IBJ invited lawyers, judges, police officers, and the Minister of Justice to discuss this topic.

IBJ’s Field Coordinator, Hasan al-Mousa, initiated the event with a briefing on the past 4 roundtable events that IBJ held in Daret Azza, Maarat al-Numan, Afrin and Azaz where justice stakeholders discussed early access to justice, women and children’s rights, the suspension of the suspended sentences, and criminal matters resulting from HLP issues respectively. Hasan also laid out the outcomes of each event and how the stakeholders in the justice system made sure the outcomes are implemented.

Husein Bakri, IBJ’s Senior Legal Director, joined the discussion via Skype. He introduced the participants to the topic and laid out the importance of measures aimed at rehabilitating juvenile delinquents as the legal alternative to some of the current unlawful practices. Abdulaziz Darwish explained what rehabilitation measures mean as well as the objective of those measures. He mentioned how the war created a medium for violations against children including unlawful detention and displacement. Those circumstances led some minors to be delinquents. He further stressed the importance of early protection and safeguarding of juveniles by strengthening the work of school protection officers, getting dropouts back on track, as well as finding shelters for the homeless children and providing them with the care they need.

The Minister of Justice, Abdullah Abdulsalam, suggested that the juvenile courts should be rehabilitation institutions, and that separate sections in prisons should be allocated for juvenile delinquents. He underscored the importance of providing specialized psychosocial support to the juveniles in custody and noted that juveniles should not be liable for civil claims if they’re convicted as minors and then become adults in prison.

Jasem al-Ali talked laid out why some children become delinquents and highlighted their right to be tried as juveniles, not as adults. He also talked about the importance of founding juvenile correctional facilities that provide physical and psychological care for children noting that those facilities are meant to rehabilitate children not punish them.

Lt. Col. Hikmat Ibrahim underlined the need for specialized juvenile police that can investigate juvenile-related criminal matters. “Juveniles must not be detained without an arrest warrant, and the juvenile’s guardian must be properly informed”, he added. Yusuf Husein, said that juvenile detention facilities should be educational and correctional. Muhammad Haj Abdo further pointed out that a juvenile probation officer should be a specialist who base their report on facts and the meeting with the juvenile’s guardians to take into account the circumstances that led to the juvenile delinquency.

Ahmad Maznouq mentioned that juvenile hearings must not be public so that they don’t compromise the juvenile’s future. “We should replace the name ‘juvenile court’ with ‘juvenile committee’”, he suggested. Zahra Abu Hilal proposed delivering juvenile case management training and children rights awareness to legal practitioners, juvenile police, and to juvenile probation officers.

Outputs

Participants agreed on the following measures to improve juveniles’ access to justice and to ensure that children’s rights are protected:

1. “Juvenile Committee” to be a replacement of “Juvenile Court”,
2. Training PSS specialist to be better capable of providing juvenile delinquents with the social support they need,
3. Assigning a case worker to every juvenile delinquent to provide PSS support,
4. Providing case management and children’s rights training to legal professionals and police officers and court personnel who deal with juvenile delinquents,
5. Follow a preventive approach by empowering the role of protection officers in schools,
6. Getting dropouts to join schools and finding shelter to homeless children,
7. Establishing rehabilitation facilities with qualified cadre and proper health care,
8. Providing children in the camps with education and other forms of care,
9. Forming a juvenile police force that includes female police,
10. Coordinating with civil society organizations and bar associations to start initiatives to support children; and
11. Empowering women to be able to lead the correction of juvenile delinquency

To follow up with the implementation of the aforementioned measures, the participants agreed to create a task force whose responsibility is to provide care for children and to ensure that juveniles’ due process rights are maintained. The task force will include people from bar associations, the judiciary, the police, schools, and civil society organizations, and will be managed and supervised by the Ministry of Justice of the Syrian Interim Government.

Media Coverage

This video shows Hasan al-Mousa welcoming the participants and giving a brief summary of the four past roundtable events held by IBJ inside Syria.

