The Juvenile justice Project

The Restoration & Protection Unit has been working very closely with the Department of Probation and Child Care for a considerable period of time providing free legal assistance and reunifying  the juveniles in the remand homes in the Western province. The table given below shows the statistics for the months of March, April and May 2009.

Case Study

Magistrates Courts, Trincomalee had sent 14 year old Nishanthan to the Boys remand home, Kottawa  for 2 years for committing the offence of stealing a bicycle and this had not been informed to his parents.

IHR, after much effort managed to contact his mother who came forward as his guardian. He was released after 2 years on 28th May 2009 and was referred to Sarvodaya Vocational Training Centre to be trained in motor mechanism for a period of 6 months.

Increased number of visits to remand homes

IHR increased the number of visits per month to remand homes with the objective of reunifying more children

Psychosocial support center

A Psychosocial Support Centre (PSC)  was set up at IHR to provide psychosocial services through referral services. Through this services such as legal aid, temporary shelter facilities, counseling etc. are provided.

In the months of March, April and May 2009, services have been extended as follows.

March-12 clients

April -10 clients

May -12 clients

Also several advices have been given through telephone calls.

There are clients accessing the services throuph telephone calls and visits

Orientation Programme for network lawyers

An orientation programme for the network lawyers was held on the 21st March 2009 at  the Save the Children in Sri Lanka (SCiSL) head office.

Objectives of the Programme:

▪ Provide participants with background knowledge on Juvenile justice project carried out by IHR as a partner of SCiSL.

▪ Discuss the challenges faced by the network lawyers, in the process of expediting reunification of children from remand homes.

▪  Enable the network lawyers to benefit by a technical session on the Children and Young Persons Ordinance N. 48 of 1939.

The meeting commenced with an introduction to SCiSL and IHR ‘s work on Legal aid ,reunification and the follow up process. This was followed by a presentation on a summary of the work done by Social Legal Protection (SLP) project, progress and plans for the future. The importance of the role of a network lawyers in the process of reunification was emphasized in the  presentation.The main protection aspects of the CYPO and some thought-provoking data /excerpts of reports were also presented to the participants by the resource person,  Mr. Sajeeva Samaranayake – Attorney-at-Law.

Details of cases handled

	March	April	May	Total
Collection of new cases	18	11	29	58
No. of cases Referred to Network Lawyers	55	40	45	140
Legal representations	70	40	43	153
No. of children represented in Court	45	44	50	139
No. of children reunified with guardians	07	04	07	18
No. of children placed in Institutions	03	03	03	9