Page 30 - University of Pretoria RESEARCH REVIEW 2016

HUMAN rights
Using the courts to promote the rights of children involves research to inform court cases and submissions, and further, to ensure that writing about children’s rights litigation becomes a published record for future reference.
South Africa’s Constitution is recognised internationally for promoting and protecting children’s rights in section 28 of the Bill of Rights. Courts interpret the rights in the Constitution within a framework of international and regional law, which means that there is a comparative consideration of the law of other countries, too. This, in turn, means that good research to support a child rights argument in court is invariably done through global partnerships.
The Centre for Child Law based in UP’s Faculty of Law has earned a reputation for well- researched submissions that have been argued by the Centre’s legal teams before the Constitutional Court. Professor Ann Skelton, Director of the Centre, writes that this was achieved through in-house research, but also through international cooperation, in 2016, with student researchers at the Oxford Human Rights Hub, United Kingdom. For example, the case of Zephany Nurse came to court in 2015. Zephany had been kidnapped
28 | UP Research Review 2016
THE RIGHTS OF CHILDREN RESEARCH, ADVOCACY AND LITIGATION