The event was also reported by the Syrian Interim Government, Aleppo Bar Association, and by Almohrar Network.

IBJ maintains three offices in China, the National Defender Resource Center (NDRC) in Beijing, the Southeast Defender Resource Center (SEDRC) in Wuhan, Hubei Province, and the Northwest Defender Resource Center (NWDRC) in Xi’an, Shaanxi Province. Currently operating with a total of eight staff covering the three offices, IBJ China’s programming reaches every province and autonomous region with its live and online trainings, rights awareness campaigns, community building activities, and pilot projects in local districts all aimed to improve the rights of the accused and build a fair and functioning criminal justice system.

From the period of January 2014 through September 2014:

• training 421 legal professionals, securing early access to counsel for 186 accused
• 444 individuals through roundtables and other community building events
• distributing rights awareness materials to 72 migrant workers and their children
• publishing 9 online learning modules on advanced topics in criminal defense

Highlights of our programming during this timeframe include activities held under three major multi-year projects, namely: the China Defender Resource Center Project, the China Defending Marginalized Populations Project, and the Next Generation Chinese Rights Defenders Project.  Your donations made this possible. Please click here to donate and be part of their transformative work.

IBJ has been working alongside government institutions and members of the criminal justice community to generate sustainable reforms. IBJ supports an emerging class of legal aid attorneys and is contributing towards the development of a rights-based approach in China’s criminal justice system.

China still only has a total of 200,000 lawyers for a population of more than 1.3 billion. Furthermore, the practice of criminal defense law is often regarded as a high-risk profession. As a result, an exceptionally large number of criminal defendants remain unrepresented at trial.

IBJ is continuing to work in three directions to create a functioning legal aid system:

• Launching the Defender Empowerment Series to produce a sustainable, self-generating network of skilled lawyers and legal skills trainers, using the train-the-trainer approach
• Expand its efforts to promote a pro bono legal culture in Chinese law firms
• Roll out three additional pilot juvenile justice projects to emphasize early access to counsel in juvenile cases

This is why we are calling for your donations to IBJ China this week. Over the last year, IBJ in China has helped make access to counsel a reality for hundreds of vulnerable defendants. Our China program helps the most marginalized in society, making sure victims of domestic violence receive a fair trial, improving access to justice and raising the dignity of suspects with disabilities, and providing rights awareness for migrant workers, minority populations, and children of the incarcerated. We thank you for your continued support.

For more on IBJ China:

http://www.ibj.org/where-we-work/china/

http://www.ibj.org/meet-ibj/our-team/team-china/

http://www.ibj.org/category/programs/china/

29 October 2014

IBJ India Team at the Awareness Camp

On the 13^th of August 2014, a team of IBJ India lawyers visited Tihar Jail #7. The jail is part of Asia’s largest prison complex, housing young offenders who are in conflict with the law and are between the ages of 18 to 21 years.

The jail house as many as 862 adolescent inmates, most of whom are being tried for petty offences and awaiting their release on bail. An overwhelming number of detainees lack the basic awareness of whether or not their offence is bailable. This in turn leads to overcrowding in jails and detention centers all over the country.

Under the Indian Criminal and Procedural Laws, young offenders (between 18 to 21 years) are entitled to the same protection of law and access to fair trial as an adult offender. Section 167 of the Code of Criminal Procedure entitles inmates to a statutory bail in cases where no charge sheet has been filed against them by the police authorities. The statutory right to bail accrues within a period of 60 days upon certain administrative failures. This occurs in the failure of the police agency to file a charge sheet for an offense punishable for up to 10 years in prison, as well as when charge sheets fail to be filed for a case within 90 days, punishable with imprisonment for more than 10 years and up to life.

Young undertrial prisoners participating in the Awareness Camp

Though most of the inmates were between the ages of 18 to 21 years, there were still some who claimed to be under the age of 18 years and had a dearth of documents to prove their true age. The team of IBJ India lawyers consisting of IBJ India Fellow Mr. Ajay Verma, Mr. Ajay Raghav, Pankhuri A. Mehndiratta, along with advocates and interns, were able to identify a few inmates who were languishing in the prison without any legal representation due to reasons such as indigence and lack of legal awareness.

