Page 46 - OSISA Annual Report 2015-2018

Human Rights, Access to Justice and Rule of Law
Access to Justice and Rule of Law
OSISA supported the nascent Pan African Judges and Jurists Forum. This Forum aims to create a support system, particularly for activist judges who come under attack for their activism from their governments. This Forum stemmed from the realisation that most political administrations tend to ostracise judges that have a progressive/activist inclination in the manner in which they discharge themselves. The tendency then is to fire those judges. This Forum was set up as a support system for judges who experience such situations. It also provides trial observations for politically sensitive matters where necessary.
At a regional level, 2018 saw the institutionalisation of the Southern African Human Rights Defenders Network, which since 2013 had been operating as a loose network. It has proved to be an excellent resource for coordinating regional advocacy and efforts to strengthen the protection and security of Human Rights Defenders. A national network was also established in Zimbabwe (Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, in 2018).
Human Rights
Under Human Rights, we have continued to respond to the situations of human rights defenders under attack. This has included responding to situations happening in Zimbabwe and Lesotho where we had to support 59 soldiers who were charged with mutiny after refusing to execute an unlawful order. Responding directly to these situations has been time and resource-intensive. This made us double efforts to establish a fully functional and
well-resourced Southern Africa Human Rights Defenders Network.
Disability Rights
In 2018, the Cluster supported organisations in the two countries that have been impacted the most by attacks of people with albinism: the Association of People with Albinism in Malawi, which successfully advocated for the establishment of a national commission of inquiry onto the killings of persons with Albinism, and the prosecution of offenders, and UNESCO in Mozambique, which successfully established a better coordinated national network of organisations working on Albinism whose collective advocacy has led to a reduction in attacks against persons with albinism.
During the same period, informed by shrinking budgets, OSISA’s Disability Rights Programme had a distinct shift from the broad disability rights programming to focus on just two areas that are marginal in the disability rights movement. These two are issues of people with albinism and those of people with mental and intellectual disability. The focus on issues of albinism was informed by the reality, which is that the Southern Africa region is the epicentre of the crisis faced by people with albinism, with attacks and killings on people with albinism in Malawi and Mozambique reaching unmanageable proportions. The programme also supported the production of a film on mental and intellectual disability called State of Mind. The programme supported the climb Kilimanjaro for Albinism Project. Two of the three people who climbed were women.
Equality and Non-Discrimination
LGBTQI Rights
Globally, work was being done to change transgenderism from a mental disease (in the ICD-10) to a medical variant in ICD-11. This change, however, could not happen with some medical voices from the Africa continent being supportive. OSISA increased the grant to Iranti-org to run a regional workshop on advocacy needed to engage the ISD-11 process. The programme manager attended the WPATH meeting in Amsterdam in 2016, where he presented on challenges trans persons face in health institutions and advocated directly for the changes we
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OPEN SOCIETY INITIATIVE FOR SOUTHERN AFRICA – 2018 REPORT