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Daily Maverick
6 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Constitutional rights for children: An urgent call for early childhood development in South Africa
The right to development must be understood holistically and is a legal entitlement rooted in international law. Access to early learning, nutrition, healthcare, responsive caregiving, safety, social services and play are not optional services, but are entitlements that enable children to survive, thrive, and participate fully in society. South Africa cannot claim to uphold children's rights while the foundations for early childhood development (ECD) — the most critical phase of human development — remain legally invisible. Despite a growing budget and increased political support, the country's youngest six million citizens will continue to be deprioritised without a justiciable right to ECD. This was the challenge a powerful group of legal minds and ECD champions confronted head-on at the Right to ECD Symposium hosted by the Real Reform for ECD movement in Johannesburg. The Symposium brought together ECD practitioners, law and policy experts, and seasoned ECD advocates in a powerful show of collective commitment to one goal: confronting the legal vacuum at the heart of ECD delivery. The keynote address by Associate Professor Noam Peleg, an expert on children's rights and development, grounded the discussions in international law. He urged South Africans to rethink the legal framing of childhood. He argued that children should not be seen merely as future adults but as full rights-holders in the present. He called for the full recognition of the right to development, from zero to 18 years as understood in international law, with ECD recognised as a critical foundation for the realisation of that right. Peleg's core message was that the right to development must be understood holistically and is a legal entitlement rooted in international law. Access to early learning, nutrition, healthcare, responsive caregiving, safety, social services and play are not optional services, but are entitlements that enable children to survive, thrive, and participate fully in society. No enforceable right to ECD While South Africa's Constitution protects several of these elements individually, there is no express unified and enforceable right to ECD. Further, the absence of a legally binding, cross-sectoral legislative framework weakens accountability and undermines coordination on service delivery. Roles remain poorly defined across departments, responsibilities shift without consequence, and systemic failures are often left unchallenged unless civil society steps in to advocate. These are not theoretical concerns but have urgent real world impacts. Despite the welcome political shift by the government to significantly increase the ECD budget to more than R10-billion, the allocation remains inadequate to achieve universal access. Moreover, without legal and regulatory reform, policy commitments concerning universal access will not be achieved. Presenting a proposed framework for constitutionalising the right to early childhood development, Nurina Ally (Director of the Centre for Law and Society at the University of Cape Town) and Tatiana Kazim (Research Associate at the Centre for Law and Society) argued that the South African Constitution, interpreted in light of international law, implicitly includes an umbrella right to early childhood development, holistically understood, as well as a number of component rights (the spokes of the umbrella): rights to early learning; adequate nutrition; good health; responsive caregiving; rest, leisure and play; and opportunities to participate in cultural life. Both the umbrella right and each of the components, or spokes, also entail corresponding duties on the part of the state, families, and service providers. Importantly, the overarching umbrella right entails duties of coordination and funding on the part of the various government departments implicated in ECD service delivery, such as the departments of Basic Education, Health, and Social Development. However, a constitutional right to ECD has not yet been widely recognised in South Africa, either in civil society, the courts, or in the government. The failure to recognise such a right is evident in existing legislation and policies, and has serious consequences for the ECD sector and for young children. Legal clarity is necessary for enforcement as well as accountability. Consequences of legal gaps The consequences of the legal gaps are felt throughout early childhood development services. Among many other issues, departments work in silos, children between birth and two are neglected, parents are inadequately supported, nutrition support is inadequate, and health policies do not speak to the National Integrated ECD Policy. Many ECD programmes are locked out of public funding due to outdated planning laws, inflexible infrastructure norms, burdensome registration requirements, and the lack of a qualified and well-trained ECD workforce. While incremental reforms — such as amending the Children's Act, revising municipal bylaws, and easing regulatory requirements — are necessary, they are insufficient. While we strongly support these reforms and call for the Department of Basic Education to table the Children's Amendment Bill in Parliament this year, we also urge it to commit to a longer-term law reform strategy, as outlined in its own ECD 2030 Strategy. What we need is a bold shift: recognition that the Constitution protects an umbrella right to early childhood development, which encompasses the full essential package of ECD services. Crucially, this right is enforceable by the people it affects: the children, families and communities who rely on it. The Right to ECD Symposium was a beginning. It marked the start of a new phase in the movement for legal recognition of ECD as a right, not just a policy objective. Real change requires more than political will, it requires a legal framework that is principled, enforceable, and grounded in the lived realities of children in South Africa. The time for fragmented approaches has passed. The right to ECD must be recognised, resourced, and protected by law. DM Nobukhosi Zulu-Taruza is the Law and Policy Specialist at Ilifa Labantwana. Tess Peacock is the Executive Director at the Equality Collective. Nurina Ally is the Director of the Centre for Law and Society and Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cape Town. Cameron McConnachie is the co-lead of the Legal Resources Centre's Education Programme. Peter Daniel Al-Naddaf is a Legal Researcher at Equal Education Law Centre. Mmatsetshweu Ruby Motaung is the Executive Director of TREE (Training and Resources in Early Education).
