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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

Champagne and cancer have more in common than you might think

2013-05-08

Photo: Supplied
08 May 2013

No, a glass of champagne will not cure cancer....

…But they have more in common than you might think.

Researchers from the Departments of Microbial Biochemical and Food Biotechnology, Physics and the Centre for Microscopy at the University of the Free State in South Africa were recently exploring the properties of yeast cells in wine and food to find out more of how yeast was able to manufacture the gas that caused bread to rise, champagne to fizz and traditional beer to foam. And the discovery they made is a breakthrough that may have enormous implications for the treatment of diseases in humans.

The team discovered that they could slice open cells with argon gas particles, and look inside. They were surprised to find a maze of tiny passages like gas chambers that allowed each cell to ‘breathe.’ It is this tiny set of ‘lungs’ that puts the bubbles in your bubbly and the bounce in your bread.

But it was the technique that the researchers used to open up the cells that caught the attention of the scientists at the Mayo Clinic (Tumor Angiogenesis and Vascular Biology Research Centre) in the US.

Using this technology, they ultimately aim to peer inside cells taken from a cancer patient to see how treatment was progressing. In this way they would be able to assist the Mayo team to target treatments more effectively, reduce dosages in order to make treatment gentler on the patient, and have an accurate view of how the cancer was being eliminated.

“Yes, we are working with the Mayo Clinic,” said Profes Lodewyk Kock from the Microbial, Biochemical and Food Biotechnology Department at the UFS.

“This technique we developed has enormous potential for cell research, whether it is for cancer treatment or any other investigation into the working of cells. Through nanotechnology, and our own invention called Auger-architectomics, we are able to see where no-one has been able to see before.”

The team of Prof Kock including Dr Chantel Swart, Kumisho Dithebe, Prof Hendrik Swart (Physics, UFS) and Prof Pieter van Wyk (Centre for Microscopy, UFS) unlocked the ‘missing link’ that explains the existence of bubbles inside yeasts, and incidentally have created a possible technique for tracking drug and chemotherapy treatment in human cells.

Their work has been published recently in FEMS Yeast Research, the leading international journal on yeast research. In addition, their discovery has been selected for display on the cover page of all 2013 issues of this journal.

One can most certainly raise a glass of champagne to celebrate that!

There are links for video lectures on the technique used and findings on the Internet at:

1. http://vimeo.com/63643628 (Comic version for school kids)

2. http://vimeo.com/61521401 (Detailed version for fellow scientists)

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