Children's and Young Persons’ Rights

The applicants were permanent residents in South Africa. They challenged legislative provisions, which limited entitlement to social grants for the aged to South African citizens, and would prevent children of non-South African citizens in the same position as the applicants from claiming any of the childcare grants available to South African children (regardless of the citizenship-status of the children themselves).  

The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) alleged that a large number of children in Portugal (estimated at 200,000 children) worked in poor conditions that affected their health. The ICJ claimed that Portugal was violating article 7(1) of the European Social Charter (ESC) by failing to properly supervise child labour. The government disputed the ICJ's statistics, claiming a maximum of 27,000 children worked and only 2,500 children were paid workers and employed in contravention of the Charter.

The Bhe judgment concerned three related cases (Bhe, SAHRC and Shibi), which were decided together. In the first action, the father of applicants, Nonkuleleko and Anelisa Bhe (aged 9 and 2), had died, and the mother (the third applicant) brought an action to secure the deceased's property for her daughters. Under the African customary law rule of primogeniture as well as section 23 of the Black Administration Act, the house became the property of the eldest male relative of the father, in this case the grandfather.