Children’s Rights International has been working on the ground in Cambodia with its partner Legal Aid Cambodia (LAC) since 2005. CRI’s current priority, after extensive consultation, is to help establish a Child Friendly Court system in Cambodia. Since that time, with the support of the Cambodian Ministry of Justice, the Inter Ministerial Child Justice Working Group, the NGO Working Group on Child Justice, the Australian Embassy, AusAID, and UNICEF considerable progress has been made.
This partnership will shortly commence to roll out training programmes in Australia and later in Battambang, Siam Reap and Phnom Penh to assist Cambodian judges, prosecutors, police, prison officers, social workers and allied professionals in bringing to Cambodian children, in conflict with the law, their rights as detailed in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Cambodia is a signatory. A Child Friendly Court is the aim. To establish this Court in 3 key provinces is currently seen as a 3 year project. With successful outcomes and additional funding the project could be expanded to other provinces and hopefully to include the whole of Cambodia.
There is an overwhelming consensus amongst the agencies and individuals, consulted by CRI, that a Child Friendly Court system in Cambodia will be a fundamental building block to improving what is currently an appalling situation for children and juveniles who come in contact with the reality of Cambodian adult law. There is also a demonstrated good will on behalf of most Cambodian adults to improve the situation for children in a nation where most people are themselves young as a consequence of the genocidal madness of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge.
The justice system in Cambodia currently lacks structure as local authorities and police have very little expertise and no basic legal knowledge of children’s rights or legal documents. Once children are arrested and detained by the police, they are typically “punished” in some extrajudicial way if the offence is minor. If a child is prosecuted and enters the court system, the lack of a separate juvenile justice system condemns the child to be tried in adult courts, under adult laws. If sentenced to prison, the child will be incarcerated alongside adult inmates. Similarly child witnesses including victims of crime are not dealt with in an appropriate way by police, prosecution authorities and the courts. This is what CRI, the Ministry of Justice and our partners want to turn around and the will is there from all the key stakeholder to do just that.
Recently The Hon Alastair Nicholson AO RFD QC, CRI’s Chair went to Cambodia with Bill Jackson, CEO of CRI and other Board members to finalise arrangements for the project. He held meetings in PP with UNICEF, AusAID, the President of the Bar Association of Cambodia and senior Cambodian Government officials, together with lawyers from our partner organisation, Legal Aid Cambodia. The Australian Ambassador, Her Excellency Ms Penny Richards, held a dinner to welcome the CRI party and those associated with the project including Government officials, judges and prosecutors.
The CRI party then visited Battambang and met with the Provincial Governor and visited the courthouse and met with the Prosecutor and the President of the Provincial Court and inspected the newly fitted out child friendly courtroom.
outside UNICEF headquarters Phnom Penh
Vietnam
Royal Children’s Hospital International (RCHI) has for many years been working with the National Hospital for Pediatrics (NHP) in Hanoi on a wide range of issues and more recently has commenced a programme for the training of Vietnamese paediatricians and nurses at the hospital in the detection and possible ways of prevention of child abuse.
In Vietnam there has been only limited progress in developing a child friendly approach to justice issues and children, whether alleged offenders, witnesses, or victims tend to be treated in the same way as adults in Vietnam when involved in the justice system. There is also considerable concern about issues of child protection and a concern that action should be taken. However there is now considerable interest in changing the system.
CRI in conjunction with the National Hospital for Pediatrics Hanoi and Royal Children’s Hospital International and The Research and Training Centre for Community Development (RTCCD) a Vietnamese NGO, then proposed a further seminar in 2011 which was designed to include not only the MOLISA and the Ministry for Health but also those Ministries and organisations associated with the justice network, namely the Ministry of Justice, the People’s Procuracy and the Supreme People’s Court.
The concept of such a seminar was enthusiastically adopted by those bodies and importantly, by the National Assembly of Vietnam, which took over its running. The Seminar, which was held on 15 and 16 December 2011, was entitled “Strengthening Intersectoral Collaboration against Child Abuse in Vietnam". Financial support for the seminar also came from the Australian Embassy and UNICEF.
Click here to read The Hon. Alastair Nicholson’s address the workshop
Stengthinge Intersectoral Collaboration against Child Abuse in Vietnam
Child Protection, Juvenile Justice and Criminal Sanctions: The Australian Experience
Melia Hotel Hanoi, 15-16 December 2011
It is hoped that it will lead to a programme similar to that being developed for Cambodia and CRI remains ready to be involved in it. A project like a Child friendly Court will only succeed if it is accepted by those with the responsibility to implement it. In Cambodia years of consultation with Government NGOs and Cambodians seeking a Cambodian appraisal of how to proceed have taken place and the relationships which have thus been built have been crucial to getting the to this point. A similar process is occurring in Vietnam.
The calibre of the individual trainers from Australia, and New Zealand where Child and Juvenile Courts are world leaders speaks for a bright future for the projects. Those individual contributions will be voluntary and ongoing professional and personal relationships will be made.
It is not easy for countries which have been though the trauma suffered by Cambodia and Vietnam stripped as they have been of their older generations and infrastructure to regenerate and modernise an entire system and at the same time address the issue of child justice……… but this is essentially what they must do to secure their future.
Last Updated on Sunday, 14 April 2013 16:34
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