More than 215 cases of children in detention were heard last week as part of an on-going process to ensure that the backlog of cases particularly where minors are concerned is speedily cleared.This Legal Aid Week, as it has been dubbed, was first organised in 2009, and then again in 2010.Due to the mobilisation of prison officers, courts, parquets, the national police, the Bar Association and the Legal Aid Forum, more than 800 cases involving children awaiting trial were cleared, enabling most of the minors to be set free. “Now we cannot tell the number of children who were cleared. We are waiting for the report from the Ministry of Justice showing the minors who were set free or given punishment after their cases were heard,” noted François Mugabo, the Child Protection Officer at United Nations Children Education Fund (UNICEF).The Child Week was part of a larger judicial reform process in the country, supported by the European Union, Dutch and Belgian Governments, Department For International Development (DFID), UNICEF and other partners, to ensure that the rights of children in conflict with the law are realised as efficiently and effectively as possible. An innovative feature of this reform has been the creation of “justice centres” or maison d’accès à la justice in each of the country’s 30 districts. These centres, which have a staff of three lawyers, provide free legal aid to an average population of 350,000 people. Since their creation in 2011, the centres have dealt with over 7,000 cases related to child rights, protection and violence issues. They have also helped the justice system to identify pending cases, thereby enabling the organisation of the legal aid clinics.“The continued organisation of these weeks is an important step to realising justice for all children in Rwanda,” emphasised Noala Skinner, UNICEF’s Representative to Rwanda. “And I know we all hope that these weeks will soon be a fixture of the past, which is why we are supporting Government to put in place alternative corrective measures for children.”In addition to helping transform correctional facilities for minors, UNICEF has supported the creation of a juvenile chamber with specialised judges for children and is also assisting the country to revise the child protection law to ensure that it is sensitive to children’s rights and needs.“All these initiatives were put in place to ensure that people don’t spend much time in courts. We want people to spend that time on projects that have positive impact on their welfare,” said Tharcisse Karugarama, the Minister of Justice during the official launch of the Legal Aid Week. Rwanda has made significant progress in realising the rights of children he said. Over 95 per cent of girls and boys go to school. Child mortality has dropped significantly from 152 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2005 to 76 in 2010 while the number of children and their families living in poverty has decreased from 56 percent in 2005 to 44 percent in 2010.
