Human Rights Month commemorations will contribute to social cohesion and nation building through a series of dialogues and events planned for the duration of March.
Sport, Arts and Culture Minister, Nathi Mthethwa, on Tuesday launched the National Human Rights Month in Tshwane.
As part of planned activities, government, said Mthethwa, will conduct public engagements between local and foreign nationals in efforts to foster mutual understanding and peace.
While last year marked the 25th anniversary of the Constitution, government has also extended the commemoration into 2022, with a series of activations planned.
Launched under the theme, ‘The Year of Unity and Renewal: Protecting and Preserving our Human Rights Gains’, this month’s commemorations will also be used to assess the progress of the nation’s constitutional democratic project.
It will also bring to the fore the triple challenge of poverty, inequality and unemployment, and the extent to which this negates the goal of building a human rights culture.
While South Africans have made great strides in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, government will also use this month to foreground issues on public health, which are at the centre of the human rights agenda, given the lived reality of the pandemic.
“There are, however, concerns that the country is still nowhere near achieving herd immunity, as a result of lower-than-expected uptake of the COVID-19 vaccines. Thus, it is not inconceivable that while there would be some further relaxation of regulations, the country may not as yet get back to pre-COVID-19 levels of normality. This will further have implications in terms of how commemorations such as Human Rights Day are appropriately marked and commemorated,” the Minister said.
Human Rights Day can be traced back to the tumultuous events in Sharpeville, on 21 March 1960. On that day, 69 people died and 180 were wounded when police fired on a peaceful crowd that had gathered in protest against the Pass laws.
Outlining the gains made in engendering a human rights culture since the advent of democracy, Mthethwa said the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development has played a crucial role in ensuring that such an evaluation is premised on empirical evidence and reliable data through its longstanding partnership with the Foundation for Human Rights (FHR).
“Women constitute the majority in the population, yet in many respects, remain marginalised and more often, fall victim to discrimination and abuse, with some in the process paying with their lives.
“In terms of practical interventions, it is important to note that since the National Summit against Gender-Based Violence and Femicide that the President convened in 2018, there has been a 365-days commitment in this fight across all government departments and State agencies.
“Also since this national indaba, the Department of Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities developed a National Strategic Plan (NSP), in which all commitments on practical interventions are codified, monitored and reported about periodically as a way to gauge progress or otherwise. On the legislative front, there has also been progress, given the latest enactment into law of the three anti-GBV Bills,” Mthethwa said.
These legislative reforms will, among others, allow victims to make online protection order applications without being present in court.
Moreover, protection order applications will be on a 24-hour basis on the online application platform.
“As a deterrent measure for likely perpetrators, one of the Bills has provision in it that makes it possible for certain particulars of persons convicted of sexual offenses to be made publicly available. These Bills include the Criminal and Related Matters Amendment Bill, Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Bill and Domestic Violence Amendment Bill,” the Minister said.
The Department of Justice and Constitutional Development is also hard at work in consultations with stakeholders that will ensure that going forward, sex work is decriminalised.
“This would be an important development, since it is recognised that the criminalisation of sex work disproportionately affects women,” he said.
Source: South African Government News Agency