Submitted by crinadmin on
There has been increasing attention by the government of Afghanistan and civil society to juvenile justice reform in Afghanistan in recent years. The adoption of the Afghan Juvenile Code in 2005 is the first major step in the development of the administration of juvenile justice in the country. Yet, there remain gaps between the Juvenile Code and the international standards and norms on children in conflict with the law. Afghanistan still has a long way before achieving full compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child regularly in the areas of prevention of juvenile offending, diversion and the use of deprivation of liberty only as a measure of last resort. The study was initiated in order to assist the Government of Afghanistan in fulfilling their duties towards children in conflict with law and also to urge for full implementation of the Juvenile Code. The study shows that children in detention face various rights violations‐ including maltreatment, lack of access to education and health services. Also, lack of due process in juvenile justice system appears to be a serious concern. A punitive and retributive approach to juvenile justice seems to be still predominant in Afghanistan. The authors strongly advocate for measures to prevent and reduce detention or imprisonment of children and prevention programmes involving vulnerable families, communities and children at risk‐ we need to invest more to prevent children coming into conflict with the law than just to assist children already in detention. The authors hope that the present study will offer a basic dataset and tool to further develop assessment, evaluation and service and policy for children in conflict with the law in Afghanistan. Further information
Owner: AIHRC with UNICEFpdf: http://www.crin.org/docs/Juvenile_Detention_eng.pdf