• Juvenile justice

Juvenile justice

There is currently no juvenile justice system in Burundi, no alternatives to incarceration for children and no services to help children once they are released from prison. This report details the failings of Burundi’s criminal system and their impacts on children. The information is based primarily on interviews with 142 children in prison, lock-ups or demobilisation centres or who had been recently released from detention, as well as a survey of all 136 children incarcerated in the Mpimba central prison.

Interviews with the children and other stakeholders indicate that children’s rights are frequently abused by the criminal justice system, both in initial arrest, sentencing and during their incarceration. Key findings from the report include:

• many children in conflict with the law had experienced considerable hardship and trauma prior to incarceration, including abuse, witnessing their parents’ deaths, involvement with armed forces or injuries during conflicts, and many had been living on the streets
• confessions were reported to be forced from children through beatings, threats and false information
• most children in conflict with the law in Burundi have no access to a lawyer or are not provided with legal assistance
• there is evidence that children can be the victim of false accusations made for material gain, particularly by former employers of domestic child workers seeking to avoid payment of wages, or by neighbours seeking access to the children’s land
• due to delays in processing cases, many children accused of minor creimes spend months in prison and are subsequently found to be innocent or given short sentences
• the quality of prosecution cases is compromised by the workloads and compulsory targets being set for prosecutors, who must handle too many cases with too few resources and no transportation
• the judicial and police systems are reportedly hampered by corruption, including the accepting bribes to support false accusations
• conditions in jails are very poor: there are no formal educational opportunities for children, and in many prisons there is severe overcrowding, and limited access to water and food, leaving many detainees severely malnourished. Further, children are in contact with adult prisoners in most prisons, leaving them vulnerable to abuse and rape.

The report urges the Burundian government to adopt proposed amendments to criminal law and advises that international support for improvements in the justice and prison systems will be essential.

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