Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Albania: Are Albanian Legal Rules on Divorce Adequate for High-Conflict Divorces?
- Australia: Reform and Complexity: A Difficult Balance
- Brazil: The Social Food Bank and the State's Duty to the Child in the Face of the Non-Fulfillment of Child Support Executions
- Canada: Habitual Residence of Abducted Children and Divorce Act Reform
- China: On Protection of the Child's Right to Care under the Minor Guardianship System in China
- England and Wales: Familial Relationships: Entrances and Exits
- The Faroe Islands: A New Family Law is Born
- France: A Chronicle of French Family Law
- Hong Kong: Slow Progress Towards Family Law Reform?
- Ireland: ‘Best Interests’ as a Limited Constitutional Imperative
- Italy: The Divorce Allowance in Italian Law: The Role of Jurisprudence in the Formation of the Legal Rule in the Family Sphere
- Korea: AID and Surrogacy in Korean Law
- Namibia: Towards a New Juvenile Justice System in Namibia
- New Caledonia: Legal Pluralism and Diversity of Interpretation of Fundamental Rights (Common Law, Customary Law, Reservation Related to Indigenous Rights): The Example of New Caledonia
- New Zealand: Reform is in the Air
- Papua New Guinea: State and Customary Laws and the Underlying Law of Papua New Guinea: A Family Law Conundrum
- Portugal: What's Mine is Mine and Won't be Yours: The Newly Introduced Possibility of Opting Out of the Mandatory Succession Effects of Marriage in Portugal
- Serbia: Transgender Issues before the Constitutional Court of Serbia
- The Seychelles: The Seychellois Family Tribunal and its Implementation of the Family Violence (Protection of Victims) Act 2000
- UN Committee on the Rights of the Child: Reflections on Family Law Issues in the Jurisprudence of the CRC Committee: The Convention on the Rights of the Child @ 30
- United States of America: Same-Sex and Different-Sex Relationships: Is it Time for Convergence?
- Index
Namibia: Towards a New Juvenile Justice System in Namibia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 November 2019
- Frontmatter
- Preface
- Contents
- List of Contributors
- Albania: Are Albanian Legal Rules on Divorce Adequate for High-Conflict Divorces?
- Australia: Reform and Complexity: A Difficult Balance
- Brazil: The Social Food Bank and the State's Duty to the Child in the Face of the Non-Fulfillment of Child Support Executions
- Canada: Habitual Residence of Abducted Children and Divorce Act Reform
- China: On Protection of the Child's Right to Care under the Minor Guardianship System in China
- England and Wales: Familial Relationships: Entrances and Exits
- The Faroe Islands: A New Family Law is Born
- France: A Chronicle of French Family Law
- Hong Kong: Slow Progress Towards Family Law Reform?
- Ireland: ‘Best Interests’ as a Limited Constitutional Imperative
- Italy: The Divorce Allowance in Italian Law: The Role of Jurisprudence in the Formation of the Legal Rule in the Family Sphere
- Korea: AID and Surrogacy in Korean Law
- Namibia: Towards a New Juvenile Justice System in Namibia
- New Caledonia: Legal Pluralism and Diversity of Interpretation of Fundamental Rights (Common Law, Customary Law, Reservation Related to Indigenous Rights): The Example of New Caledonia
- New Zealand: Reform is in the Air
- Papua New Guinea: State and Customary Laws and the Underlying Law of Papua New Guinea: A Family Law Conundrum
- Portugal: What's Mine is Mine and Won't be Yours: The Newly Introduced Possibility of Opting Out of the Mandatory Succession Effects of Marriage in Portugal
- Serbia: Transgender Issues before the Constitutional Court of Serbia
- The Seychelles: The Seychellois Family Tribunal and its Implementation of the Family Violence (Protection of Victims) Act 2000
- UN Committee on the Rights of the Child: Reflections on Family Law Issues in the Jurisprudence of the CRC Committee: The Convention on the Rights of the Child @ 30
- United States of America: Same-Sex and Different-Sex Relationships: Is it Time for Convergence?
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
Namibia's moves towards developing a new juvenile justice system for children in conflict commenced a quarter of a century ago. A country which emerged from the ravages of apartheid colonisation and a bloody civil war to gain independence in 1990, Namibia was an early signatory of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) (1989), and received the advice that juvenile justice system reform was required upon submission of the initial report in 1994. However, bringing the law reform process to a conclusion has been halting. The first draft of a Child Justice Bill was prepared as early as 1994. In 1999, the Juvenile Justice Interministerial Committee (IMC) commissioned a Discussion Document on Juvenile Justice in Namibia. This did not result in the adoption of a separate juvenile justice statute either. Nevertheless, some gains were made in developing restorative justice and diversion programmes, and slowly the involvement of social workers (acting as probation officers) in the nascent juvenile justice system began to take root. The IMC coordinated substantial activities pertaining to the transformation of criminal justice in steering efforts towards compliance with the CRC. A detailed plan of action was crafted and set in motion. The programme description towards a structured and holistic juvenile justice system contained a number of project interventions, namely: Law Reform, Training, Structures, Service Delivery System, Evaluation and Monitoring and Advocacy and Child Crime Prevention.
The principle of restorative justice was deeply written into the programme description. Progress was made in a short time regarding all project interventions. There was a common understanding that the system envisaged a preventative and remedial tool, that came with limitations, in that it would be deeply dependant on an effective service delivery system. The first version of a draft Child Justice Bill was presented to the IMC in 2002. However, this did not result in law reform efforts coming to fruition.
In 2012, a multisectoral and interdisciplinary workshop was held in the capital city Windhoek, to try to build momentum for enhanced efforts at reigniting the reform process.
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- International Survey of Family Law 2019 , pp. 205 - 218Publisher: IntersentiaPrint publication year: 2019