence, which reflect the historical, social, cultural, economic, and political background of South Africa. This research examines policing practices in effect at the time of a deadly outbreak of xenophobic violence in 2008, as well as how police capacity management in affected and non-affected areas have developed since then in regard to effective policing practice. I argue that in addition to sensitively managed police human and material resources, police communication both internally among the police and externally with the community has created an overall reduction in overt expressions of xenophobic sentiment.

Description of research: The constitutional principle of legality was developed by the South African court to review conduct of the executive branch of government that falls short of administrative action. The recent and often haphazard development of the manner in which executive conduct has been judicially reviewed by the courts has caused some confusion with regards to how the principle ought to apply due to several inconsistencies in its application. This thesis therefore maps the origins of judicial review of executive conduct to how it has developed and outlining how the expansive principle of legality should be applied going forward. The thesis will propose clear and succinct guidelines on how executive conduct should be reviewed, the appropriate standard that should attach and how far judicial control can go.

Description of research: Family law has evolved and changed significantly in South Africa and internationally over the years. However, our family related dispute resolution mechanisms are slow to change. Courts and other dispute resolution mechanisms require re-imagining, in the ways in which the best interests of the child are protected and implemented in family related legal disputes. Therefore, it is important to determine the extent to which the principle of the best interests of the child is protected in South Africa and ways in which to enhance and further provide for the protection of the best interests of the child. The research does this by examining and analysing the international children’s rights encompassed by the principle of the best interests of the child, such as the child’s participation rights. Thereafter, the research determines the application of international children’s rights in South Africa and the current methods of dispute resolution in family related legal disputes. This is done with a view to evaluate the proposal of a specialised family law paralegal in South Africa, to ensure the implementation of the best interests of the child in family related legal disputes more efficiently. The research intends to develop a concise role for a specialised paralegal that is appropriate to South African family related legal disputes. This is done by evaluating the need and scope of the specialised paralegal to promote and protect the best interests of the child in, among others, marriage and divorce; in the resolution of parental disputes; in instances of abuse and neglect of the child; and in disputes regarding the gender and homosexuality of children.

 

Description of research: Jane’s doctoral research seeks to examine the environmental and other related factors that trigger the increased migration by Fulani nomads from the north to the southern part of Nigeria along with the effects of such migration on the environment and the economy of Nigeria. The research adopts a combination of doctrinal and empirical research. Its aim is to propose ways to reconcile the traditional right to nomadic pastoralism, land ownership rights and the anti-open grazing laws as well as protect the environment in the efforts to regulate nomadic pastoralism in Nigeria.

Description of research: Ingrid’s thesis focuses on the issue of duress in the commission of international crimes, and how this defence plays a part in the refugee status determination assessment. The research highlights the exclusion mechanism in the international refugee law regime and how exclusion marks the intersection between rights and punishment. Furthermore, the availability of defences to exclusion triggers questions regarding the increasingly blurred line between victim and perpetrator in highly coercive environments such as territories of conflict. The interrogation the current approach to refugee exclusion and the possibility for refugee claimants to raise the defence of duress in the exclusion assessment is important because of a gap in doctrine, and perhaps more importantly, the global political climate surrounding refugee law.  

Description of research: Tinyade’s thesis is exploring the potential of community bylaws as a means of eliminating harmful practices affecting women and girls in Malawi considering that these bylaws are sprouting in rural communities across Malawi, and yet they are not anchored in ‘formal law.’ Using the norm diffusion conceptual framework, the research is seeking to explain the factors that are influencing the use of community bylaws to ensure the protection of the right of women to be free from harmful practices. By understanding how harmful practices are being conceptualised in the community bylaws, the research is going to establish whether or not such understanding is consistent with domestic and international human rights law norms. In this project, the thesis will establish whether or not the community bylaws can be defended as a sincere form of norm internalisation of women’s human rights and will test if the community bylaws phenomenon is revealing other facets of norm internalisation that are at play when the action ground is a rural setting. Furthermore, the thesis is seeking to establish the legal validity of the community bylaws by interrogating the relationship between the bylaws and African customary law within the broader context of legal pluralism.

