The International Court of Justice has declined the South African government's urgent application for further measures to prevent an "unprecedented military offensive against Rafah,” but reiterated that Israel is bound to protect civilians in the country.
South Africa argued in an urgent application that this military offensive “announced by the State of Israel, has already led to and will result in further large-scale killing, harm, and destruction in serious and irreparable breach both of the Genocide Convention" and of the Court's Order of January 26, 2024.
The International Court of Justice today told Israel to take all measures within its power to prevent a genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Judge Joan E. Donoghue, the court's president, read the order directing the State of Israel to abide by temporary measures to stop the humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian population in Gaza from worsening.
The International Court of Justice will deliver it's order for provisional measures submitted by South Africa in the case of South Africa versus Israel today.
Israel disputed both South Africa’s jurisdiction and the provisional measures that it demanded the International Court of Justice impose on the State of Israel to prevent genocide.
Israel’s co-agent, Tal Becker, said in his opening address that Jewish people’s experience of the Holocaust meant that it was among “among the first states to ratify the Genocide Convention, without reservation, and to incorporate its provisions in its domestic legislation. For some, the promise of ‘never again for all people’ is a slogan. For Israel, it is the highest moral obligation.”
Far from the mayhem, destruction, and humanitarian crisis in Gaza, the South African government argued in the International Court of Justice in the Hague that it had an obligation and a right to bring a case to halt a genocide by the Israeli government and its military.
A just transition should be viewed as an opportunity to rectify some of the wrongs where women are not prioritised in the energy mix, yet their experience of the impact of climate change is massive, says Thandile Chinyavanhu, a young South African-based climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace Africa.
In the deep rural village of Jekezi in South Africa's Eastern Cape, most young and able-bodied people have fled the area, leaving behind people with disabilities, the elderly, and children.
Greed, poverty, irresponsible legal mining giants which exploited and then abandoned South Africa's mines, together with the government's failure to enforce regulations on the mining giants to rehabilitate mines before closing them, have created fertile ground for a thriving illegal artisanal mining sector called Zama Zama, many of them run by criminal syndicates.
South Africa’s almost record level food price inflation, load shedding, rising energy costs, and further fuel and interest rate hike forecast have eroded workers’ disposable incomes and further disadvantaging the poor – leaving analysts predicting that the country was at heightened risk, including civil unrest.
Mining towns across South Africa have become hostage to a booming but bloody illegal mining economy.
With the outbreak of Monkeypox in non-endemic countries leading to a scramble for vaccines, global health advocates are again calling for equity to be prioritized in the international response.
After two years of economic and social upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries, including South Africa, have lifted the tough protocols such as lockdowns, the mandatory wearing of masks and social distancing.
Around the world, from Syria to Libya, from Bangladesh to Ukraine, millions have become refugees in foreign lands due to war, famine, or political and economic instability in their countries.
Twenty-seven years after South Africa’s first democratic elections, the country finds itself reflecting on the catalysts of a week of looting and destruction of property resulting in more than 200 deaths and US$ 1.3 billion in damage.
Mobs have attacked foreign-owned businesses on the streets of at least three South African cities in recent days. This has caused outrage across Africa. There have even been
retaliatory attacks. The South African government, under pressure to protect her
large international migrant community, quickly defused the attacks.
Millions of South Africans headed out in large numbers, some braving cold and wet weather to cast their ballot in the country's sixth democratic elections this week. The 2019 election was one of the most competitive and contested elections that also saw a whopping 48 parties on the national ballot—up 300 percent from a mere 10 years ago.
Between 1982 and 1988 Birgitta Karlström Dorph was on a secret mission in South Africa. "Why didn't they stop us? Probably they were not aware of the scope of the operation. The money was transferred through so many different channels. We were clever, " Karlström Dorph says.
Long before Joy Daniels became the manager of a travel company she was cleaning rooms at a guesthouse. But after joining a Fair Trade-certified business, a place that valued its staff, in a few years she was soon promoted to manager.
South Africans await judgement to be handed down in a court case that could set a sweeping precedent by empowering communities on communal land with the right to reject new mining projects.
April 12 is expected to be the infamous “Day Zero” in South Africa’s second largest city of Cape Town, a tourist hub which attracts millions of visitors every year.
The crowd in the park gave out roars of approval as the next act was announced: Mothusi Bashimane Ndlovu, one of Zimbabwe’s most popular singers and actors, who took to the stage with a small axe in hand.