AfriForum to address UN in Genève on violence against minorities

On Tuesday and Wednesday (25 and 26 November 2014) AfriForum will attend the seventh session of the UN Human Rights Council’s Forum on Minority Issues in Genève, Switzerland, to address the Forum on the state of minority rights in South Africa. It will be the fifth time that AfriForum will be attending the annual session of this forum.

According to Alana Bailey, Deputy CEO of AfriForum responsible for international liaison, this year’s session will focus on preventing and addressing violence and atrocity crimes targeted against minorities. As part of her presentation, she will submit a report on the lack of protection for minorities in South Africa. She will specifically look at the crisis level of attacks and murders committed against minority farming communities. Another burning issue that will receive attention, is the authorities’ disregard for the language rights of speaker od Afrikaans and other indigenous official languages, which often results in victims of crime being denied justice.

In addition, AfriForum’s comprehensive report on farm attacks which was submitted to the South African Human Rights Commission earlier this year, will also be presented to the UN’s Human Rights Council.

The focus of the Forum on Minority Issues is not the submission of complaints per se, but the finding of solutions. With its South African perspective, AfriForum proposes that minorities should be protected and their rights promoted by:

• allowing civil society to be positively involved in the prevention of the abuse of power against minorities and the promotion of their rights;
• ensuring the freedom and independence of the media and the judiciary;
• creating institutions such as the South African Article 9* institutions, but also safeguarding them from interference (for example by cadre deployment) and intimidation by authorities, political parties and other interest groups. They need to have access to methods to enforce their rulings, as well as sufficient funding. Financial management must be controlled stringently and immediate, effective action must be taken, should maladministration occur;
• applying international pressure when such measures are not in place.

According to Bailey, AfriForum’s presence at the session is part of a comprehensive strategy by means of which AfriForum increasingly internationalises the violation of human and minority rights in South Africa.