Description of research:  Omowamiwa’s thesis examines the obligation to fulfill the right to health in low- and Middle-income countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. The thesis focuses on States where there is no express constitutional provision for the right to health and there is limited normative clarity on its content. The focus is especially due to these States’ limited capacity to realize the right due to limited resources in the face of competing interests.  Using Nigeria as a case study of States with this phenomenon, he examines specifically, the obligation to fulfill, by providing health care as a key element of the broader right to health. Incorporating human rights research with health systems research, he looks at the six pillars of the health system and how they may be strengthened through the normalization of right to health law even in the face of claims of non-justiciability of socioeconomic rights. The thesis interrogates how normative clarity on the right to health care can help broad based health system strengthening and reform to make the health system better able to fulfill its duties to the populace. He explores how the judiciary may then hold the health system accountable as an agent of the State to its duties bearing in mind the principle of progressive realization and its implications for resource allocation. 

Description of research: Anine's primary areas of research interest are crime statistics and drug policy. Her dissertation investigates South African crime statistics over the last century. It speaks to debates on the causes of crime, especially in South Africa, on the relationship between social theory and empirical data, and on the value of criminological statistics, with a particular focus on the incidence of murder.

Description of research: Ishmael’s thesis focuses on the constitutionality of invoking the sub judice rule in parliamentary proceedings in the light of the executive’s constitutional duty to account on any public affairs. However, the usual remit by public officials and politicians is that ‘a matter is sub judice’ in an attempt to avoid dealing with controversial or unpalatable questions relating to public affairs. The executive and Parliament have the constitutional duty to account for public affairs and exercise oversight on public affairs respectively. The sub judice rule, in a parliamentary setting, appears to upset this constitutional imperative.  My thesis is that the sub judice rule undermines and hampers the proper conduct of parliamentary affairs, thus repugnant to the provisions of the South African Constitution. In other words, the sub judice rule may not pass constitutional muster. The research is topical and hopes to contribute to the resolution of the controversy concerning the application of the rule in South African parliamentary proceedings.

Description of research: This research aims to fill the gap in existing literature on Gender and Judging, by providing case studies from an African Perspective.  Using South Africa and Zambia, the research examines the judicial appointment process in regard to women specifically. How does the judicial appointment processes in these two countries enable women to ascend to the bench and are there factors that limit women’s judicial aspirations? Using empirical data and existing literature, the thesis examines the structure and context of the two jurisdictions, the judicial appointment bodies, the role of the judge and how this affects women, the legal profession and other relevant factors.  The research compares relevant literature from other studies in the West and draws out aspects that are common and uncommon in the two jurisdictions. At a practical level, the research aims to provide useful recommendations that would influence policies seeking to improve the representation of women on Superior Court benches.

Description of research: In this thesis Tamsanqa explore the world of the gym, the personal histories that contributed to these men becoming engaged in gym culture and the values that they espouse to explain their obsession. He is interested in exploring their views on their activities and on the boundary between legal and illegal use of supplements (including steroids).

Description of Research: The study recognizes that cases of defilement are increasingly being adjudicated by the court, available research illustrates feeble management of DNA evidence characterized by poor collection methods, inappropriate preservation and storage facilities, lack of standardized format for analysis, documentation and translation of evidence.  The inefficiency has led to a huge backlog of cases, low prosecution rates, delayed and compromised justices for victims of defilement and wrongful identification of perpetrators. The study intends to explore the use of forensic DNA evidence in resolving cases of defilement.

Description of research: Grace’s research focuses on disciplinary tribunal processes for sexual offences in South African universities. It seeks to ask and answer how we can formulate disciplinary processes so that they are victim friendly, regulated, yield more just outcomes, and are cognisant of the complex socio-legal display of power that characterizes sexual violence.

Description of research: Over the past few years, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women in its comments to Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe advised these states to take positive steps to eliminate the practice of lobola as it was a practice that disproportionately affected women by arguing that it should be recognized as a harmful traditional and cultural practice. However, in the same period, the Committee’s comments to other state parties such as South Africa, where the same cultural practice is observed, did not get the same comment. A few questions arise from this lack of standard application of what consists of a harmful traditional cultural practice in one state and not the other? It is from this stand point that the research seeks to investigate the practice on the ground, whether women and men who practice it view it as such and thereby qualifying whether this practice should be called a form of violence against women? If it is, why are we not calling it as such across all cultures? More generally, this research discusses broadly the extent to which the current human rights discourse is influenced by the idea of progress and modernity, by examining whether it is an intrinsically western discourse that has space for the practice of some customs, in this case, lobola.  The research also discusses the extent to which this right to culture can be reconciled with a woman’s right to be free from violence, particularly looking at the practice of lobola.

