J.G.A. Diergaardt

Hans Diergaardt

Kaptein Johannes Gerard Adolph Diergaardt, more commonly known as Hans Diergaardt was a Namibian politician and the fifth Captain of Baster community at Rehoboth, succeeding Dr Ben Africa in 1979...

 (late Captain of the Rehoboth Baster Community) et al. v. Namibia

Namibia

Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...

(No. 760/1997) was a case decided by the Human Rights Committee

Human Rights Committee

The United Nations Human Rights Committee is a United Nations body of 18 experts that meets three times a year for four-week sessions to consider the five-yearly reports submitted by 162 UN member states on their compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,...

 in 2000.

Complaints

Representatives of Rehoboth

Rehoboth, Namibia

Rehoboth is a town of 21,000 inhabitants in central Namibia just north of the Tropic of Capricorn. Located on the B1 road, 90 kilometres south of the Namibian capital Windhoek, Rehoboth lies on a high elevation plateau with several natural hot-water springs. It receives sparse mean annual rainfall...

 Baster Community

Baster

The Basters are the descendants of Cape Colony Dutch and indigenous African women. They largely live in Namibia and are similar to Coloured or Griqua people in South Africa....

 have complained over alleged violations of Articles 1 (right to self-determination), 14 (equality before the courts

Equality before the law

Equality before the law or equality under the law or legal egalitarianism is the principle under which each individual is subject to the same laws....

), 17 (privacy

Privacy

Privacy is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves and thereby reveal themselves selectively...

), 25 (right to participate in public life), 26 (ban of discrimination

Discrimination

Discrimination is the prejudicial treatment of an individual based on their membership in a certain group or category. It involves the actual behaviors towards groups such as excluding or restricting members of one group from opportunities that are available to another group. The term began to be...

) and 27 (minority rights

Minority rights

The term Minority Rights embodies two separate concepts: first, normal individual rights as applied to members of racial, ethnic, class, religious, linguistic or sexual minorities, and second, collective rights accorded to minority groups...

) of ICCPR.

Committee's views

The committee found that it has no competence over alleged violations of Article 1, and that no violations of Articles 14, 17, 25 and 27 were shown by the facts before it.

The committee held that the authors have shown that the State party has instructed civil servants not to reply to the authors' written or oral communications with the authorities in the Afrikaans language, even when they are perfectly capable of doing so. These instructions barring the use of Afrikaans do not relate merely to the issuing of public documents but even to telephone conversations. In the absence of any response from the State party the Committee must give due weight to the allegation of the authors that the circular in question is intentionally targeted against the possibility to use Afrikaans when dealing with public authorities. Consequently, the Committee finds that the authors, as Afrikaans speakers, are victims of a violation of article 26 of the Covenant (Para. 10.10.).

Members Abdalfattah Amor, Nisuke Ando, P. N. Bhagwati, Lord Colville, Maxwell Yalden and Rajsoomer Lallah filed four dissenting opinions on Article 26; members Elizabeth Evatt

Elizabeth Evatt

Elizabeth Andreas Evatt, AC , an emminent Australian reformist lawyer and jurist who sat on numerous national and international tribunals and commissions, was the first Chief Judge of the Family Court of Australia, the first female judge of an Australian federal court, and the first Australian to...

, Eckart Klein, David Kretzmer, Cecilia Medina Quiroga and Martin Scheinin

Martin Scheinin

Martin Scheinin is the first United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism. He was selected for this position after serving for eight years as member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the independent expert body monitoring states' compliance with the...

filed two concurring opinions on the same issue. Besides, Elizabeth Evatt and Cecilia Medina Quiroga filed a concurring opinion on Article 27.