Juvenile justice remains a serious challenge in Cameroon even though the Convention of the rights of the Child has been ratified, enacted protections in the Criminal Procedure Code of 2005 and trained some stakeholders to protect the rights of children in conflict with the law. Some of the problems are insufficient resources and capacities; Children are not adequately tracked after facing legal action; children lack legal representation, no programs divert children from the legal action against them or offer those found guilty constructive non-custodial remedies; poor children and those without caregivers are jailed prior to trial; and children in jail lack food, healthcare and schooling and are sometimes mixed with adults in over-crowded cells, social workers, police, gendarmes, magistrates, traditional leaders, advocates, local officials, national legislators and the media lack knowledge of children’s rights and the skills to protect them.\
This training came against the backdrop of initiating the setting up of a diversion system in Cameroon where the project team will be exposed to the international Diversion systems from which concepts will be reviewed and adapted to meet the Cameroonian challenges. Experts from the preeminent Diversion Programme in the world from South Africa’s National Institute for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of Offenders (NICRO), facilitated the training in an intensive four-day training. South Africa and Cameroon have similar context, making it more relevant for them to transfer knowledge, capacities, share challenges and successes upon which Cameroon can tap from and put its own systems in place.
It was made clear that putting in place a diversion system was going to follow the national and international laws governing children and focus while focus will be on children-in-conflict-with-the-law. It is a new concept in Africa and particularly in Cameroon. Therefore, the training was an inevitable action which aims at setting the foundation of the diversion programme in Cameroon. See the report below
[su_document url=”http://hedecs.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Diversion-training-report-PDF.pdf”]
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