PESHAWAR: Juvenile justice system not yet enforced in Fata
By Waseem Ahmad Shah
PESHAWAR, Feb 25: The extension of the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance (JJSO) to the tribal areas proved to be an exercise in futility as most of the concerned officers are ignorant about the law.
According to an official deputed in a tribal agency, till date no directives have been received from the government regarding implementation of the JJSO.
“We still don’t know what the law is all about and when it was extended to the tribal areas,” the official said. Judicial officers had been functioning under the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) and no juvenile court had been set up in tribal areas, he added.
Lawyers and social activists dealing with cases of juvenile offenders told Dawn that even though the law was extended to Fata by the president of Pakistan due to pressure from different organisations, proper homework had not been made before the move.
In Fata, the political and assistant political agents have been functioning as administrative and judicial officials, but they have not been assigned powers under the ordinance to deal with cases of juvenile offenders.
The social activists claimed that under the JJSO, a juvenile court had the exclusive powers to deal with cases of children, but in Fata that provision had been violated blatantly.
The JJSO was promulgated by former president Mohammed Rafiq Tarar on July 1, 2000. Under Article 247 of the Constitution, no law is applicable to Fata unless the president issues special notification for its extension. After hectic campaigning from different organisations, the president finally extended the law to Fata on November 4, 2004.
Legal experts claimed that the law was extended without proper amendments required to be made in view of the prevailing situation in Fata.
“The probation department which has been assigned important tasks under the ordinance is non-existent in Fata,” said Noor Alam Khan, Chairman of the Voice of Prisoners, an organisation dealing with cases of destitute children, women and foreigners.
He said under the ordinance, a juvenile court for a specific area could only be set up either by the provincial government in consultation with the chief justice of the high court; or, the high court might confer powers of the juvenile court on existing courts. He said since the provincial government and superior courts could not exercise any jurisdiction in the tribal areas under the Constitution, it was legally not possible to establish the juvenile courts in Fata under the existing law.
According to the activists, the FCR is a procedural law in Fata and most of its sections are in conflict with the JJSO.
“Under section 21 of the FCR dealing with collective responsibility, the entire tribe could be detained and there is no differentiation between an adult and a minor in that section," said Jehanzeb Khan, regional coordinator, Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child (Sparc).