IBJ fellow Mr. Ajay Verma led an interactive legal awareness session on the topic of ‘The Rights of the Undertrial Prisoners’, ‘The Provisions of Bail,’ and ‘The Need to Ascertain the Age of the Detainees at the Time of Arrest.’ These sessions were conducted through the means of an age memo in order to rule out the possibility of juveniles being tried by the adult criminal justice system.

Ajay Verma, IBJ Legal Fellow, speaking with an inmate

The representatives of IBJ India were received warmly by the prison authorities and inmates alike, and saw a forthcoming response from the gathering of about 100-120 inmates who were eager to receive support in any manner possible.

Legal awareness camps and workshops such as this one go a long way in empowering the inmates through information and awareness about their legal rights. Such awareness raising activities also dissminate information regarding the course of the trial and the ideal course of interaction between individuals in the criminal justice system.

July 22nd, 2014

At 16 years old, Vannak[1] found himself being interrogated by two police officers – in fear that if he did not provide a confession for crimes he knew nothing about, he would be subjected to violence. The officers did not inform him of his right to a lawyer, and he feared the “large officer” would “punish him by hit[ting] him” if he did not provide the answers they sought. Vannak “was afraid, so [he] did what they said” and ‘confessed’ to serving as an accomplice to intentional damage to property and intentional violence – crimes which, given these particular circumstances, would warrant up to 15 years in prison and over 10 million riel ($2,000 USD) in fines[2].

Vannak’s friend had been in a fight a few days before police stopped Vannak in an internet shop and arrested him last November. Vannak had heard about the fight, but had no idea that since then his friend had attacked his foe with a knife, injuring the victim and damaging the victim’s house where the attack took place. When police questioned a friend of the perpetrator, he lied and implicated Vannak in the crime. However, the day the attack took place, Vannak had been hanging out with a friend, playing volleyball amongst other things.  When the police questioned Vannak, he was forced to give a coerced confession for a crime he was unaware even happened.

Vannak recounts his experience in prison

After six hours in the police post, which is almost two hours from the Battambang/Thailand border-town where Vannak lives with his mother, Vannak was allowed to call his mother, and then was taken to the prison. However, because necessary prison admission forms had not been signed, and it was too late at night to find a judge to do so, Vannak was brought back to the police post where he slept for one night. It was not until his hearing the next morning that the judge informed him he should have a lawyer. The court clerk referred Vannak’s mother to IBJ when she arrived at the courthouse, after frantically rushing from their town to the Battambang court – a costly journey that she had to take multiple times during this ordeal.

After meeting with Vannak’s mother just a few days after Vannak’s arrest, Sothea (the provincial lawyer here in DRC 6) took on Vannak’s case in its earliest stages. The investigating judge dismissed the case against Vannak after Sothea presented Vannak’s friend who had spent the day with him on the date of the incident as a witness. Sothea further pointed out that there was no evidence indicating Vannak’s involvement in this crime.

Although the investigating judge dismissed the charges, the dismissal did not occur until after Vannak spent 15 days inside the prison. I wrote previously about the conditions a minor kept in the prison here in Battambang can face (see http://ow.ly/yDZ58), and the conditions Vannak faced were very similar. He spent his days in a five by five meter cell with 20 other inmates, finding both sleep and food scarce, but able to use his mornings for exercise. Vannak felt he was lucky, as he said new prisoners were often made to stay in the bathrooms until space opened up in the cells; however, because the prison guards took a liking to him, he instead stayed in the overcrowded cell.

Me (legal intern), Vannak[1], Vannak’s Mother, Kalyan (lawyer assistant); Taken at their home.

[1] Name changed for client’s privacy.

[2] Art. 29, 218, 414, Cambodia Criminal Code (CCC) (2009).

