Juvenile Justice Administration: The Case of Tigray Regional State
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Date
2015
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Children in conflict with the law are vulnerable and hence need special protection and
support services that are appropriate to their age and level of maturity. Special protection
need to be given with a view to protect children in conflict with the law from further hardship
and trauma that may result due to their participation during criminal proceedings. Having this
in mind, the purpose of this study is to assess the juvenile justice administration in Tigray
regional state. To this end, quantitative and qualitative research methodologies were used and
questionnaires, interviews, and field visits were used as data gathering tools. A total of 129
persons were made part of this study from judges, public prosecutors, police, advocates, children
in conflict with the law, human right commission experts, labour and social affairs bureau
expert, members of the parliament and social workers. The responses of those respondents were
interpreted and analyzed. The core findings of the research are the following;
In the case of legislative measures, it is a positive development that Ethiopia is a state party to
different human rights instruments in general and children’s right like CRC and ACRWC in
particular. Furthermore, there are also domestic laws like the FDRE constitution and Tigray
constitution, the revised criminal code and the criminal procedure which have key provisions on
the right of the child in conflict with the law. However, there are still some problems that need to
be addressed in relation to these laws like; the minimum age of criminal responsibility is too
low, the maximum age limit for juveniles is not in line with the international instruments, lack of
non judiciary diversionary mechanism in the laws, absence of clear and detailed rules and
guidelines on the application of juvenile cases, the problem of the law to give awareness to the
large varieties of non institutional dispositive measures.
It was also discovered that the situation relating to children in conflict with the law was very
poor in Tigray regional state. The professionals’ working in the administration of justice suffers
from a clear lack of adequate knowledge with the words and sprits of the law protecting children
in conflict with the law. The system is also suffering from lack of child friendly infrastructural
facilities like CPUs, CFCs, and non existence of any of the legally envisaged institutions to
administer the educational measures prescribed by the criminal code. Furthermore, the concept
of diversion is not known in the regional state and the diversionary role assigned to the courts by the criminal procedure code is not much understood by the police and the courts. In other words,
there are not diversionary programs (centers) in the regional state. There was also problem of
networking among the justice professionals and other NGOs and CSOs. With regard to these
shortcomings, the research makes some relevant recommendations which are believed to be of
help to the government in the better implementation of juvenile justice
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Keywords
Children in conflict,Tigray regional state