Mahamadiba Traoré
Clinique Juridique DEME SO
Introduction
Created in 1994, the DEME SO legal clinic aims at promoting democracy and Human rights. In order to reach this goal, DEME SO has defined four lines of action:
- Information and awareness raising on legal matters to allow people and especially the most resourceless (male and female detainees) to have an equal and equitable access to the legal procedures and be able to fully exercise their citizenship.
- Legal training
- Formalization of - and support to - female groups.
- Detainees’ rehabilitation
These activities are led in collaboration with the State and its technical structures, civil societies organizations both in rural and urban areas, and resourceless groups such as women and young people, etc.
These target groups, constituted of rural and urban population, associations and NGOs’ members, managers and leaders, and defendants and detainees, are supported and prepared to exercise their rights and do their duties through legal and jucicial Civic Information and Education (IEC) actions, training programs, radio broadcasting and audio tapes dealing with law needs, and the pedagogical law material produced. DEME SO speaks up for democracy, decentralization, human rights, women’s rights, etc.
After this short introduction of DEME SO and its activities, let’s get onto the real theme of this presentation: the methods on monitoring and influencing economic, social and cultural rights-related judicial practices. We will first tackle the detainees’ rehabilitation issue, as rehabilitation comes under penitentiary law and the Ministry of Justice. Our presentation will base on DEME SO’s experience of the methods on monitoring and influencing economic, social and cultural rights-related judicial practices in Mali. One remembers that back in 1998, in Mali, rehabilitation was neither governed by law nor by any existing policy.
Since its foundation in 1994, the DEME SO legal clinic had set an objective to improve social, legal and economic living conditions in Malian jails. In order to carry through this mission, a national investigation was conducted in collaboration with the National Directorate of Penitentiary Administration and Surveilled Education ( DNAPES - Direction Nationale de l’Administration Pénitentiaire et de l’Education Surveillée) on the conditions of custody and detention.
Once the data had been analysed and interpreted, a national report was drafted on the conditions of custody and detention, along with a series of suggestions and recommendations likely to improve the living conditions in the Malian penitentiary environment.
It is precisely from that moment on that the DEME SO legal clinic judged that judicial practices and policies constituted to a large extent obstacles to the improvement of living conditions in Malian jails.
In order to better understand the approaches that led to influence judicial practices, we adopted the following strategy:
- Development of the Terms of reference (TORs) for the investigation conducted in the penitentiary environment
- Drafting of the report
- Submission of the report to the relevant authorities (Ministry of Justice, Directorate of Penitentiary Administration)
In the meantime, the legal clinic has been looking for necessary ways and means to improve living conditions in jail. That is why, in collaboration with his financial partner, the Coordinator went on a study tour in the Netherlands. The study tour’s TORs focused on the Dutch policy regarding penal matters, as well as visits and exchange with some prisons’ directors. Following this study tour, DEME SO negociated - and obtained its partner’s agreement for the development of a rehabilitation mini-project at the Special Reeducation and Rehabilitation Center for Women and Minors located in Bollé (Centre Spécial de Rééducation et de Réinsertion pour Femmes et Mineurs (es)).
Rehabilitation mini-project implementation strategy
- Drafting of the project document.
- Organization of a field visit to identify and list Bollé detainees’ needs in terms of learning and professional training.
- Identification of target groups (women and primary juvenile delinquents)
- Interviews with the penitentiary staff (jailors and supervisors)
- Drafting of the report on female and minor detainees’ learning and training needs
- Submission of the report to the Ministry of Justice and the National Directorate of Penitentiary Administration.
- Organization of meetings with the National Directorate of Penitentiary Administration on the report’s results.
- Set-up of a collaboration through a Management Committee composed of the person in charge of penitentiary matters at DEME SO and the National Directorate of Penitentiary Administration’s managers.
- Set-up of rehabilitation activities (by setting up learning and training workshops and supplying them with raw material)
- Distribution of the detainees following the latter’s choices
- Recruitment of workshops’ supervising teams.
- Setting up learning and training sessions
- Monitoring of the sessions and objects made by the detainees.
- Progressive storage of the products.
After the effective implementation of the mini-project ’s activities with the eventual production of objects made by the detainees, DEME SO planned to organize a "Detainee Week".
This week’s ultimate goal was to make visible what was happening in Bollé in terms of training and preparation for the detainees’ resocialization. It also aimed at mobilizing decision-makers and populations, and convince them that another form of prison was possible, beyond pure and simple imprisonment.
Detainee Week implementation strategy
- Set-up of an Organization Commission gathering together the Ministry of Justice, DEME SO and DNAPES
- Reservation of the meeting room and building of the exhibition stands.
- Development of the day’s program and setting of a date related to a memorable and universal event likely to bring together government members, such as December 10 – anniversary date of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights which coincides with the space of democratic interpellation in Mali
- Sending of invitation letters to authorities and civil society organizations.
- Making of TV adverts for the event
- Event placed under the patronage of the Ministry of Justice along with other governement members
- Organization of the Detainee Week which turned out to be a total success - DEME SO received congratulation letters from the Ministry of Justice and the Directorate of Penitentiary Administration.
After the success of the first edition, the State later institutionalized the Detainee Week on its third edition in 2001, and eventually adopted a national policy of rehabilitation in Malian prisons.
The Adoption and implementation of this rehabilitation policy in Malian penitentiary environment further convinced DEME SO that the judicial system could be transformed – a sytem which is at the base of a series of long detention and overpopulation in prisons.
To that purpose, DEME SO organized in partnership with the Ministry of Justice , the Directorate of Penitentiary Administration and civil society, a one-day workshop on the alternatives to imprisonment in Mali.
One-day workshop organizational strategy
- Development of the TORs
- Set up an Organization Commission (Ministry – DEME SO - DNAPES)
- Identify and select the consultants.
- Book the room
- Send invitations
- Make TV adverts for the event
- Write papers related to the rehabilitation issue.
- Organize the day
- Present the papers, questions – debates and answers.
- Group workshops
- Present the work/amendments and adopt the report
At the end of the day, the decision-makers, the Ministry’s and penitentiary administration’s officers, and civil society’s leaders exhorted the State to introduce the community service into the judicial legislation.
Development process of the commmunity service implementation bill
- Set-up of an enlarged commission (Ministry – DEME SO – DNAPES and others involved in penitentiary matters)
- Drawing-up the bill
- Submission of the bill to the Minister of Justice and his cabinet
- Amendment and adoption of the bill by the Ministry
- Sending of the bill to the National Assembly
- Presentation of the bill by the Minister to the National Assembly
- Debates/questions/answers at a plenary session
- Adoption of the commmunity service implementation bill
- Promulgation by presidential decree.
Thus, since 2002, Mali has endowed its legislation with a community service law integrated into the code of penal procedure, a law for primary and resourceless delinquents, that are, women, young people and minors.
The judicial practice regarding pure and simple imprisonment in Mali has been enriched with another sanction which helps to ease the pressure on prisons and avoid long detention and cohabitation between big criminals and petty delinquents - this used to be a serious right violation according to the standard minimum rules for the treatment of prisoners advocated by the Penal Reform International (PRI).
Considering this modest contribution made by DEME SO together with all the stakeholders, we can assert that the clinic to a large extent influenced judicial practices in the Malian penitentiary environment.
Today, detainees have access to a rehabilitation focused on professional training, which allows them to become entrepreneurs and economic agents once they are out of jail, and conduct income-generating activities as a proof of their acceptance and resocialization within the community.
I thank you all.
