The Government of Uzbekistan launched an innovative project on diversion and restorative justice in the Chilanzar district of the capital.
The project aims to ensure that the following international standards for juvenile justice mentioned in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child:
- children under 18 shall only be deprived of their liberty as a last resort;
- wherever appropriate or desirable, children under 18 shall be dealt with outside the formal criminal justice system.
“This landmark project seeks to avoid the adverse effects of sentencing children to specialized educational correctional institutions, as the trial process can lead to stigmatization. Now, cases of children in conflict with law will not be passed to a court. They will be reviewed by district department of the Prosecutor General’s Office applying alternative measures to restore the damage caused by the crime and to rehabilitate and reintegrate minors,” said Evgeniy Kolenko, Head, Academy of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Children aged 14-18 years from Chilanzar district of Tashkent city who have committed less serious crimes as well as children aged 16–18 years who have committed administrative offenses, will be sent to the Diversion Unit under Inter-Agency Commission on Minors. Trained staff will identify the needs of the child needs and the family, to develop individually tailored activities to change the child’s offending behavior and therefore prevent re-offending.
Diversionary measures, as an alternative to prosecuting juveniles, seek to discover the reasons for the offending behavior and provide effective rehabilitation activities. These alternatives help avoid stigmatizing children and labelling them as criminal. They are more cost effective than the expensive trial process.
“Modelling diversionary measures and a restorative justice approach is a good opportunity to test an innovative model of crime prevention among juveniles. It is an approach that has proved itself successful in many countries around the world,” said Sascha Graumann, Representative, UNICEF Uzbekistan. “If proved to be successful here, the project will be rolled out in other areas of Tashkent and countrywide,” he added.
The project is led by the Prosecutor General’s Office, with support of the local authorities of Chilanzar district of Tashkent city. As the first initiative of its kind in Uzbekistan, the project, supported by UNICEF, will support the ongoing reforms of the system for children in conflict with the law.
