Asian Centre for Human Rights

(The Asian Centre for Human Rights is based in New Delhi, India.)

H undreds of juveniles in Bangladesh are being illegally detained in prison in violation of the country's Children Act of 1974 and its obligation as a party to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

According to the Dhaka Central Jail authorities in last December, at least 108 juvenile delinquents were held in the central jail instead of correction centres. At least eight of them have been in jail for more than a year, including a 14-year-old boy, Al Amin, who has been held since October 7, 2000. At the National Juvenile Correction Centre at Tongi, nearly 100 seats are vacant. The government of Bangladesh unabashedly stated in a report to the U. N. Committee on the Rights of the Child in last September that a total of 1,041 juveniles -959 boys and 82 girls-were held in different prisons. 

Under section 2( f) of the Children Act of 1974, any person below 16 years is a juvenile and must be sent to a "certified home or approved home or to the custody of a relative or other fit person".

However, age verification has never been taken seriously in the administration of juvenile justice. Police often increase the age of a juvenile in court to avoid the so-called legal complications. Magistrates are supposed to order a verification of age if a suspect seems to be under 18. The verification involves scrutiny of birth or school certificates and bone ossification tests. But most magistrates usually do not look up from their paperwork and, in a routine exercise, send the juveniles to jail. Even when court orders send the juveniles to correction centres, they are often ignored and the children are still being detained in prison. There were five cases in January last year in which the accused children remained in the Dhaka Central Jail although the court ordered that they be sent to correction centres. For example, Rafique, 13, has been in the central jail since last November despite a court order to keep him in the National Correction Centre at Tongi.

The maltreatment of juveniles in Bangladesh is in contravention of international standards on the administration of juvenile justice. It violates Articles 37, 40 and 39 of the U. N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. It also breaches other U. N. standards including the Standard Minimum Rules
for the Administration of Juvenile Justice (the Beijing Rules), the Guidelines for the Prevention of Juvenile Delinquency (the Riyadh Guidelines), the Rules for the Protection of Juveniles Deprived of Their Liberty and the Vienna Guidelines for Action on Children in the Criminal Justice
System. 

The Bangladesh Penal Code determines the minimum age of criminal responsibility at seven. That is an affront to the treatment of children in a civilised society. The U. N. Committee on the Rights of the Child, in examining the periodic report of the Bangladeshi government at its 35th session in last September, expressed concerns about 

(a) the minimum age of criminal responsibility (at seven years); 
(b) the sentencing to life imprisonment of children from the age of seven and to death penalty of children from the age of 16; 
(c) the absence of juvenile courts and judges in some parts of Bangladesh; 
(d) the extensive discretionary powers of the police, reportedly resulting in incarceration of street children and child prostitutes;
(e) the use of caning and whipping as a sentence for juvenile offenders; 
(f) the failure to fully ensure respect for the right to fair trial, including legal assistance for alleged children offenders and the very long periods of pre-trial detention; and 
(g) the detention of children with adults and in very poor conditions without access to basic services. 

The committee recommended the Bangladeshi government to 
(a) raise the minimum age of criminal responsibility to an internationally acceptable standard; 
(b) ensure that the imposition of the death penalty, of life imprisonment without possibility of release, and of caning and whipping as sanctions for crimes committed by persons while under 18 are explicitly prohibited by law; 
(c) ensure the full implementation of the right to fair trial, including the right to legal or other appropriate assistance; 
(d) protect the rights of children deprived of their liberty and improve their conditions of detention and imprisonment, including by guaranteeing separation of children from adults in prisons and in pre-trial detention places all over the country; and 
(e) establish an independent child-sensitive and accessible system for the reception and processing of complaints by children.

The December report prepared by the central jail authorities of Dhaka shows that government has little respect for the recommendations made by the U. N. bodies.

The establishment of a national human rights commission consistent with the Paris Principles relating to the status of national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights could have served as an effective mechanism to address such gross and systematic human rights violations.

After examining the first periodic report of the government of Bangladesh, the U. N. Committee on the Rights of the Child in its concluding observations on June 6, 1997 welcomed "the recent law to establish the post of ombudsperson as well as the fact that a national human rights
commission is being set up". More than six years later on October 3 last year, the committee after examining the second periodic report once again welcomed "the information from the delegation concerning the intention to establish a national human rights commission and an ombudsperson".

Since the start of the project to establish a national human rights commission by the then Bangladesh National Party government in April 1995, three
governments have changed. During that period of time, many draconian laws such as the Public Security (Special Provision) Act of 2000 and the Joint Drive Indemnity Act of 2003 were passed, and the officials and project officers took a detour of all the countries in the world that have
national human rights institutions. Yet the establishment of the national human rights commission in Bangladesh remains a pipe dream. The process of establishing such a commission has been all but a gravy train.