16 Feb 2012 • Juvenile justice Burkina Faso

Burkina Faso: Legitimise community service for youngsters

- Published by Darcissac, Marion

To make the punishment of community service effective for minors in conflict with the law is one of the challenges taken up by Terre des hommes. Last Friday, at an advocacy workshop organized by Tdh, the Ministers undertook to see that the young delinquents could at last have their sentences enforced in suitable structures and so be helped to become reintegrated in society.

This workshop, in which the Minister of Justice and the Ministration for Regional Administration took part, enabled bringing magistrates, officers of the detective force, social services, town councils and organizations of civil society together to discuss community service as a disciplinary measure.

The workshop took a look at the advantages of community service for adolescents; and Tdh demonstrated that, firstly, this disciplinary measure responds to the wish to put right the damage caused to society, and secondly, that it is a penalty favoring the youngsters’ reintegration. But the workshop also made it possible to point a finger at the lack of structures able to receive the minors in conflict with the law and give them the possibility of carrying out their sentences. On the contrary, the participants were shown that the conditions of detention in Burkina Faso are most unsuitable for youngsters to become reintegrated in society.

Firmly convinced that imprisonment is not a suitable solution for adolescents, all the participants committed themselves to play their part in implementing community service to become effective to benefit minors in conflict with the law in Burkina Faso. The Ministers committed themselves to supporting Tdh in the effective implementation of community service and appealed to the organizations invited (town councils, social services, structures of the civil society) to receive the young people into their organizations and to allow them to work out their punishment correctly. Circulars are being prepared: signed by the two Ministers who were present at the workshop, these will be published and distributed to all Presidents of Courts and local representatives, so as to get over the reluctance shown by some people.

Further information on Tdh’s intervention in Burkina Faso