Help 250 children in prison in Burundi + Cambodia

International Bridges to Justice (“IBJ”)—a global focus on justice for children in conflict with the law--helping imprisoned children in Burundi and Cambodia

IBJ is continues its worldwide efforts seeking justice for children. Your help will enable the legal task forces of IBJ in Cambodia and Burundi to reduce the amount of time kids spend in pre-trial detention. Your support will also lessen the possibility that children will be subjected to torture and mistreatment during questioning by the police and increase their chances of receiving due process of law.

IBJ emphasizes the need for clients to have early access to counsel. Too often, in overworked and under-resourced police departments, forced or torture-induced confessions are the main investigative tool of police. Such coercive tactics are too often inflicted on children. Children are too frequently detained by the police, even when a better alternative would be to release them to their parents or to a responsible adult. Children are frequently housed with adult prisoners after they are arrested. This increases their vulnerability to abuse and their risk of injury. In Burundi and Cambodia, where IBJ has worked extensively, the incarceration rate for children is staggeringly high and and conditions of incarceration are often appalling.

More than 2,000 children are being held in prisons in Cambodia. Mass arrests of street children are becoming more common in Burundi. In both places, children are held in police jails for days before being sent to juvenile rehabilitation centers. Moreover, centers for juvenile detention and rehabilitation lack space and the conditions at such facilities are often very poor.

It is fundamental that children should be in school, not behind bars. Detention in secure facilities should be a last resort, not the default alternative for children in conflict with the law.

Creating a humane and effective juvenile justice system that respects and protects the human rights of children is vital. IBJ programming gives the highest priority to work with child justice.

Your donations make our work possible! Here are two of the stories of the children we have helped in2022:

CAMBODIA

The number of Cambodia’s children in detention has increased. Children now represent 5% of the prison population.

Due to a lack of resources, children are often housed with adult males, often men who have been convicted of serious violent crimes. This practice can subject children to physical and sexual abuse, and, at minimum, it subjects them to unhealthy influences that can increase the chances these children will continue to engage in criminal activity. Access to education, vocational training, and even minimal recreational activity for these children is very limited. Incarceration can increase these children’s downward spiral into criminality. International human rights standards hold that detention should be a rare for children charged with crimes. Our affiliate in Cambodia, Cambodian Bridges to Justice (“CBJ”), advocatedtirelessly for children to be returned to their families, breaking the vicious cycle of incarceration leading to continued criminality.

Here are two of CBJ’s stories from between August and November 2022:

“Young boys, unaware of their rights, got a reduced sentence and were released few months later”

Kosal and Dara were 16 and 17 when they were arrested by the police. They were frightened and confused when they were arrested. They immediately confessed to stealing a motorbike. As juveniles, Kosal and Dara should have qualified for state-sponsored legal aid. However, because they were unaware, their families struggled to pay for a private lawyer.
This financial burden placed the family further into poverty. Despite paying for a private lawyer, Kosal and Dara's case was not processed in accordance with the rights afforded to juveniles. Cambodian law requires juveniles to be tried within 3 months. However, for Kosal and Dara, a trial was held one year later.

“Rights awareness training event in a Correctional Centre”

In September, CBJ held a "Know Your Rights” training event in a correctional facility in the province of Phnom Penh-- . The purpose of the session was to educate children incarcerated in the Centre about their rights. The attendees included 50 incarcerated youth, most of whom were arrested for drug-related charges. Eighteen of attendees were still pretrial detainees who had no legal representation. The informal training session was conducted by Mr. Vandeth.Booklets that outlined the basic human rights detainees are guaranteed under the Cambodian constitution were distributed to the children. The pamphlet contained crucial information about the rights guaranteed to imprisoned children by Cambodian law. It provided the children with tools to guard against systemic abuses that children frequently suffer in Cambodian prisons and lockups. For example, the children were informed that police were obligated to tell them why they were being arrested and imprisoned. They were also informed about their right to representation without cost and the details about that right under Cambodian law.

IBJ is the only organization providing rights awareness training within Cambodia’s prisons. The program provides access to vital information in the darkest places in Cambodia’s criminal justice system.

BURUNDI

From August 2022 through November 2022, the Burundi Bridges to Justice (“BBJ”) Taskforce of professional lawyers assisted 41 children in police custody in Bujumbura’s police stations. This work prevented these children from getting lost in the criminal justice system—something which frequently occurs in Burundi’s under-resourced system.

Here is the story of one of these youths:

“Young girl, falsely arrested for theft, quickly released”

A young girl, herein called “Lisa”, spent three days in police lockup, facing unfounded allegations. Under the law, she should have been sent directly to a juvenile facility.

During visits to the police lockups, often called “dungeons”, Burundi Bridges to Justice (“BBJ”) members heard Lisa's story. The accusation had been made by her boss. BBJ argued to the Officiers de Police Judiciaire(“OPJ”), the officials that heard the case initially, that the accusation was a pretext for her boss not paying her wages. It was revealed after investigation that the child worked for the accuser as a cleaning lady for a year without being paid, and that her employment was in fact illegal. Two days after this intervention, the OPJ ordered the child released and required her boss to pay her salary. Child labour is punishable by law. The situation of Lisa is not an isolated incident. BBJ fights against all arbitrary incarcerations and abusive practices aimed at Burundian children.

Many countries struggle with juvenile justice, particularly countries in which justice systems are not well supported by the government. Abuses are also common in systems in which justice actors are not educated about international standards for juvenile justice and about the special challenges of working with children in conflict with the law. IBJ’s extensive institutional knowledge and experience with representation of children has provided its staff with extraordinary insight into juvenile justice. Working with children is a highest priority for IBJ’s global work. IBJ’s publications, its “Know Your Rights” sessions, its advocacy, and its professional training curricula educate the public and justice actors about the subject of justice for children. The two examples cited are only a small sampling of the IBJ success stories. Throughout the world, IBJ has remedied miscarriages of justice affecting children.

Your support helps us continue and expand this important work!

Links:

• IBJ website