Issued by Daniela Ellerbeck on behalf of the FW de Klerk Foundation on 17/03/2025

In honour of Human Rights Day, the FW de Klerk Foundation’s Constitutional Rights Programme team today launched the Foundation’s Human Rights Report Card 2024.

“The Human Rights Report Card 2024 examines to what extent South Africans enjoyed their constitutional rights and freedoms during 2024. As part of this examination, the report also delves into the major developments of 2024 that impacted these rights and freedoms,” states Daniela Ellerbeck, an attorney and the FW de Klerk Foundation’s Constitutional Rights Programme Manager.

“While the report’s measures are not finite, they are tools to open discussions about the enjoyment of rights and freedoms. The goal is to enable South Africans (and their leaders) to gauge how well the country is making the Constitution a reality for all and is part of the Foundation’s efforts to encourage citizens to engage in discussions about these important issues,” continues Ellerbeck.

“The Foundation is built on the vision of making our constitutional democracy a reality for all South Africans,” Christo van der Rheede, Executive Director of the Foundation. “Evaluating the extent to which the rights and freedoms in the Bill of Rights are being enjoyed in practice is crucial. It enables South Africans to pause, once a year and zoom out. It allows us to see the bigger picture and about how we as a nation are doing in our endeavour to advance the human rights and freedoms in the Constitution – how we are doing as a nation in building a future of freedom and justice”.