Liesl Muller – Senior Attorney
Liesl is an experienced public interest lawyer, and strategic litigation specialist. She provides support to CCL’s direct legal services staff and designs strategic litigation cases based on needs and trends emerging from our enquiries. She enjoys teaching, and mentoring the next generation of lawyers and activists. She is a strong believer in professional, service-based, client and affected person-centred human rights work.
She holds an LLB, and two Masters’ degrees (with distinction), one from the University of the Witwatersrand, and a second in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa from the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria. Her academic interests include African nationality law and rights, child rights approaches to litigation, children’s autonomy rights, and environmental justice for children. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Law through the University College Cork in Ireland, where she is engaged with the Youth Climate Justice Project as a PhD researcher.
Liesl practised at a private law firm as a litigation attorney for two years before being appointed as an attorney and the head of the Statelessness Unit at Lawyers for Human Rights in 2011. Here she pioneered several precedent-setting cases and expanded the project to include multistakeholder involvement, regional and international advocacy, and capacity-building initiatives and resourcing. She is a recognised expert in nationality law and rights in Africa and continues to teach and write on the subject.
In 2024, Liesl was appointed to the African Committee on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, where she will serve as an external expert on climate change and children’s rights for the next two years.
Recent/notable cases
Centre for Child Law v Director General: Department of Home Affairs & Others [2021] ZACC 31 (‘Naki’)
Chisuse and Others v Director-General, Department of Home Affairs and Another [2020] ZACC 20.
DGLR and Another v Minister of Home Affairs and Others (NGHC 3 July 2014) (‘DGLR’)
FAM v The Minister of Home Affairs and Others (6871/2013) [2014] ZAGPPHC 649.
Publications
Muller, L. (2022). The Law is Not Enough. The Statelessness & Citizenship Review, 4(2), 256-279 https://statelessnessandcitizenshipreview.com/index.php/journal/article/view/369 .
Book contributions
Making safeguards work: A perspective from South African legal practice by Liesl Muller (The World’s Stateless: Children. The Institute for Statelessness and Inclusion)
Legal Identity for All – Ending Statelessness in SADC by Liesl Muller. Article in Goal 16 of the Sustainable Development Goals: Perspectives from Judges and Lawyers in Southern Africa on Promoting Rule of Law and Equal Access to Justice (SALC).
Promoting Citizenship and Preventing Statelessness in South Africa: a Practitioner’s Guide (LHR) published by PULP (editing and updates).
Media contributions
EPISODE 4 of the ISI podcast series. Liesl Muller from LHR discusses how her organisation works to address childhood statelessness through strategic litigation and international advocacy.
A guest blog post for the European Network on Statelessness – South African courts confirm the right to a nationality of a stateless child – 20-year-old legal principle protecting children finally implemented by Liesl Muller.
Guest blog post for the University of Tilburg, Statelessness Programme – The Dream of a Common Identity: Statelessness and Nationality on South Africa by Liesl Muller
Guest blog post for Mail & Guardian Thought Leader – Condemned to obscurity: The State of our Population Register and the Right to Vote by Liesl Muller
Guest blog post for Mail & Guardian Thought Leader – ID Blocking: A Growing Threat to Nationality by Liesl Muller.
The Belonging series (in collaboration with LHR & UNHCR ROSA) Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
“Children are tired of being the future, they want their rights NOW!” – Benyam Mezmur