On 15 February 2025, the Helen Suzman Foundation (HSF) and Kopanang Africa against Xenophobia (KAAX) submitted a joint submission on the Draft Revised White Paper on Citizenship, Immigration and Refugee Protection (White Paper).
HSF previously submitted comments on the 2024 iteration of the White Paper. A significant and welcome change in the 2025 version is the removal of the recommendation for South Africa to withdraw from the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees and re-enter them with reservations regarding the principle of non-refoulement. This shift reflects an important recognition of South Africa’s constitutional and international legal obligations.
However, there remains significant concerns. While migration reform is necessary as courts are overwhelmed with the interpretation and review of immigration decisions, our submission emphasises that human rights must remain the central guiding principle. Economic and national security objectives cannot be pursued at the expense of constitutional protections and right to equality and dignity.
The White Paper frames migration primarily as a security and economic issue. This risks reinforcing exclusionary approaches in overhauling the asylum and refugee systems rather than addressing the systemic administrative failures and severe corruption. The Department of Home Affairs’ longstanding backlogs, staffing challenges, and institutional weaknesses must be addressed directly if meaningful reform is to succeed, which the White Paper does not.
Several proposed reforms also rely on institutional capacity, technological infrastructure, and legal frameworks that do not yet exist. For example, proposals involving digitisation and artificial intelligence lack clear legislative safeguards and risk excluding vulnerable individuals who may face barriers in accessing digital systems.
Of particular concern are proposals to introduce the “First Safe Country” principle and to relocate Refugee Reception Offices to ports of entry. We submit that this is an attempt to stop asylum seekers and migrants from entering the country entirely to deny them any constitutional claims.
The White Paper also fails to provide clear solutions for addressing statelessness among children and longstanding birth registration backlogs, which is currently being litigated in the Western Cape High Court to which HSF is amicus curiae. Without clear pathways to documentation, vulnerable children risk exclusion from claiming their rights and services and unfairly bearing the consequences of their parents status.
HSF and KAAX submits, along with many other organisations, that the recommendations concerning the criminalisation of concealment of death where a burial is carried out without a death certificate does not adequately consider religious burial customs or socio-economic barriers to registering a death before a burial is carried out.
HSF and KAAX support efforts to improve migration governance. However, reform must strengthen administrative capacity, clear all application backlogs, uphold constitutional rights, and ensure compliance with South Africa’s international obligations.
You can read our joint submission here.
