Sexual and Reproductive Rights
SALC’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights programme has the following objectives:
- To ensure a human rights approach in management of teenage/adolescent and learner pregnancy
- To challenge the practice of child and forced marriage
- To ensure accountability for health care violations relating to sexual and reproductive health rights
- To promote recognition and respect for sexual and reproductive health rights
- To challenge laws and practices that violate sexual and reproductive health rights
- To ensure accountability for and eradication of gender-based violence.
Current cases:
Malawi: Protecting right to freedom of expression for woman human rights defenders
Eswatini (Swaziland): Challenging laws allowing child marriage
Completed cases:
Tanzania: Challenging laws allowing child marriage.
Botswana: Challenging prescription in medical negligence claim
Zimbabwe: Case strengthening women’s access to reproductive health services.
Namibia: Challenging coerced sterilisation of women living with HIV.
Malawi: Advancing the best interests of the child in sentencing of caregivers.
Malawi: Challenge to the arrest and removal from school of pregnant learners
Malawi: Challenging the criminalisation of breastfeeding by women living with HIV.
Lesotho: Challenge to unfair dismissal as a result of pregnancy in the Lesotho Defence Force.
Publications:
Advocacy:
Call in the lawyers: mitigating the Global Gag Rule...
Article on the effects of the global gag rule, how it negatively impacts efforts to improve laws to ensure access to safe abortion in Africa and how lawyers can explore ways to mitigate this. Read the article here. Article published…
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News Release: Challenge to use of Defilement Offences against Adolescents Engage...
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…
Read More MALAWI: CHALLENGING CRIMINALISATION OF ADOLESCENT SEXUALITY...
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,inasfar as it criminalises consensual sex between adolescents in Malawi. It is illegal to have sex with a girl under the age…
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Celebrating International Women’s Day...
International Women’s Day (IWD), which was held on 8 March 2020, represents an important day in the fight for women’s rights, equality and non-discrimination in Southern Africa and around the world. IWD is the perfect time to take stock of…
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News Release: Tanzania Court of Appeal upholds ban on child marriage...
23 October 2019 - Today, the Tanzania Court of Appeal issued a judgment in the case of Attorney General V Rebeca Gyumi dismissing an appeal filed by the State against a judgment obtained in the High Court in 2016. Rebeca…
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Eswatini: Summary of the Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Act...
The Rights4All Project, under its My Body My Rights Campaign, published a booklet which summarises the provisions of the Sexual Offences and Domestic Violence Act of 2018. The booklet is available here.
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International Safe Abortion Day 2019: The Global Gag Rule as a barrier to access...
Article 14(2)(c ) of the Maputo Protocol mandates African states to facilitate access to safe abortion in cases of sexual assault, rape, incest or where the pregnancy poses a risk to the physical or mental health of the woman, and…
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Policy Brief: The Recognition of Customary Marriages In Zimbabwe And The Propose...
The Zimbabwe Marriage Bill, 2019 was gazetted and released for public comment on 19 July 2019. The Bill proposes to amend the law governing marriage in Zimbabwe, in order to consolidate the different laws and to align the law with…
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ESWATINI: DOMESTIC WORK & THE LAW...
The Rights4All Project, under its My Body My Rights Campaign, published a pamphlet setting out the various laws which apply to domestic workers. The pamphlet is a response to the widespread abuse endured by domestic workers in the workplace. The…
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ESWATINI: SEX WORKERS & THE LAW...
The Rights4All Project, as part of its My Body My Rights Campaign, has produced leaflets on the laws which can be used by sex workers to assert their rights. See detailed pamphlet here See summary pamphlet here
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Tanzania: Challenging Child Marriage...
SALC supported Msichiana Initiative and Rebeca Gyumi in an appeal filed by the state in the Tanzania Court of Appeal against a judgment obtained in 2016. In 2016, Rebeca Gyumi filed a case on behalf of children at the risk…
Read More Nigeria: Challenge to arbitrary arrest of women during sweeping exercises...
Factual Background The applicants were among 71 women who were arrested at various public spaces in Abuja between 17 and 26 April 2019. The arrests were carried out by the FCTA Joint Task Team comprising the Nigerian Army, Nigeria Securities…
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