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1. The Law is Not Enough: Realising the Child’s Right to a Nationality in South Africa

Author:
Liesl Heila Muller
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Statelessness & Citizenship Review
Institution:
Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, Melbourne Law School
Abstract:
The Republic of South Africa (‘South Africa’) boasts some of the most progressive and inclusive citizenship laws on the African continent, protecting the right to citizenship in both its constitution and subsidiary legislation and affording special protections to children. A simple exercise in comparative law would find that there is no statelessness problem in South Africa but that would be incorrect. A closer look at the implementation of the laws reveals serious problems in the Government’s nationality administration, resulting in statelessness. In the South African context, it is not immediately possible to tell whether a child is stateless. It is only once attempts have been made to obtain (recognition of) citizenship and those attempts have failed (because of a faulty system) that a determination can be made. Under customary international law, a person is stateless because of non-recognition of citizenship by any state, whether legally or illegally. As a result, nationality administration procedures are as important as laws. South Africa’s failure to formally recognise its citizens because of insurmountable administrative barriers and discriminatory practices is making children in South Africa stateless, rendering its impressive laws useless. This article provides a brief analysis of the historical and legislative context within which South Africa finds itself, then analyses recent jurisprudence on childhood statelessness to illustrate how the right to administrative justice is crucial to South Africa’s trajectory of success in ending childhood statelessness, offering recommendations for the way forward.
Topic:
Nationalism, Citizenship, Bureaucracy, and Administration
Political Geography:
Africa and South Africa

2. Is Cameroon a Police State? All About the Use of Administrative Custody

Author:
Steve Tametong
Publication Date:
07-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Nkafu Policy Institute
Abstract:
The wind of liberal democracy will not have swept away all the vestiges of the police state long maintained in Cameroon under the cover of Ordinance No. 62/OF/18 of March 12, 1962 on the repression of subversion. Indeed, this legislation had made impossible any democratic political life and had emptied of its substance the enjoyment and exercise of fundamental rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. Today, administrative custody seems to be one of the vestiges that has survived the passage of time. A unilateral prerogative of arbitrary deprivation of freedoms formerly held by the administrative authorities, administrative custody was formally instituted by law n°90/054 of 19 December 1990 on the maintenance of public order. In application of this law, and under the pretext – justified or false – of maintaining public order, the administrative authorities can request persons and property in the legal forms, request the forces of order, control the movement of goods and persons, but above all “take measures of police custody for a period of 15 days, renewable, within the framework of the fight against organized crime. This deprivation of liberty ordered by the administrative authorities is commonly referred to as “administrative custody”, which distinguishes it from judicial custody ordered in the context of criminal proceedings. At a time when most democratic systems are implementing a legal and institutional framework favorable to the rule of law and the development of fundamental rights and freedoms, it is not without interest to question the appropriateness of maintaining administrative custody in Cameroonian positive law, especially in normal times. Before mobilizing the arguments in favor of abolishing it (I), it is appropriate to first dwell on the difficulties it poses in the Cameroonian context (II).
Topic:
Democracy, Liberalism, Police State, Illiberal Democracy, and Administration
Political Geography:
Africa and Cameroon

3. Assessing the Management and Administration in Public Health Facilities of Uganda and the Implications for the Healthcare Service Delivery and Utilization: Evidence from the CODES Project

Author:
Moses Mukundane, Annet Nannungi, Dennis Bataringaya, Adelaine Aryaija-Karemani, Patrick Ssesanga, and Wilson Winstons Muhwezi
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE)
Abstract:
This Policy Research Paper is an outcome of the feld activities carried out under the Community and District Empowerment for Scale-Up (CODES) project- a fve-year initiative (2012-2016) designed to reduce child deaths caused by diarrhoea, pneumonia and malaria—the three of the top childhood killer diseases in Uganda today. The paper presents an assessment of one of the critical determinants of quality of healthcare provision – the health facility level management and administration. The paper is premised on the argument that the existing weaknesses in health facility management and administration immensely jeopardize the quality of health care service delivery in public health facilities as well as effective utilization of healthcare by the community. This is to the extent that even when the issues and challenges that require government intervention seem to be improving or being addressed at health facilities, with outstanding weaknesses in facility management and administration, the quality of care does not correspondingly improve.
Topic:
Services, Public Health, Management, and Administration
Political Geography:
Uganda and Africa