Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items

Dr Namakula leads UN talks on Human Rights of People of African descent

17 November 2022 | Story Valentino Ndaba

Dr Catherine Namakula — Dr Catherine S. Namakula, Senior Lecturer of Public Law at the UFS and Chairperson of the UN Human Rights Council's Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent.

During the 77th General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), the plight of children of African descent was a main topic of conversation. The conversation was led by Dr Catherine Namakula, Senior Lecturer of Public Law at the University of the Free State (UFS) and Chairperson of the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (WGEPAD).

On Monday 31 October 2022, in New York, she presented the group’s yearly report, titled ‘Children of African Descent’ to the third committee of the General Assembly. Dr Namakula urged the UN and other stakeholders to avoid using photos of African children and children of African descent in deplorable situations for fundraising and marketing purposes. She stated that "children of African heritage are not synonymous with poverty".

Some of the issues discussed at the meeting included conflicts of law with regard to children of African descent, their disproportionate criminalisation, the intense policing of their families and homes, the racial conditioning of their education, and the use of images of them in degrading circumstances in UN and other stakeholder messaging for marketing and fundraising.

The Working Group recommended the creation of a racial justice index to assess how well states are performing and making progress in improving the well-being of children of African heritage. South Africa was one of the nations that intervened to affirm the report. Among the countries that affirmed other related issues were Russia, Cameroon, China, and Syria.

Dr Namakula also had private meetings with the leaders of the World Council of Churches, UN Women, UNICEF, and other UN agencies to talk about human rights-based approaches to programming aimed at mainstreaming racial justice in their work.

African Commission on Human and People’s Rights

In addition, Dr Namakula headed the WGEPAD team to the 73rd regular meeting of the African Commission on Human and People's Rights. She made a statement at the session that brought attention to the opportunities for and necessity of African civil society participation in the work of the Working Group and the UN anti-racism machinery. She made reference to the 'Declaration on People of African Descent' being drafted, to which they may add African perspectives.

Dr Namakula also called attention to the precarious status of victims of modern forms of enslavement, torture, and exploitation in the Middle East and Gulf States, emphasising the important role of civil society in documenting and publicising the tales of vulnerable victims. She emphasised the need for work on the reparations agenda to start right now in order to document Africa's claims and create the necessary institutional and normative frameworks.

She added that efforts are under way to have the UFS Faculty of Law serve as the academic alliance's anchor for the reparations agenda in Africa.

News Archive

UFS scientists involved in groundbreaking research to protect rhino horns

2010-07-27

Pictured from the left are: Prof. Paul Grobler (UFS), Prof. Antoinette Kotze (NZG) and Ms. Karen Ehlers (UFS).
Photo: Supplied

Scientists at the University of the Free State (UFS) are involved in a research study that will help to trace the source of any southern white rhino product to a specific geographic location.

This is an initiative of the National Zoological Gardens of South Africa (NZG).

Prof. Paul Grobler, who is heading the project in the Department of Genetics at the UFS, said that the research might even allow the identification of the individual animal from which a product was derived. This would allow law enforcement agencies not only to determine with certainty whether rhino horn, traded illegally on the international black market, had its origin in South Africa, but also from which region of South Africa the product came.

This additional knowledge is expected to have a major impact on the illicit trade in rhino horn and provide a potent legal club to get at rhino horn smugglers and traders.

The full research team consists of Prof. Grobler; Christiaan Labuschagne, a Ph.D. student at the UFS; Prof. Antoinette Kotze from the NZG, who is also an affiliated professor at the UFS; and Dr Desire Dalton, also from the NZG.

The team’s research involves the identification of small differences in the genetic code among white rhino populations in different regions of South Africa. The genetic code of every species is unique, and is composed of a sequence of the four nucleotide bases G, A, T and C that are inherited from one generation to the next. When one nucleotide base is changed or mutated in an individual, this mutated base is also inherited by the individual's progeny.

If, after many generations, this changed base is present in at least 1% of the individuals of a group, it is described as a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), pronounced "snip". Breeding populations that are geographically and reproductively isolated often contain different patterns of such SNPs, which act as a unique genetic signature for each population.

The team is assembling a detailed list of all SNPs found in white rhinos from different regions in South Africa. The work is done in collaboration with the Pretoria-based company, Inqaba Biotech, who is performing the nucleotide sequencing that is required for the identification of the SNPs.

Financial support for the project is provided by the Advanced Biomolecular Research cluster at the UFS.

The southern white rhino was once thought to be extinct, but in a conservation success story the species was boosted from an initial population of about 100 individuals located in KwaZulu-Natal at the end of the 19th century, to the present population of about 15 000 individuals. The southern white rhino is still, however, listed as “near threatened” by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

Media Release:
Mangaliso Radebe
Assistant Director: Media Liaison
Tel: 051 401 2828
Cell: 078 460 3320
E-mail: radebemt@ufs.ac.za
27 July 2010

Back

Economic and Management Sciences

Education

Health Sciences

The Humanities

Law

Natural and Agricultural Sciences

Theology and Religion

Open Distance Learning

Business School

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept