New law to promote international standards in prisons

A newly-ratified law is expected to bring significant changes to Afghanistan’s crumbling prisons and ensure the basic rights of thousands of inmates in the country’s jails, law experts said in the capital, Kabul, on Tuesday. The 54-article law has been designed to bring the nation’s prisons and detention centres up to minimum international standards. “The new law says the prison system has to achieve the goal of rehabilitation of prisoners and to deliver a person back in to society as a law abiding individual,” Giuseppe di Gennaro, a senior legal reform advisor of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) said. The law was ratified on 31 May after two years of work by national and international experts. It was drafted by the government of Afghanistan, with support from the UNODC and the government of Italy, which is the lead nation working on the reform of the Afghan justice system. Despite the good intentions which have led to the drafting and ratification of the new legislation, lack of resources will be likely to pose a real barrier to any meaningful upgrade of penal facilities in the country. Afghan justice minister Sarwar Danish said that in twenty provinces of Afghanistan, inmates are housed in rented buildings often too small to accommodate them. One provincial jail recently visited by IRIN had mud floors and sickly-looking prisoners shivering in thin blankets complaining of poor food, no medical facilities and long waits before being brought to trial. “In such situations when we don’t have the tools and the proper buildings, we are not able to ensure prisoners rights.” Danish said. There are currently 6,000 prisoners housed in at least 34 state jails. Hundreds more languish in an unknown number of private prisons in the provinces, mostly controlled by powerful warlords or local commanders. There are also a number of detention centres under the control of US-led Coalition forces holding suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda members and supporters. According to UNODC, work on the rehabilitation of prisons and detention centres in Kabul is almost complete. Tackling the upgrading of provincial prison facilities looks set to be a far more challenging task that has yet to be addressed. UNODC officials said progress has been made in the reform of the justice sector in the last three years. A new law on criminal procedures has been introduced, a new juvenile justice code has been brought in and now the new legislation on prisons has been ratified.