In response to the 2017 Universal Periodic Review (UPR), the Juvenile Justice System Act 2018 (JJSA 2018) was enacted and promulgated on the 18th. of May 2018 in Pakistan to safeguard the best interest of children in conflict with the law. The preamble of the said Act desired children in conflict with the law to be socially integrated.
Despite its promulgation in 2018 it has not been implemented in its letter and spirit across Pakistan because children said to have infringed any penal law have been subjected to torture and denied rights enshrined in the law i.e., JJSA 2018. Prior to this, Pakistan had introduced the Juvenile Justice Ordinance 2000 and it was the very first ordinance of this kind in codified form to handle matters of children in conflict with the law. The Ordinance 2000 was enacted in Pakistan to fulfil international obligations rising under international law i.e., the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child and General Comment No. 24. In spite of its introduction, children in conflict with the law had been sent to gallows and/or mass incarceration or killed extrajudicially in the name of maintaining law and order in the country.
Akin to the above, when the JJSA 2018 was introduced, the decision-making corners and stakeholders at higher levels believed that children who come in trouble with the law would not be subjected to inhumane punishment and that they would also receive a fair trial for establishing their innocence separately from adults. Under the Act 2018, children are supposed to receive free legal assistance during the pendency of the judicial procedures at the expense of the State. However, despite this provision, no fund has been introduced at the State level for children in conflict with the law who have no resources to engage any legal practitioner for their judicial matters. Moreover, as stated earlier, the JJSA 2018 was enacted to ensure that children in conflict with the law integrated socially, meaning that children would be treated as individuals having no propensity to commit any violation of the law thus imposing no penal sanctions at all.
In the opinion of the writer, the utmost purpose of the introduction of the JJSA 2018 was to rehabilitate children facing judicial actions to make them socially responsible. However, this purpose has not been fulfilled. Instead, children are put in prison along with adult inmates in a same cell lacking privacy which leads to sexual abuse.
Across Pakistan, there are 106 prisons of which 45 are in the Punjab province– where there is no specific detention center for children by virtue of section 2 of the JJSA 2018. It is rightly said that “Prison is a university of crime” and children in conflict with the law across Pakistan, particularly those who are facing penal sanctions, become notorious and stigmatized. Under the JJSA 2018, the government had to establish observation and correctional homes specifically for children in conflict with the law but they have not been established across Pakistan.
Furthermore, the Act 2018 provided major and minor violations of law by children to be settled through diversion i.e., restorative justice which meant children should not be given penal sanctions but instead should receive reprimands, community service, written or oral apology, etc. The process of diversion under the JJSA 2018 was to be practiced not by courts but instead by the juvenile justice committee at the district level having the judicial magistrate as its head. Almost five-and-a-half years have passed but such kind of committees across Pakistan have not been established, nor have the rules of business under the JJSA 2018. Children said to have infringed minor and major violations of penal law i.e., rash driving, theft, kites flying, loudspeaker violations, etc., face penal sanctions, making no opportunity for them to rehabilitate and correct themselves through diversion.
In culmination, the writer submits that children in conflict with the law and every child across Pakistan should be protected in lines with UNCRC, which Pakistan had adopted in 1990, whereby it introduced the Ordinance 2000 for children in conflict with the law. Moreover, it is said that the procedure for age determination should be adopted scientifically to make all individuals who claimed to be minors (juveniles) at the time of alleged violations to be recorded in investigation files and judicial procedures so as to debar them from going to the gallows and mass incarceration without the prospect of parole and/or discharge from prison. Juveniles put in prison across Pakistan and elsewhere should be rehabilitated to give them the opportunity to become socially responsibly with a view of integrating within society.
*The writer is an advocate based in Lahore, Pakitan and a director of Legal Awareness Watch Pakistan (LAW).
March 9, 2023
The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of Aequitas Review.