Daily Maverick
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Education in ruins: Gaza's children face dire consequences of ongoing conflict and neglect
The war waged by Israel against Palestine has denied children the right to education after schools have been closed and many children killed, said Dr Noam Peleg at Equal Education's third annual Yoliswa Dwane Lecture. In the past year and a half, Israel has devastated much of Gaza's infrastructure, killing more than 16,000 Palestinian children and depriving many of the opportunity to get an education. On Tuesday, 6 May 2025, Equal Education, a youth-led, mass democratic movement of learners, post-school youth, parents, teachers and community members who defend the rights of learners facing exclusionary policies, hosted their third annual Yoliswa Dwane Lecture at the University of Cape Town, speaking about Gaza, children's rights and international law. At the beginning of the lecture, Equal Education's Head of Organising in the Western Cape, Nontsikelelo Dlulani, reflected on Dwane's words of empowerment: 'The institution does not define your activism, you are an activist before the institution.' this year the guest lecturer was Dr Noam Peleg, an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales' Faculty of Law and Justice, and an associate at the Australian Human Rights Institute, who advocates for children's rights. Peleg works in international children's rights law and authored the book The Child's Right to Development. He painted a disheartening image of the situation faced by school children in Gaza. Peleg said that since the war started, all schools in Gaza had been destroyed or closed, while families were struggling to access medical services for children suffering from disease and trauma. Education denied 'The Israeli legal system is both complicit and a key enabler in the genocide in Gaza, and for generations it was a key player in the war against Palestinian children… It denied the right to education, the right to health, the right to family life, the right to identity, the right to non-discrimination, the right to non-descrimination, and the right to life,' said Peleg. During the lecture, Peleg spoke about the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child that became the most widely ratified human rights treaty in history, and which has helped transform children's lives around the world, allowing them the right to education. However, Peleg said this was not the case in Gaza. 'Nearly all schools in Gaza have been destroyed by Israel since October 2023 and no child has attended school on a regular basis since. Children have no place to get physical education. They are displaced and… some of the teachers and children have been killed,' said Peleg. He argued that international law was failing because, despite the widespread ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, children had been victims of genocide and other war crimes throughout the 20th century. He said many children in Gaza, as well as Sudan, Cambodia, and even across Europe, did not enjoy any of the protections that adults promised them. Israel has strenuously denied that its war amounts to genocide and that it is defending its citizens from the threat posed by Hamas, which led the 7 October 2023 attack that killed 1,200 people and led to Israel's assault. Daily Maverick has previously reported that Human Rights Watch said the displacement of Palestinians 'is likely planned to be permanent in the buffer zones and security corridors', an action it said would amount to 'ethnic cleansing'. Mentioning stories of struggling families, Peleg shared a story of Raina, a 20-month-old baby from Gaza who was living with cancer and needed chemotherapy. Raina could not get the treatment, not because there were no nurses or oncologists, but, Peleg said, because 'Israel systematically and deliberately destroyed the availability of the healthcare system in Gaza. As a result, children like Raina are at the mercy of Israel. 'A 50-minute drive from where she lives, there is a hospital where she can receive the life-saving treatment that she needs. The problem is that this hospital is in the city of Ashkelon within Israel in [1948] territory. She used to be treated here, but her entry permit was revoked by Israel overnight, and her parents were told that this had been done due to security concerns. Preventing Raina from getting chemotherapy means one thing and one thing only — that she will die from cancer very soon,' said Peleg. Children a target 'Genocide justifiers claim that there are no innocent people in Gaza, not even children, and therefore killing them is legitimate and necessary in order to create a permanent state of security. Some Israelis go as far as claiming that it is essential to kill Palestinian children if they are the next generation of terrorists,' said Peleg. He told the audience that in Gaza children were suffering, had lost the muscle mass in their bodies and didn't have access to adequate nutrition. 'There is almost no food in Gaza, and this is a result of what Israel has imposed on Gaza since the war broke. Children go hungry and eventually die from hunger.' Israel has argued that Gaza has sufficient aid to sustain its population and that it is not suffering a hunger crisis. Speaking on how to prevent children from dying, Peleg quoted a statement by Save the Children that there needed to be an urgent response to treat and screen them in time. 'To prevent children from dying of starvation and malnutrition, you need to be able to reach them, screen them and treat them. We need to access communities. We need to be able to provide supplementary treatments for children,' said Peleg. DM
