On Tuesday, 15 September 2020, Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), in collaboration with Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town and Corruption Watch, released its report Costly Protection: Corruption in South Africa’s Asylum System. The report tracks changes in corruption in the asylum system over the last five years, as well as instances of corruption purported to occur in and around the refugee reception offices (RROs).
Prompted by clients’ continued reports of corruption and barriers to realising their refugee status, and ultimately not being able to access the RROs, with barriers to access including demands for bribes, LHR initiated the assessment underpinning this report in late 2019, using both quantitative and qualitative methods to assess the current state of affairs in respect of corruption at RROs in South Africa.
Costly Protection: Corruption in South Africa’s Asylum System is a follow up to the report published by LHR and the African Centre for Migration & Society in 2015, Queue Here for Corruption, which was a quantitative assessment of corruption at South Africa’s RROs at that time. Costly Protection also takes note of the 2016 report published by Corruption Watch, Asylum at a Price, which highlights how corruption impacts those seeking legal protection in South Africa.
The report release will be accompanied by a webinar launch event on Thursday, 17 September 2020 at 9h00 via the Zoom platform which will cover corruption in South Africa and its effect on the rule of law, as well as the background and findings of Costly Protection: Corruption in South Africa’s Asylum System.
This report and launch event are made possible by the generous support of the Social Justice Initiative.
For more information, contact:
Lawyers for Human Rights: Sharon Ekambaram: Sharone@lhr.org.za
Corruption Watch: Phemelo Khaas: PhemeloK@corruptionwatch.org.za
Scalabrini Centre of Cape Town: Sally Gandar: Sally@scalabrini.org.za
