Focus on children in prison

There are currently 199 children in Burundi prisons, according to the latest statistics published by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and a local nongovernmental organisation (NGO), Libejeun. This figure is almost double that of 2000, when both UNICEF and Amnesty International (AI) documented the presence of over 100 children in Burundi prisons. "It's a reflection of the social and economic crisis in Burundi," explained Alison Dilworth of AI, who recently returned from a one-month visit to Burundi to monitor, among other things, children held in detention. "Children fall victim to it because their families can't support them, they leave home to look for work, and then they are exploited by individuals and not protected by the state." The Libejeun/UNICEF study of 11 prisons - Bujumbura, Gitega, Ngozi I, Ngozi II, Muyinga, Rutana, Muramvya, Bururi, Bubanza, Ruyigi and Rumonge - was conducted in January and February 2002. It found that of the 199 minors detained, 150 had been incarcerated, while the remainder were infants who had been born in prison. Whether children grow up with their detained mothers in prisons often depends on the mother's social position and on whether she has a family member to look after the child. AI confirmed that the oldest such child its team had come across was four years of age, and had spent all but one month of its life in prison. The vast majority of minors being detained were boys (93 percent) and came from Burundi itself (97 percent), with the remainder coming from neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo, Libejeun/UNICEF reported. Significantly, over three-quarters of them had not been tried: only 24 percent had been convicted, while 76 percent were awaiting trial. The majority, 85 percent, were between 15 and 17 years old when first arrested, while 11 percent were aged 13-14, and 1.3 percent (two children) were under 13 (no details are known about the remaining 2.7 percent). Under Burundi law, it is illegal to detain a minor under 13 years of age; under-18s should also bear diminished responsibility for crimes committed, but with no special courts to enforce this, the reality is often different. Of the 150 children who were accused of committing crimes, the main offences were theft or extortion (62 percent), murder or manslaughter (almost 11 percent), rape (10 percent), participation in armed groups (almost 5 percent), and plotting a massacre or pillage (almost 5 percent). More than half, at 56 percent, had been cultivators prior to their detention; almost 28 percent had no occupation; almost 7 percent were domestic workers; less than 5 percent (seven children) were in school; and the remaining 4 percent worked as mechanics, military personnel or had an unspecified occupation. Significantly, the vast majority of the minors in prisons with whom AI had contact came from impoverished backgrounds, confirmed Dilworth. Most of the children she met had been accused of being involved in petty theft, had committed some kind of violent act, or of supporting Burundi rebel groups. Others had been exploited as domestic servants. "They are employed in houses, given no pay and when they ask for it they are arrested and imprisoned, sometimes for between 1 and 2 years," Dilworth said. Once arrested, children in conflict with the law were often detained in conditions well below international minimum standards, and pre-trial detention could continue for unacceptable lengths of time, even as long as two or three years, the Libejeun/UNICEF and AI report noted. Dilworth said there were numerous reports of sexual abuse in the prisons without there being empirical evidence as it was "a taboo subject". In many cases, children were detained with adults, placing them at an increased risk of physical and sexual abuse, and overcrowding was "still a massive problem", she said: "In one room, about 10 by five metres, there were about 80 people detained, including children. The children had to sleep on the bare ground with no mattress or blanket, underneath shelves, in very cold conditions." "They are placed in positions that make them very vulnerable to torture," she added. Despite this, however, considerable improvements have been noted by both AI and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) over the last two to three years. Dilworth said improvements had been made in the prisons where international NGOs such as ICRC were paying monitoring visits. Others, such as Rumonge and Bururi, had seen little improvement. An ICRC official confirmed to IRIN that the organisation has been involved in repairing toilets and showers, providing water carriers, disinfecting public areas and supporting literacy programmes in six prisons. In 2001, daily food rations were also increased in the prisons with a resulting decrease in levels of malnutrition - confirmed by ICRC by measuring the body mass index, or BMI - as well as in decreasing mortality rates. A UNICEF protection officer told IRIN that recently the relevant authorities in Burundi had become more open to the idea of considering clemency for minors, and that they had been separated from adults where possible, as in the case of Mpimba prison in Bujumbura. The relevant authorities in Burundi who were contacted by IRIN - the department of justice and the Direction Generale des Affaires Penitentiaires (DGAP) - attributed the failings in the system to a lack of specific legislation on minors, the slowness of the judicial system in general, and to a lack of funds. The director of DGAP, Deo Suzuguye - who says there are only 155 minors in Burundi prisons and no under-12s - told IRIN that a special tribunal for minors was necessary, and would be the only way to ensure that their best interests were made a priority. (The latest report on the human rights situation in Burundi submitted by the UN Special Rapporteur notes that "establishing minors' ages is always a problem in Burundi prisons", which may explain the discrepancy in the figures. "The inmates have no identity papers, and there are always discrepancies between how old they [say they are] and [how old] the judicial police officers mentioned in their case files say they are.") "The prison administration does not have a lot of resources, but it is trying to organise a small programme of literacy and apprenticeship for volunteers," added Suzuguye. AI emphasised, however, that more must be done by the relevant authorities. "If the political will is there to make these children a priority, I don't see why it can't happen even with shortages of resources," said Dilworth. Asked about the detention of minors and adults together, a spokesman for the department of justice, Onesphore Nikuze, told IRIN that it was due to a lack of resources needed for constructing separate quarters. "Even those [laws] which we have date back to the colonial times," he added. A UNICEF spokeswoman confirmed that her organisation was working with the transitional government in Burundi to draw up laws that would specifically protect children's rights, as outlined in the Arusha peace accord, and that within that context it was advocating for detained children's rights. "The length of detention periods show that it is necessary to assist the government in rectifying the dysfunctional judicial system; that the specific character of children's needs are not recognised; that the length of incarceration is disproportionate to the crime committed; and that incarceration is decided on without any consideration for the possible damage to the child in question," a UNICEF protection officer noted.