OnCampus Issue 3 • October 2015 • For daily updates visit www.uwc.ac.za
PAGE 3 Dentistry volunteers making a difference
PAGE 4-7 Events
PAGE 9 Learning Centres key to improving science
PAGE 16 UWC scholar appointed to top IOC position
Twenty-five years of community Law
U
WC’s Community Law Centre (CLC) has been renamed the Dullah Omar Institute for Constitutional Law, Governance and Human Rights in honour of its founding director, Advocate Dullah Omar. The former CLC, which recently celebrated twenty-five years of tireless work in the cause of human rights and democracy, was born out of the struggles of the 1980s and opened its doors at UWC in 1990. It was active at the centre of the negotiations for a democratic South Africa in the early 1990s and, as the Institute, will continue to be a major contributor to policy formulation in South Africa and, increasingly, elsewhere on the continent. The Institute works in five key programme areas: children’s rights, socio-economic rights, multilevel government, criminal justice reform and parliamentary democracy. The Children’s Rights Project. The
Institute is a member of the African Children’s Charter Project (ACCP), an international consortium which supports efforts in the African Union to uphold the rights of children. In addition to policy engagement on the issues of children’s rights, the Institute also hosts postgraduate level teaching on the subject. The Socio-Economic Rights Project (SERP) is a multi-disciplinary research and advocacy unit that supports socio-economic rights nationally and continentally by publishing engaged research, conducting practical education and campaigning around social justice issues, including discussions on the right to housing and sexual and reproductive rights. The Civil Society for Prison Reform Initiative (CSPRI) conducts research and policy engagement to mitigate the consequences of imprisonment, including the risk of human rights violations in pre-
trial detention. For example, the CSPRI participated in a review of the incidence of torture in South Africa from 1985 to 2014 that revealed an increase since 2006 in the use of torture and excessive force by law enforcement officials in South Africa. The Multilevel Government Initiative (MLGI) undertakes applied interdisciplinary research into real-world governance problems. In addition to engaging in public debate about government at local, regional and national levels, the MLGI develops indices and barometers for measuring government performance, such as the Municipal Audit Consistency Barometer, which analyses trends in the audit performance of municipalities. The Parliamentary Programme promotes democracy and public participation in South Africa’s legislatures, with emphasis on women’s and children’s rights.