The Centre for Child Law is based in the Law Faculty at the University of Pretoria. The official launch of the Centre was held in October 1998. The Director of the Centre for Child Law at the University of Pretoria is Dr Ann Skelton and the Deputy Director is Professor I.P. Maithufi.

The Centre contributes towards establishing and promoting the best interests of children in our community through education, research, advocacy and litigation.

Post-graduate students may obtain an LLM in Child Law. This LLM is presented over two years. National and international experts in the field of Child Law conduct lectures in the LLM programme. For more, please visit our University site.

The Centre for Child Law established a Children’s Litigation Project in August 2003 (with a grant from the Open Society Foundation) in order to undertake impact litigation work in the children’s rights sector. The Project was officially launched at a function at the University on 14 October 2003. Advocate Ann Skelton is the project co-ordinator, and the project is currently dealing with a number of cases.

The Project objectives are to use impact litigation in the areas of both civil and criminal law in order to:

• Push forward boundaries of the law relating to children
• Establish the content of legal rights and protection of children
• Set precedents, thereby changing the attitudes of the courts
• Hold government accountable on their responsibilities towards children
• Build experience and knowledge in Children’s Litigation

FUNDERS:

The Litigation Project is made possible through funding provided by the Open Society Foundation (South Africa) and the International Commission of Jurists (Sweden). The University of Pretoria provides our offices and administrative support for personnel and finance functions. We thank all concerned for their support.