The Lahore High Court has ruled a
presidential decree, the Juvenile Justice System Ordinance of 2000, as
unconstitutional, unreasonable and impracticable.

Under the decree, the government had to set up special juvenile courts for
under-age offenders and establish independent trials for juvenile and
adult offenders. But implementation has been slow.

The high court judgment challenged the definition of a juvenile as a
person under 18, saying this was arbitrary. "The ordinance contains such
downright absurdities as to create havoc in the country's criminal justice
system," the judgment said. It followed a petition by a man whose son was
allegedly sodomised and burnt alive by a group of people, one of whom was
a juvenile.

The decision means that juvenile courts will be abolished and children
will once again be tried in the same system as adults and can be sentenced
to death.

Human rights watchdogs have protested against the decision.

In a statement, Amnesty International called it a retrograde step. "It
flies in the face of the worldwide movement towards the abolition of the
death penalty for juveniles."

"The government of Pakistan must abide by its commitments under the
Convention on the Rights of the Child and take immediate action to appeal
to the Supreme Court to review the judgment and stay its implementation,"
Amnesty International said.

Pakistan's independent Human Rights Commission said it was disappointed
with the striking down of the juvenile justice law, especially as it was
evident that juveniles in jails, who number at least 3,000, received no
counselling, rehabilitation or education.

The high court said that as there were constitutional guarantees, a host
of laws, including the Pakistan Penal Code and the Criminal Procedure
Code, and numerous court judgments that adequately safeguarded the rights
of a child, the ordinance was unnecessary and had created confusion.

"The prohibition of death sentences for children had resulted in more and
more young people committing heinous crimes like murders and gang rapes.
There were even instances of children being used by criminals to settle
score with opponents," the high court said.

"The law had encouraged corruption on a large scale as families of accused
had procured fake birth, school and medical certificates to establish that
the accused were juveniles," the court said.

"The court has identified various loopholes in the law, and we hope these
can be amended in any new draft intended to tackle the juvenile justice
system," the Human Rights Commission's director, Kamila Hyat, told IRIN.

Dr Faiza Asgher, children's affairs adviser to the Punjab chief minister,
told IRIN that the Punjab government would urge the federal government to
move the Supreme Court against the abolition of the Juvenile Justice
System Ordinance by the Lahore High Court.[Source: IRIN]