Dear Members and Friends,
1° Pakistan: Better justice for children in conflict with the law.
The foundation of our work in this country has always been to identify and defend individual cases of young people incarcerated and facing the death penalty or life imprisonment for acts, real or alleged, committed while they were minors.
Last year, in partnership with the organization Sanjog, we conducted a survey of minors threatened with or sentenced for offenses punishable by death or life imprisonment in seventeen prisons in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The following prisons in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were visited for this work: Peshawar, Abbottabad, Manshera, Haripur, Swat, Malakand, Charsadda, Chitral, Bannu, Kohat, and Timergara.
In Balochistan: the prisons of Mach, Mastung, Noshki, Loralai, Ghaddani, and Quetta.
In total, 163 young people at risk of these sentences were identified, including 29 already convicted and 134 awaiting trial.
Detailed documentation of these surveys is available upon request.
At the same time, throughout 2024, Vivere’s actions have followed the same objectives as in previous years, in compliance with the Pakistani Juvenile Justice System Act (JJSA 2018) and within the framework of international standards for juvenile justice:
- Defence of individual cases
- Organization of awareness or training forums, alongside many advocacy cases.
This year, this included the defence of 24 individuals who were minors at the time of the alleged offenses. Two of them were acquitted in 2024. They were a young girl and a young boy aged 14 and 15 respectively at the time of their incarceration.
In 2024, our three local partners — the organizations LAW, MRDO, and Sanjog — organized 14 awareness and training sessions on juvenile justice, including four two-day training sessions. Three were held in the Sindh province, 3 in Punjab, 5 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and 3 in Balochistan.
The participants included 487 professionals involved in juvenile justice — magistrates, prosecutors, lawyers, judges, police officers, social workers — as well as NGOs, civil society representatives, and media. In Punjab and Sindh, Vivere actively supported the networking of these actors to promote synergy for better child protection.
Since the beginning of this initiative in Pakistan in 2019, 67 forums have been organized, reaching a total of 2,381 participants, including 1,100 lawyers, who were made aware of the issue of juvenile justice. One can reasonably hope that across the country, several hundred professionals have now gained a better understanding of their daily responsibilities to act in the defence of children and adolescents whose very lives are at stake.
Here are some pictures taken during these sessions:
Lastly, we would like to mention that one of our members will be traveling to Pakistan next week to assess, support, and further develop these activities as much as possible across several provinces.
2° A reminder of an important date to note, please: Thursday, May 8, 2025
the annual General Assembly of Vivere in Lausanne. Kindly mark this key event in your calendar, as your participation in this important moment in the association’s life is greatly encouraged and much appreciated! A formal invitation was sent to you on April 3.
Dear Members and Friends,
We once again would like to express our gratitude for your interest in Vivere’s work and for the trust you place in us — it means so much.
The Vivere Committee