Burundi: The Tdh team assesses its work for juvenile justice

27 Oct 2011 Juvenile justiceBurundi

In view of the difficulties encountered in the Terre des hommes project for the ‘Establishment of a system of juvenile justice in Burundi’, a self-assessment inquiry was organised at the end of September 2011, getting together all the contributors to the project. Although, during such an exercise, it is pertinent and often pleasant to note the progress accomplished, the delegation in Burundi wanted above all to point out the difficulties and pressures experienced during the project.
Objective: Propose recommendations and an action plan for the end of the project.

Burundi courts, judges for the work of Terre des hommes

Self-assessment is not an easy exercise. So as to get round some difficulties of organisational order and to avoid falling into the byways of self-satisfaction, the direct partners of the project (such as the Presidents of the Higher Court Tribunals, Public Prosecutors of the Republic, Prison Governors and officers of the provincial judicial police working in the areas of intervention of this project) were requested to participate in the exercise. They were also able to reflect the image they had of our work. Another choice was to decide to cross over the personnel from each base so as to facilitate the exchanges about the difficulties encountered in each of these areas of the project’s intervention (3 provinces and 3 bases).

Terre des hommes, like a pillar of Burundi justice

The first conclusion of the inquiry showed that even if the partners are on the whole convinced of the validity of the services of social workers from Terre des hommes (in police stations, magistrates and family courts), this intervention by Terre des hommes is only a substitute for a national socio-judicial system for minors, which is virtually non-existent. And yet, the purpose of the project is the setting up of such a system.

The interest shown by people in the judicial chain in the work of social workers remains no less essential because it is synonymous with recognition of the need for laws adapted to minors, more humanised and above all, restorative. The trial judges in particular emphasised the added-value brought to their work by the social inquiries done by social workers. QED.

Nevertheless, as the self-assessment underlined, difficulties are always present:
• the poor impact of preventative activities within the communities; • the absence of social workers to be given training in the Ministry of Justice;
• inopportune recourse to questioning;
• the lack of means available to the people involved for their best efficiency;
• far too long periods of preventative detention (delayed procedures);
• difficult and unstructured conditions of detention;
• the absence of alternative measures to imprisonment;
• the lack of follow-up for re-integration, etc.

Lacking social workers from the government, it is the social workers from Terre des hommes who accompany the minor from his questioning up to his re-integration, through the whole penal procedure. This is the chance, for Terre des hommes, to note all the irregularities of the system and, for want of being able to free them, to improve the rights of the detained youngsters. The project was also able, for example, to have the dossiers of some minors ‘rediscovered’ that had been forgotten in cupboards (or rather in provisional detention

The next steps of the project are the integration of Social Workers from the Ministry of National Solidarity into the penal network and the training of all the people involved in the same network (including Social Workers from the Ministry) on the characteristics of juvenile justice.

A meeting, therefore, in eight months’ time, for the results of the final assessment of the project, an assessment which will concentrate, this time, on the impact of the intervention of Terre des hommes for Minors in Conflict with the Law who have benefited from the project’s support.