June 2014

I have only been interning in IBJ Cambodia’s Battambang office for a few weeks, but I have already seen just how important the work they do is to those accused of crimes here in Battambang Province. Sopheak’s* acquittal provides a clear example of the impact of IBJ’s success.

Kalyan (lawyer assistant), Sopheak’s mother, Sopheak, Me (legal intern); Taken at Sopheak’s home.

A few months ago, Sopheak, his girlfriend, and another couple (who were classmates of his) were enjoying the typical night out as teenagers. They had gone out to eat, and were hanging out around town. At the end of the night, Sopheak and his friends returned home to spend the night at his house, but they realized there were too many people and it was too loud to sleep, so they booked two rooms at a local guesthouse. Sopheak and his girlfriend slept in one room, while the other couple slept in a separate room. However, one of the teens staying in the other room was a 14-year-old girl, and her parents became very upset upon learning that their daughter had spent the night out. Although the girl was in a separate room from Sopheak and had slept over Sopheak’s house prior to this incident, her parents subsequently filed a complaint with the police and Sopheak found himself in a completely unanticipated position.

Sopheak, a 17 year-old boy who had spent the night in a guesthouse room with his girlfriend, had been accused of rape by the 14 year-old girl’s parents, despite the fact that he and his girlfriend had stayed in a different room and he had had no physical contact with the young girl.

Luckily, Sopheak was quickly referred to International Bridges to Justice by two separate sources: a woman who worked at the Battambang court, and a neighborhood friend who had attended one of IBJ’s Community Legal Awareness sessions in their commune. Clearly, as this case demonstrates, IBJ’s outreach to the Battambang court and community is making an impact and helping those accused of crimes gain legal counsel. Because these sources put Sopheak in contact with IBJ early in the process, IBJ’s lawyers were able to help Sopheak through every step, starting with procedure and investigation and continuing through trial. However, while awaiting trial, Sopheak was forced to stay in a four by four meter cell with twenty other minors for the three to four months that he was in detention awaiting his trial. Under these extreme conditions, Sopheak found sleeping very difficult, and says that there was not enough food for him to eat. While his family was able to visit him, they could only make around two trips each month.

Sopheak’s lawyer communicated the true account of what happened that night to the judge, which was corroborated by the young girl herself, and successfully refuted the allegations made by the young girl’s parents. Found innocent, Sopheak was acquitted of the false crime he was charged with and could put the past few months behind him. Without this help, Sopheak may have received an unfair trial and believes he would have had to “stay [in prison for a] long time”. Upon his release on May 20th of this year, after three to four months in detention, Sopheak says he was “feeling great” and “very happy” to return to his commune. Although he had to suspend his schooling while he was imprisoned, he has now restarted school and is in Grade 9. Justice was served for Sopheak!

Sothea (lawyer), Sopheak, Sopheak’s mother, Me (legal intern); Taken at their home.

*Name has been changed.

Burundi signed and ratified the convention on child rights in 1990. But until now the situation has not yet improved in practice. The penal code of 2009 has brought about many reforms in the protection of minors, including raising the age of penal responsibility from 13 to 15. Under these new provisions, if the minor had been sentenced to life imprisonment, he must be resentenced to between five and ten years of penal servitude; if the minor incurs a time sentence or a fine, the penalties that can be imposed against him may not exceed four years.

With this new penal code, many measures of protection of the minor accused of crime have been provided, such as: warning, reminder of the law; returning them to their parents, guardians or an otherwise trustworthy person; providing educational assistance; institutionalization in a social institution, school or other educational institution authorized by the court. These measures must intend to match the imprisonment with a measure of protection such as educational assistance or institutional care.

In practice, these provisions are not yet implemented in daily practice, because in prisons we still find minors accused of crime who have been waiting for trial during several months or even years. Some prosecutors still are pushing for life imprisonment. Also, many jurisdictions have not yet set up special sessions for minors, they are still heard in public hearings as adults and there is no separation of them from adults in jail and this situation exposes them to different kinds of abuse, according to results of IBJ rights awareness campaigns to detainees conducted in different prisons. In addition, the infrastructure is not in place for education.

