Human rights organisations criticise court decision on juvenile justice

The Lahore High Court has ruled a presidential decree, the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance of 2000, as unconstitutional, unreasonable and impracticable. Under the decree, the government had to set up special juvenile courts for under-age offenders and establish independent trials for juvenile and adult offenders. But implementation has been slow. The high court judgment challenged the definition of a juvenile as a person under 18, saying this was arbitrary. "The ordinance contains such downright absurdities as to create havoc in the country's criminal justice system," the judgment said. It followed a petition by a man whose son was allegedly sodomised and burnt alive by a group of people, one of whom was a juvenile. The decision means that juvenile courts will be abolished and children will once again be tried in the same system as adults and can be sentenced to death. Human rights watchdogs have protested against the decision. In a statement, Amnesty International called it a retrograde step. "It flies in the face of the worldwide movement towards the abolition of the death penalty for juveniles." "The government of Pakistan must abide by its commitments under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and take immediate action to appeal to the Supreme Court to review the judgment and stay its implementation," Amnesty International said. Pakistan's independent Human Rights Commission said it was disappointed with the striking down of the juvenile justice law, especially as it was evident that juveniles in jails, who number at least 3,000, received no counselling, rehabilitation or education. The high court said that as there were constitutional guarantees, a host of laws, including the Pakistan Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code, and numerous court judgments that adequately safeguarded the rights of a child, the ordinance was unnecessary and had created confusion. "The prohibition of death sentences for children had resulted in more and more young people committing heinous crimes like murders and gang rapes. There were even instances of children being used by criminals to settle score with opponents," the high court said. "The law had encouraged corruption on a large scale as families of accused had procured fake birth, school and medical certificates to establish that the accused were juveniles," the court said. "The court has identified various loopholes in the law, and we hope these can be amended in any new draft intended to tackle the juvenile justice system," the Human Rights Commission's director, Kamila Hyat, told IRIN. Dr Faiza Asgher, children's affairs adviser to the Punjab chief minister, told IRIN that the Punjab government would urge the federal government to move the Supreme Court against the abolition of the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance by the Lahore High Court.