South Africa and the UN Human Rights Council by Eduard Jordaan

Author:Eduard Jordaan [Jordaan, Eduard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138609945
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-09-20T00:00:00+00:00

5 Civil and political rights

Introduction

The previous two chapters showed that, on the HRC, South Africa is an enabler and often a defender of rights-abusing regimes and that there is a strong anti-Western bias in the way South Africa responds to human rights problems in specific countries. This chapter focuses on civil and political rights. It presents yet further evidence that South Africa stands on the side of repressive governments rather than on that of people whose rights are threatened or violated. Civil and political rights protect individuals against undue restrictions of their liberty and guarantee their participation in civil society and the political process. It will be demonstrated that on issue after issue, South Africa has failed to defend or has actively supported the curtailment of these rights that lie at the heart of democratic politics.

South Africa’s illiberal record on civil and political rights is all the more surprising when viewed against the backdrop of growing support for these rights on the HRC. During the HRC’s first years, resolutions that supported civil and political rights were scarce and roughly equal in number to resolutions attacking political freedoms, notably resolutions on free expression. In 2011, however, the HRC began to adopt civil and political rights resolutions with greater regularity and to push into new areas, with, for example, resolutions on human rights and the internet and on the right to peaceful protest. South Africa did not follow the HRC’s liberal trajectory.

This chapter focuses on seven civil and political rights issues on which disagreement was considerable: peaceful protest, freedom of expression, civil society space, human rights defenders, political participation, rule of law, and judicial integrity.

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