In the perspective of helping  to reinforce the implementation of existing criminal provisions in the area of juveniles, International Bridges to Justice organized a roundtable discussion in September. On the 23^rd of September, IBJ gathered prosecutors and judges who have been nominated as “focal points” in juveniles’ cases by the ministry of justice within the courts of Bujumbura township and Bujumbura rural. Clerks and secretaries of these courts also participated in the discussion.

Judges and prosecutors of courts (TGI & Parquets) of Bujumbura township and Bujumbura rural

After discussing many challenges encountered by the actors who were present, many solutions were adopted in favour of those of the accused who deserve special protection. Representatives of these courts committed to set up special sessions for minors, and to schedule many cases to be heard at the same dates and in private hearings. All this will be in coordination with IBJ which will provide the accused with qualified legal representation. Law clerks and secretaries committed to facilitating the paperwork of minors’ cases and communicating with IBJ when such cases are scheduled to be heard.

After these important measures were agreed upon, another crucial gathering was held on September 28. This was with lawyers who participated in the July training in order to follow up on the training. After reviewing modules of the previous training and discussing challenges encountered in meantime, lawyers committed to assist in cases provided by IBJ on a pro bono basis.

Group of lawyers after the roundtable

Each of these actions identify the gaps between the criminal laws of Burundi and their implementation, and show how these gaps can be bridged when key actors collaborate on constructive solutions. It is in this way that IBJ builds bridges between the law as it has been written and its just implementation in practice.

Lawyer’s group discussion on the implementation of criminal law provisions protecting juveniles accused of crime

]]> http://www.ibj.org/2010/06/meet-justicemaker-nana-chapidze-2/ Wed, 30 Jun 2010 09:07:06 +0000 http://www.ibj.org/wp_main/2010/06/30/meet-justicemaker-nana-chapidze/ In between working for five different Georgian legal justice NGOs, spearheading international grant projects and translating various legal documents, it’s a wonder that JusticeMaker Nana Chapidze has any time for herself.

Chapidze discusses project implementation at the GYLA office / Photo by Roshan Nebhrajani

Born and raised in Kutaisi, Georgia, Chapidze has always been deeply connected to community development projects. As a law student, she became a legal aid assistant at the Georgian Young Lawyers Association (GYLA), an NGO that works to resolve the endless legal issues plaguing the post-Soviet republic. During this time, she worked to monitor the city’s human rights issues, most predominantly the ongoing presence of internally displaced people. She also held interactive training seminars for law students, hoping to strengthen both their and her own developing legal education.

Upon graduating from the well-respected Kutaisi University of Law and Economics in 2006, Chapidze became one of the five GYLA Kutaisi branch board members. As a board member she “participates in the decision-making process and organizes events and helps to set the priorities of GYLA’s activities.”

Chapidze discusses GYLA’s aims with another documentary journalist / Photo by Roshan Nebhrajani

Through GYLA, Chapidze has worked for Foundation Sukhumi, an NGO that works to bolster the rights of internally displaced people of the Sukhumi region. Additionally, Chapidze actively works for four other NGOs – The Kutaisi Information Center, The Imeriti Regional Center for Training and Consultations, Article 42 of the Constitution and The Human Rights Center. Among many other tasks, she helps these NGOs prepare applications for citizens, organizes initiatives for local self-government and teaches citizens about their legal rights.

As a JusticeMaker, Chapize has just kickstarted yet another human rights initiative. With funds and consultation from IBJ, Chapize hopes to reform Georgia’s juvenile justice system, ensuring that the Georgian youth receive a fair and objective trial, preventing the ruling of “adult time for adult crime.”

You can read more about her project here.

With this new project and the ongoing need to fulfill her endless responsibilities to other NGOs, “in this last year, I’ve had no free time,” Chapidze jokes.

