UNICEF Pacific Child Protection Programme in partnership with the Samoan Government Hosts Judges for Youth and Children’s Courts.
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© UNICEF/2008 |
UNICEF in partnership with the Government of Samoa hosted the South Pacific Council for Youth and Children’s Courts (SPCYCC) in Apia, Samoa, from the 7th to the 11th July 2008. Magistrates and Judges from Samoa, Australia, New Zealand, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Solomon Islands, Tonga and the Cook Islands were represented. – to do what? To explore youth and child centred based approaches to responding to youth and children who come into conflict/contact with the law as offenders, complainants and witnesses.
The program focused on Child Protection and Youth Justice in the Pacific. Samoa’s new Youth Offenders Act and Community Justice Sentencing Act raised particular interest amongst the participants as both legislations address its country’s specific issues with regards to youth offending and innovative non-custodial community sentencing options. The presentations from Ronji Tauielu and Efeso Collins, two young New Zealand born Samoans spoke to the meeting on the issue of the conflicts experienced by young people who grow up in two very different cultures. They emphasised the importance for judges in understanding young offenders’ cultural history and identity when considering alternative sentencing options in a context that must be relevant for the young offender if the sentence is to have a positive outcome.
Especially important was the three days of workshops run simultaneously by conference presenters with the officers from the Ministry of Justice, Samoa. These workshops were aimed at building the capacity of the Ministry of Justice to further strengthen inter-agency collaboration in exploring diversionary options by police and the courts when young people offend. Explored also was the need to hold effective family group conferencing to assist an offender ,their family and the victim and their family in finding an outcome that embraced a strength based approach but simultaneously addressed the issue that the offender must take responsibility for the offence.
The meeting ended on a positive note for the South Pacific. Members of SPCYCC unanimously agreed(where possible) to hold future meetings in the South Pacific with an aim to strengthening advocacy for children and build capacity for law reform, institutional strengthening in the justice sector to further protect children.
The Commonwealth Secretariat also supported the Conference.
If you can answer the below questions for me the story can be more relative to the everyday person-
- how did this affect children. Participant Judges and Magistrates learnt a lot more on how to develop youth /child based approaches on how they can respond more appropriately to youth and children in their court be they offenders, witnesses.
- where they are children participating (if so this can be my first sentence) Samoan Youth participated to show case their programmes where facilites had been set up for Court Diversion Programs as opposed to imprisonment outcomes.
- what is the future of children if child diversions become more common practice
Where child / youth diversion become more common practice, there should be a domino effect on more informed/better trained “duty bearers’/service providers in creating child friendly court processes, more informed/better trained Welfare/Communities and within families to work towards preventative approaches and innovative approaches to creating protective environments for children who grow to young persons…less young persons presenting before the courts…decrease in exploitation and abuse of YP and children…
- what were some comments made Judges and magistrates learnt better ways to deal with youth and child issues during sharing of what works. Judges and magistrates learnt of the constraints experienced by PI countries due to lack of resources, training and information and suggested that SPCYCC be held in PI countries to support back to back training for “Pillars of Justice” duty bearers with their input and contribution.
- how did UNICEF contribute to the discussions – did they bring up the CRC
yes and shared the agreement for partnerships with samoa and other focus countries to assist in capacity building and training towards developments for creative protective environments for children focusing on the Legislative Policy component, Services for Welfare and Social and Community Moabilisation and the Communication Plan component.
- how does this relate to the CRC It informs and guides developments in these three areas to focus on compliance with CRC in creating protective environments for children against violence, abuse and sexual exploitation
- where to from this meeting There is an SPCYCC website developed after Fiji hosted SPCYCC in 2005, there are continuing networking, exchanges amongst colleagues in the area of Youth and Child Court systems being more compliant with CRC as all participant countries have ratified CRC. Also developments to increase membership in the South Pacific. Issue is funding and costing for PI countries to attend.
- how will the agreements made in this meeting or training provided help children
Agreements to continued discussions on issues of best court practices for child witnesses, including arranging protection for child witnesses before, during and after court proceedings, ‘child friendly’ court procedures including: arrangements for child witnesses and support persons, the use of screens, directions to counsel to seek to prevent the traumatising of child witnesses and, generally, the examination of ways of minimising stress in court, and
• sentencing principles, policies and practice.
At other meetings and training as part of the SPCYCC on going networks simulated courts were held in order to emphasise the difference between adult and juvenile courts, including the court setting and procedure as well as judicial conduct, demeanour and language.