Description of research: The research tackles the issue of the implementation of key socio-economic rights within Botswana's disability landscape. The research tests Botswana's disability framework, with respect to these key rights against existing disability models and international conventions. The key question the research seeks to answer is whether Botswana is fulfilling its obligations with respect to the protection, fulfillment, enforcement and promotion of socio economic rights for persons with disabilities.

ii. To examine how the Zambian regulatory framework can effectively guarantee such participation.

Description of research: Nerida’s thesis examines ways in which gender makes a difference in the way judiciaries work and should work. The oft-repeated sentiment is that ‘justice is blind’- does this also mean justice is gender-blind? This thesis will analyse various structural and institutional barriers to women’s appointment and access to judicial careers in judiciaries in Kenya and Uganda. Gender equality is increasingly recognized as a fundamental component of a well-functioning and modern judicial system. Through the use of well-researched case studies and recommendations, Nerida hopes to contribute towards the quality and efficiency of judicial systems in Kenya and Uganda through highlighting the importance of gender equality and diverse representation in judiciaries. This research is premised on the sociology of law, to determine how engendering the judicial system contributes to a more responsive and representative government.

Contact details: Jameelah.omar@uct.ac.za

Description of research: This research explores whether the criminal procedure mechanisms that target sexual offence complainants are limited to mitigating harm to complainants, that is, mechanisms aimed at preventing secondary victimisation, rather than participatory mechanisms. A fuller understanding of what is meant by participatory rights allows for a proper understanding of whether South Africa’s adversarial system must evolve to accommodate these rights. Because the adversarial system precludes the participation of any third party, the question of complainant participation has not been adequately addressed, with most South African commentators purporting to speak to complainant participation, but actually speaking to protective mechanisms.

Ronald’s research departs from the traditional application of the doctrine by advocating for the justiciability of political questions that bear a nexus to a fundamental right and freedom.

Description of research: Sudan is one of the African countries that witnesses prolong civil war and conflict since its independence. The issue of accommodation of cultural and ethnic diversity is a prominent root cause of Sudan conflicts. The thesis is attempting to explore the scope of the international framework of accommodation of diversity and minority rights and to investigate to what extent the Sudan constitution is complying with it. The research aims to recommend the key features of a constitutional model tailored for Sudan that based on equal citizenship rights and protection of minority cultures.

Description of research: Technology has developed rapidly over the last three decades.  Over the last decade in particular, information is regularly transmitted and stored electronically – and only electronically.  As a result, Lee Swales’ thesis focuses on the regulation of electronic evidence in South Africa.  It examines hearsay electronic evidence; whether a presumption of regularity exists in South Africa; whether admissibility and weight of electronic evidence is appropriately regulated; and considers the South African Law Reform Commission’s (‘SALRC’) selected option for law reform.  In response to society’s reliance on technology, and evolving communication norms, the SALRC has suggested three different methodologies for law reform in relation to electronic evidence and recommends the most aggressive of these options in the form of a Law of Evidence Bill. In this thesis, Lee agrees with many of the findings made by the SALRC but disagrees with the option recommended for law reform. As suggested by several other stakeholders, rather than a drastic overhaul of the current legal framework, the thesis proposes a more cautious amendment of existing legislation.

Description of research: Paul’s research examines how Prolonged and Arbitrary Arrest and Detention (PAD) has become a justice and human rights challenge for South Sudan. The research builds on existing theoretical knowledge, regional and international legal framework and case law as well as drawing on lessons learned, and best practices drawn from different context and increases awareness on PAD as a specific justice and human rights concern of South Sudan. The research explores how a limitation in the awareness and the application of human rights; the limited geographic coverage and dysfunctional judicial and law enforcement institutions, and; an insufficiency of required logistics for the provision of justice services is perpetuating PAD in South Sudan and rendering it an inevitable consequence of justice service delivery in South Sudan. As South Sudan contends with the challenges of nationhood, this research shall provide a critical understanding of the status of the criminal justice sector in South Sudan and makes recommendations on how the identified challenges and limitations could be addressed in preventing PAD and making the justice system work for all South Sudanese.