Legal reference books in GYLA’s library / Photo by Roshan Nebhrajani

Listen to Nana summarize her project in her own words.

While time for recreational activities is few and far in between, in the ephemeral moments she spends on herself, Chapidze likes to listen to soft rock and classical music, go on picnics to the countryside with friends and read books by Ernest Hemingway , Herman Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Georgian writers such as Goderdzi Chockeli, Galaktion Tabidze. Her favorite books are Hesse’s Siddhartha and Hemingway’s Fiesta.

Some of the participants who were at the roundtable are active in NGOs dedicated to protecting children’s rights. One of these, Jean-Claude Nzeyimana, noted that the justice system does not properly take into account the background of young criminals. Many of them live on the street in tough conditions and, without anyone to rely on, are confronted with violence on a daily basis. These children should thus be seen primarily as victims rather than being cast as criminals. A real attempt to reduce poverty could therefore drastically improve the situation, as could a collective national effort to improve educational opportunities. Unfortunately there is clear tendency in the Burundi judicial system to favour disciplinary action over education, despite that latter proving to be more efficient in reducing juvenile criminality. Pierre Claver, president of APRODH, shared an example to illustrate this, a shocking story which took place a few weeks before the roundtable. A 12-year old pupil caught cheating during a test was, rather than learning form his mistakes at school, sent to a police cell for a couple of days as punishment.

Above: IBJ Burundi Fellow Astère Muyango introducing the debate to Magistrates, Police Officers and Prison Officials and seeking their reaction (Photo by Sanjeewa Liyanage).

The systematic imprisonment of juveniles also lies in the shortage of alternative sanctions. It is widely felt that the purpose of prison is to punish the culprit, as well as to protect him or from retributive community justice. These factors help to explain why officials of the judicial system do not even think to consult NGOs before sending children to jail. However, a few alternative measures do exist. APRODH, for instance, has provided shelter and rehabilitation programs to young boys who face prison due to violent behavior They only have a limited number of places at their disposal, but other NGOs such as FVS are increasingly moving in the same direction.

The discussion then moved to the need for additional legal tools. Olivier Niyonzigiye, a former Justice Maker now working for RCN Justice and Democracy, oriented the debate by stating that the new penal code provided Burundi with everything needed to improve juvenile criminal Justice. The only thing left, he argued, was to put pressure on the state in order to ensure that it gives the judicial system the means to work properly. This effort would need to be directed towards the entire system, granting priority in access to lawyers to children but also implementing measures which would help all detainees–addressing, for instance, prison overpopulation and pre-trial detentions. In a state confronting numerous challenges, the main problem is convincing political leaders that a functional justice system is a priority for the country in order to fully recover from years of conflict.

This is only a short summary of two very rewarding debates. I would like to end by highlighting two points in the discussion which really struck me. The first was when Jean-Claude Nzeyimana noted that the most effective way of preventing juvenile delinquency was parental control. This idea underlines that Justice is above all a collective good, which does not rely solely on the shoulders of magistrates, police officers or lawyers. Finally, Astère reminded us of one of Karen‘s favorite stories, that of the girl and the starfish. A little girl was trying to return to the sea every stranded starfish she found on the shore. A man approached and told her that her task was hopeless, and that she‘d never be able to save them all. The girl replied: “maybe I won’t, but it will mean something for each one of them I do save”. So don’t lose hope and let’s work to save some little Burundian starfish!

Above: IBJ Burundi Fellow leading the discussing over the “circular chart”, a tool used during roundtable discussions to get participants to make concrete commitments. (Photo by Sanjeewa Liyanage)

In addition, the LRF have prepared posters to inform the public on juveniles’ rights, specifically the mechanism of accountability under the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000 which is intended to end torture of juveniles in prisons. Conscious of the credibility that ties with international organizations lend, the LRF have put an International Bridges to Justice (IBJ) and JusticeMakers logo on the poster. The posters are being displayed at police stations, and target not only police officers but also visitors and detainees.