PESHAWAR, Aug 25: Speakers at a workshop here urged the government to establish separate juvenile courts and borstal institutions in order to fully implement the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance 2000.
"The ordinance stipulates that cases relating to juvenile accused should be disposed of within four months but such offenders are made to wait for longer periods because of non-existence of separate courts," said Noor Alam Khan, chief of Voice of Prisoners, an NGO.
Speaking at a one-day consultative workshop entitled 'Waiting for the sunrise: juvenile justice in Pakistan', organised by an NGO - 'Sparc' - on Wednesday at the Peshawar Press Club, he called for joint work by lawyers, police, the judiciary and prison officials to pave the way for smooth implementation of the ordinance.
"There is also a need to make technical jargon of police rules understandable for police officials," Mr Khan added. Lack of space in jails compels the authorities concerned to lodge child prisoners with adults, with the result that many of them become hardened criminals, he said.
"The problem is that we frame laws first and think about their implementation afterwards," he remarked. "Under the JJSO 2000, hand-cuffing of child offenders is not permissible," he pointed out, and went on to add that in the absence of probation officers the juveniles prisoners were often denied relief.
Pakistan is a signatory to several sets of international laws pertaining to protection of child rights, he said. Mr Khan recalled that a juvenile prisoner, Ali Mohammad, was hanged to death in 2001 despite the fact that the president had issued a notification whereby he had converted death sentences of juvenile prisoners to life imprisonment.
"But," he lamented, "the notification was received by the prison staff belatedly." Khalid Abbas, superintendent of Peshawar jail, said that awareness regarding the JJSO had increased among jail officials.
