Funding priorities
Social Justice and Human Rights - influencing the regional policy agenda to overcome poverty and injustice
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Aids Archive
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Centre for Comparative Law in Africa
Africa’s diverse and pluralistic societies call for fresh, home-grown, and intellectually rigorous leadership grounded in the African experience. The Centre for Comparative Law in Africa (CCLA) addresses the need to devise contextually sound law and policy responses to pervasive developmental challenges facing our continent. Located in the UCT Law Faculty, the CCLA is committed to building capacity through a sound post graduate teaching, research and academic visitors programme. A strong focus on research dissemination will also ensure that the scholarly work produced in the field of comparative law in Africa feeds into policy. The CCLA sets pioneering standards as the first centre in Africa that tackles comparative law on a continental scale, engaging with legal transitions and tackling issues such as business corruption, in Africa’s new democracies. Its strategy of growing a network of scholars and students across the African cultural spectrum, hosting courses that reflect the diversity of legal cultures, attests to the levels of excellence that the Centre strives to achieve. Through your investment in the innovative work of the CCLA, we can help bring about policies that maximise our continent’s development potential.
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Children's Institute
The Children's Institute (CI) at UCT focuses on policies, laws and interventions that promote equality, realise the rights of- and improve the prospects of children in poverty. Established at UCT in 2001 with a grant from Atlantic Philanthropies, the CI brings about positive change in the lives of children through a complex but carefully honed combination of social and legal research. Their approach also includes multiple levels of evidence-based advocacy and public engagement, community capacity-building, and a communications strategy designed to reach diverse audiences. As a university institute, the CI regards rigorous, socially responsive research and analysis as a necessary condition for its activities. However, it recognises that if research is to have a significant social impact, it needs to be carefully crafted. This process involves firm strategies for dissemination, policy dialogue with key stakeholders, and advocacy for social change. The Children's Institute meets the challenge for change in areas of child rights, child health, social security, social services, education and care, child poverty, and children in the context of HIV/AIDS.
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Gender, Health and Justice Research Unit
The GHJRU focuses on contemporary legislative and policy reforms and their social application. It conducts progressive, collective action research in the area of women's rights, seeking to improve access to health and justice services for survivors of gender-based violence and their families.
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Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice There is an urgent need for highly skilled senior officials in government and government agencies. Improvements in governance and accountability, in economic policy and international economic circumstances have led to more consistent growth than at any previous time in modern African history. The Graduate School of Development Policy and Practice (GSDPP) rises to this challenge as a centre of excellence in the art of strategic leadership in government. Its core mission is to train senior officials in government service in Africa and other African countries. The School will also train top graduates to prepare them for public sector leadership, providing training for senior officials and elected office bearers. Its goal will be to make government service at the highest level an aspiration for the most able of each generation. It will seek to build an esprit de corps amongst government leaders in South Africa and across the rest of Africa, promoting links between leaders in government and leaders in other fields of human endeavour such as science, business and the arts. Your investment in the work carried out by the GSDPP will contribute towards the implementation of Africa’s key development goals, through the nurturing of highly skilled leaders.
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Poverty and Inequality Initiative Despite the many successes since South Africa’s democratic elections in 1994, our future is imperiled by continued widespread poverty and an increase in inequality in the post-apartheid era. This, accompanied by a widespread sense of hopelessness amongst millions regarding the prospects for finding decent work, presents a critical threat to our country’s future stability and success. UCT’s Poverty and Inequality Initiative is a national project that sets out to determine what is known and not known about poverty and inequality in post-apartheid South Africa. Phase one of the project establishes a more systematic record of what is being done and what the key gaps are, so that a research and capacity-building agenda can be established. Phase two will consist of a solution oriented research and dissemination of findings. The initiative will be managed by a Pro Vice-Chancellor portfolio, occupied by newly appointed Prof Francis Wilson, who will create the bridges between researchers in economics, public health, nutrition, education, social welfare and development, business and entrepre- neurship, the green economy, labour markets, urban planning and housing solutions, and socio-economic rights. In this way, the Poverty and Inequality Initiative serves to suggest ways in which we can make significant responses to the social challenges that now threaten our sustained development.
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Southern Africa’s efforts to contain and counteract the HIV/AIDS pandemic have produced a valuable resource of information on the disease, its vectors of transmission, prevention, treatment, care and support. To capture the vital historical record associated with this social tragedy, UCT Libraries and the Community Media Trust have embarked on an ambitious partnership to archive and curate over 3000 hours of video footage of HIV/AIDS related media. The goal is to create a searchable online database that will make the information widely available and easily accessible for teaching and research at an international level. The footage being donated by the Community Media Trust comprises one of the larg- est audio-visual collections on the AIDS experience in South Africa and internationally. It also contains extensive material on the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC)’s struggle for
access to treatment from 1999 to the present. 
More than two thirds of South Africa's 18.6 million children live in poverty and one in 15 die from diseases that can be prevented. These are just two of the disturbing statistics regarding our children, according to research by UNICEF.
Interpol studies reveal startling figures about South Africa recording the highest incidents of rape, with a woman being attacked every 17 seconds. Violence against women, and also innocent children, demands immediate and sustained action and this is the mission of UCT's