SALC's biennial report captures activities for March 2019 to February 2021. Read the report here.
Staff Writer18 May 2021
The Children’s Rights focus area is cross-cutting and integrates with all of SALC’s programme areas. Wherever possible, we seek to ensure that our cases also look at the best interests of children.
Current cases:
- Malawi: Accountability for unlawful detention of pregnant learners
- Malawi: Challenge to the arrest and removal from school of pregnant learners.
- Swaziland: Case challenging laws allowing child marriage.
- Malawi: Challenging refusal of admission to school to child with dreadlocks.
- Malawi: Challenging criminalisation of adolescent sexuality.
Completed cases:
- Malawi: Bringing accountability for sexual violence by the police.
- Malawi: Challenging detention of children in police custody
- Botswana: Challenging failure to provide citizenship to statelss child.
- Botswana: Ending discrimination in adoption.
- Malawi: Advancing the best interests of the child in sentencing of caregivers.
- Malawi: Challenging the incarceration of children in prison.
Background Detention of children is prohibited under the Malawi Child Care Protection and Justice of 2010. Detention is only allowed in exceptional circumstances. Where a detention order is made against a child before liability against the child is made, it is the requirement of the law that such detention should…
Staff Writer1 May 2021
On 25 February 2021, The Nation reported about a girl who was raped in police custody. Read the article here.
Staff Writer25 Feb 2021
Blantyre, 26 August 2020 – Yesterday, the Child Justice Court sitting in Blantyre, Malawi, issued an order for a stay of criminal proceedings against an adolescent boy who was charged with the offence of defilement pending determination of the High Court on the constitutionality of the offence. Currently, section 138(1)…
Staff Writer26 Aug 2020
SALC is working with Centre for Human Rights Education, Advice and Assistance (CHREAA) – Malawi in a challenge to the law of defilement in s138 of the Penal Code, insofar as it criminalises consensual sex between adolescents in Malawi. It is illegal to have sex with a girl under the age of 16 in Malawi, and there are no exceptions…
Staff Writer3 Jul 2020
SALC is working with Youth Watch Society (YOWSO) in Malawi on a case seeking the payment of damages for false imprisonment after a Magistrates Court decision to fine parents of students who were pregnant and those responsible for the pregnancies at a school in Malawi. This follows a judgment in…
Staff Writer30 Apr 2020
The Weekend Nation 25 April 2020 Victor Mhango from the Centre for Human Rights Education, Advice and Assistance (CHREAA) and Anneke Meerkotter and Chikondi Chijozi from the Southern Africa Litigation Centre SALC) Malawi’s 2020 Public Health (Corona Virus Prevention, Containment and Management) Rules, prescribes what must happen if and when…
Staff Writer28 Apr 2020
9 April 2020, Malawi - We the undersigned organisations commend His Excellency, The State President, Arthur Peter Mutharika for including prison decongestion as one of the measures to combat COVID-19 in Malawi. In his Presidential Address on 4 April 2020, the State President announced new measures that the Government will undertake…
Anneke Meerkotter9 Apr 2020
CGTN Africa 9 February 2020 Makeda Mbewe was just six years old when she was kicked out of her primary school in Malawi for wearing her hair in the dreadlocks of her Rastafarian religion. Two years later, she is back in the playground, thanks to a landmark court ruling in…
Staff Writer10 Feb 2020
14 January 2020 – On 14 January 2020, the High Court of Malawi in Zomba granted an interlocutory injunction compelling the Minister of Education to allow all children of Rastafari religion, who have dreadlocks, to enroll into Government Schools pending the finalisation of the matter. The order is in line…
Anneke Meerkotter15 Jan 2020
